A Cathedral of Hourglasses: Imagining time's fullness

In August 2010 I was finishing up my final week on internship at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Salem, Oregon when the text from Galatians 4:4-7 came up in the lectionary. It goes something like this:


4 But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. 6 And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" 7 So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

And so I preached my final sermon in Oregon on this text--on the fullness of time and the entry of Jesus Christ into the world. In that end was a new beginning, just as in the end of my time in Oregon there was a beginning awaiting me back in St. Paul.

Now, sixteen months later, Paul's same words have come around again in the lectionary and it brought me back to a metaphor that strikes me as more apt now than ever. So, I share it with you today.

The Cathedral of Hourglasses


An hourglass uses gravity to drop sand from its upper chamber through a small opening and into the chamber at its base. When the bottom chamber is filled this is the fullness of time.

Now, I want you to imagine a vast cathedral full of hourglasses. Close your eyes if you have to. Picture a room as long and as wide as a football field filled with hourglasses of all different sizes. Each has a finite amount of sand, and each represents a very specific thing in your life. In a very small hourglass there is your time reading this blog post; that sand is moving very fast and soon it will be full. In another hourglass there is your work—for some of you that might take up a lot of space, for others not so much. Some of you might have several hourglasses already filled up with old jobs and tucked away in a dusty corner. Some of you might be missing that hourglass at the moment, and some of you will have retired that hourglass forever. You will have many other hourglasses—ones for all the things you own and ones for all the nuisances that take up time in your life.

Now notice the hourglasses of your friends and family. These are your relationships—some of these, too, have stopped falling—family has died, friends have moved away and you have lost touch. Some of these hourglasses take up huge parts of your cathedral and are hard to get around. Some you can hardly see at all, and some you’ve forgotten you ever had.

If you look around your cathedral, the first thing you will notice is that not a single grain of sand is moving up. Everything is falling; all your hourglasses are becoming fuller—some very fast, others very slowly—but whether in moments, or in decades, every hourglass is moving toward its fullness.

When an hourglass is filled you have a choice of what to do with it, and you have two options. The first is that you take that full hourglass and put it up on the altar of the cathedral and try with all your might to turn it upside down again. Should you try this approach, you will struggle and struggle but the sand will not budge. But while you are putting all your attention into that hourglass of things-gone-by all the other hourglasses will pour out faster and faster. The more you try to re-create what is gone, the more you miss what is happening now.

But you have another option. You can take that full hourglass, set it on the floor of your cathedral and use it as a base for every new hourglass that comes your way. This may seem at first like a poor memorial for the investment you made, but over time you will appreciate that a single hourglass is only a little base but many filled hourglasses--with many full memories--can strengthen every new experience in your life. Then, you will build your new life experiences upon the memories that have made you who you are. That is how ends make new beginnings—the old inspires the new, builds upon the new and eventually lifts the new to a place it could never have gone on its own. Your new hourglass will, quite literally, stand on the shoulders of giants.

This is what God does by sending us his Son not at the beginning of time but when time is at its fullest.

If our lives are the cathedrals, then they only work when our filled-up hourglasses are removed from the altar and in their place we put the big hourglass that is Christ come into the world. When we clog the altar not only do we miss the grains of sand falling behind us, but we also lose sight of the one that matters.

Things end. And they also begin.

Ask Mary. You think she didn’t believe it was the death of her when she found herself pregnant as a teenager in a society where adultery demanded capital punishment? Ask anybody who has experienced loss and come through the far side. When Christ came into the world it was the end—it was time’s fullness. All these losses we experience here are just sand succumbing to gravity. The promise we have in Christ is that when the last grain of sand falls in the last hourglass of our lives our cathedral will not lie dormant. Rather, we will find that the cathedral itself was an hourglass all along--an hourglass that Christ will turn on its head, setting our sand free from the rule of death to a place where gravity rules no more. Every loss—every end—is a new beginning, and we know this because it has already happened--in Bethlehem and wherever you sit right now. Christ has come to turn the whole mess of your Cathedral upside down and even gravity will lose its sway.

Hourglasses fill up. They are at this very moment. The hourglass that marks this post is ending, the hourglass that marks this year has only a few grains of sand to drop, and the hourglass that is our lives could simply run out at any moment. You are guaranteed nothing, except that our ends are not empty but full, and every one is a new beginning, a new opportunity, and the next great adventure of our lives.

Shatter Our Expectations

There are 364 days in the year that are not Christmas--unless you count the 12 days of the Christmas season and let's be real: nobody counts the 12 days of Christmas. The 25th of December is the one day we're interested in, the one that captures our imaginations. In part it's the presents--gifts and cards--boxes wrapped and tucked under a tree. In part it's family--meals and traditions, shared experience and relaxation. In part it's a beginning--new opportunities, a new year, new memories and stories. In part, it's Jesus.

Well, in theory it's all Jesus. "Jesus is the reason for the season," ya know? And still it sounds cheesy--a tad too ambitious and unrealistic. As much as we might even understand and enjoy the Christmas story, there seems to be so little on the line. At Easter, there's death and resurrection. Now that is something! There are trumpets. There's reason to be excited. Easter is the festival of festivals; it's the thing worth talking about. Christmas is cute; it's like Easter's little cousin that is all dressed up with frills. It's nice. It's fun. You'll take pictures of it and talk about all the sweet things it did, but you aren't taking seriously anything that it says. Someone will tell you that when Christmas grows up it's going to be Easter and you'll nod and agree, but you won't quite buy it. You'll want to enjoy Christmas while it lasts. You'll hang on those frills for all their worth.

Jesus is the reason for the season like the 4th of July is the cause of summer. It's incidental. Early Christians co-opted pagan holidays celebrating the winter solstice and here we are. Christmas Day could be any day. That is no reason not to celebrate but it's important to realize this nonetheless. While God came into the world in the Christ-child, God also comes every day in new and unexpected ways. But that's just it, isn't it? Our expectations--they're too low.

We know the story.
We've read the Gospel.
We sing the songs.

Is that what we expect? Is that all we expect? What will it take to make this day more than quaint? What will it take to make Christ real, as the child was in Mary's arms?

It's time to shatter our expectations. It's time to be blown away by the incarnation. It's time to listen to that frilly little Christmas day speak it's message and come to the slow and earth-bending realization that everything you have seen, everything you have experienced is no longer as it seemed. For when that frilly Christmas child was playing you took it for childishness when it was really joy, you took it for ignorance when instead it was wisdom, you took it for being meaningless when instead it was the crux of the story of our lives.

Christmas is here. May your expectations be shattered.

Blog re-focusing

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to take a moment to let you in on the scoop for the future of this blog. I have started writing for Land of 10,000 Losses, a group of friends blogging on Minnesota-sports-related stuff, which means a couple of things for this blog.

1. This blog will no longer have articles focusing on sports. I am planning on having this blog focus on issues of theology, philosophy, hiking, literature, pop culture, and all the other random stuff I wrote about before with the exception of sports. Maybe occasionally if there is something of interest regarding God and sports, for example my post on Tim Tebow, I may still post here but otherwise nope.

2. If you don't want to read about sports then you're in luck. You win.

3. If you do want to read what I have to say about sports you should do the following: Go to "Land of 10,000 Losses" on Facebook and "LIKE" us. Feel free to check out the blog as well and perhaps even follow us on Wordpress. All articles will be posted to Facebook on the L10KL page. However, they might not be posted to my personal Facebook, so keep that in mind!

Thanks to all for reading my thoughts and reflecting with me on all manner of issues. I look forward to writing more in the future!

Peace,
Frank

Why Intangibles Matter: The Tim Tebow Story

There are times in sports, as in life, when things are going great but you just can't shake the feeling that it's all going to turn out badly in the end. If you've watched the Minnesota Vikings play long enough you know this experience well. You know that no matter how good it looks there will be a Gary Anderson or Brett Favre moment and it's all going to come crashing down.

Conversely, there are times when despite what appear to be insurmountable odds you feel as if things will work out fine. You don't know why this is the case; you can't prove it statistically or with any known formula. Instead, you have an overwhelming sense of calm in the face of adversity. This, my friends, is the realm of Tim Tebow.

Every week the Broncos look over-matched, Tebow shows very little in the way of tangible football skills, and then, inexplicably, they rise from the ashes and win. All of this with a starting quarterback who is too genuine to be real--or so his disbelievers seem to think. He has never shown himself to be anything but modest, but many people seem to have a clear sense that this can't be all to the story. Chuck Klosterman wrote a great piece in which he explained why it would be easier to accept Tebow if he were the kind of guy who went out and partied and got himself arrested. Then he would be gritty or tough. Instead, we have this overtly devout, gosh-darn, team-promoting quarterback who nobody seems to know how to evaluate.

Tebow's mechanics are bad. He doesn't fit the mold for an NFL quarterback. He is elusive but not fast, has a mediocre arm, has good but not extraordinary understanding of the game, and doesn't really pass the "eye test" (the test that suggests you can look at a quarterback and simply see whether he looks for real or not). All of this is true.

The problem is that Tebow also keeps succeeding. He's 7-1 in eight starts this year. His winning percentage is second only to Aaron Rodgers. Moreover, he's doing it on a team that is, by all accounts, mediocre. The Broncos traded away their best receiving threat (Brandon Lloyd) at the same time that Tebow took over this year.

All of this is to say that this is startling and strange--hence the ubiquitous Tebow publicity. It's also gotten people wondering whether there is some divine intervention going on here. I'm about as skeptical as anybody when it comes to this, because--let's face it--very few people want to think about God making a difference in a football game and not doing a thing about rampant starvation and disease elsewhere in the world. Nobody really wants a God who influences football games but doesn't stop car crashes. But here's the thing: God's interaction one place does not preclude the other. And for the first time ever I've found myself wondering, "What if God did fog up Marion Barber's head and get him to run out of bounds?" "What if God did give a little kick in the butt to Matt Prater on that 59-yard field goal to send it to overtime?" "What if..."

The answer, I think, is probably not, and not just because I think God has better things to do than impact football games. I think this is a case of marked intangibles that the stat-driven football world does not understand. This is a case of a culture change in the Denver locker room. Whatever Tebow has, it's contagious. It could be God, yes, but it could also be determination borne out of the premise that this is just a football game; it doesn't matter that much; and yet, if the team works together there's no reason they can't win. And they just keep doing it.

Malcolm Gladwell writes in his book, Outliers, about the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania. In Roseto there were virtually no cases of heart disease prior to the age of 55 during the mid-twentieth century. This was startling because heart disease was rampant in America during this time frame before the advent of cholesterol-lowering medication. More astonishing was that, as an investigation was launched of the town and its inhabitants, it was discovered that there was no tangible reason for this to be the case. The people of Roseto ate comparably to other people in America, they got comparable exercise and had no innate biological advantages. Finally, the researchers realized the only conceivable difference, and it was far more holistic than they could have imagined. The difference was stress. The people simply were not worried about life; they lived a casual, neighborly lifestyle. They were an outlier, not by any tangible definition that science could yet explain, but because of what was considered at that time an "intangible."

Now look at the Broncos and tell me that's not the same case. They are as low stress as you can get. They have a quarterback in Tim Tebow who doesn't feel measured by the world's standards, and amazingly enough, he's gotten everybody around him to buy into the same view. He might be one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL, but don't expect it to show up on the stat sheets. He's a lesson in intangibles. He might very well be the Roseto of the NFL. And I, for one, am loving every second of it.

Light, C.S. Lewis, and letting it burn.

John 1:6-8, "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He was not himself the light, but he came to testify to the light. 

C.S. Lewis once said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” You can tell that Lewis was intimately aware of John’s Gospel, especially these verses. John the Baptist comes on to the stage, testifying to the light, and causing us to pause—as we should with any metaphor—to wonder, “Who (or what) is this light?” Our Sunday school answer tells us: Jesus. But what on earth does that mean?

Try explaining to Confirmation students that Jesus is the light, and he is also the Good Shepherd, and he is also the lamb… and, oh yeah, he’s the prince of peace… and watch as their eyes gloss over. Metaphors are rough. At their best they open up worlds of interpretation and get us to see things in new ways; at their worst they positively turn us off to everything that the story is saying. Take this light image: Jesus is the light, the true light, the light of the world.

You have undoubtedly heard that a thousand times. Now let’s unpack it. If Jesus is the light that means that it is through Jesus that we see the world. Without light your eyes are useless; try walking alone in the woods on a cloudy night with no moon and thick tree cover and that’s about as close as you can get. So, we could say that Jesus allows us to see, but that opens up further possibilities. Is Jesus the sun?

This would be, I suppose, taking him literally, but it doesn’t really tell us much about God—unless you believe that God is a flaming ball of fire… I hope you don’t. It seems to me that the best way to think about Jesus as light is to think of his immanent presence. Light is all around us but we can’t touch it and have only our eyes to tell us of its existence; we can’t smell it or taste it; it might give off heat but the light itself doesn’t feel like anything.

So the obvious answer to the riddle is that light surrounds us, and so does Jesus. This is a single layer, but a good metaphor like this begs us to go deeper. To do so let’s return for a moment to C.S. Lewis’ quote. Lewis connects Christ as light to the way we believe. There’s a well-known Bible passage from Hebrews 11 that reads, “Faith is the evidence of things unseen.” Pardon the pun but Lewis sheds new light on faith, suggesting that faith isn’t only evidence of things unseen; it is also the very act of seeing itself. Everything visible, everything that our eyes take in is an article of faith, because the light itself is Christ—giving us sight just as he gave sight to the blind.

One of my favorite books is Blindness by Jose Saramago, a story about a sweeping pandemic of white blindness that quickly envelopes a country. The story follow a group of diverse individuals who are never named, led by a single woman—given only the title, “the doctor’s wife”—who is the only person in the world that can still see. Without ruining the whole story—because I strongly recommend it—they encounter all the horrible means to which people go in a society completely devoid of sight. Near the end, the doctor’s wife reflects on the ordeal of blindness as the sun rises over the city with a quote that is as haunting as it is profound. She says,

“I don’t think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.”

  

Life without Christ is to be “Blind people who can see, but do not see.” You can physically see the world, but the true light of it is missing. To see the world without Christ is to be blind but seeing. Light is Christ in and through us.

This is all well and good, and we can certainly feel good about ourselves for believing in a God who is light to the darkness of the world, but here’s the thing: if we live like the light we experience is merely light, then we too remain blind. If we take the metaphor and think, “Well isn’t that a nice image for Christ… well, isn’t that Advent candle a great ritual… well, isn’t that Christ candle or baptismal candle a wonderful ritual…” then we remain blind, because we are forgetting the nursery rhyme that we really have no excuse not to remember. You know the one: “This little light of mine. I’m gonna let it shine... Hide it under a bush, O no! I’m gonna let it shine.” It changes things when that light is Christ.

I imagine when you hear that song you think of holding a candle. Yet, I wonder if we’re not thinking big enough. Christ isn’t a puny little flame at the end of a wick; we don’t need to protect Christ from going out. Instead, Christ is everything that we see; not just the candle but the space in between us as we meet each other face to face. The candle is our faith, hanging tenuously on the end of that wick; it is ours, but not ours to keep. Our faith is to be shared with the world. The light that we hold is more powerful when it lights the wick of another.

Some peoples' approach to evangelism is to take their candle and drop it on the floor and let the whole place go up in flames. You see these people on TV with their altar calls, exorcisms and strong language of conversation. For them, faith is something shared by force; they don’t have candles as much as flame throwers to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The problem with this approach is that many will smell fire and bolt before they ever see Christ. The strong act of sharing their faith is off-putting to those standing by the exit in the first place.

We have a different problem up here in the northwest corner of Minnesota. We take our little lights and we hold them close, so close sometimes that no one else can see them. We hold them tightly because it is what we value, what we love, what we care about deeply. Our problem is not the depth of our devotion but our willingness to let it burn for the world to see.

So, here’s my hope this Advent season. We let it burn. We don’t need to burn the place down with our faith, but we should not be afraid to let it shine for the world to see. It’s the season of light. Let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine.

The art of NOT using a sermon illustration

I remember very plainly a time when a fellow seminarian explained her approach to the sermon illustration. She said that she was always looking for them and when a particularly striking one came around she would apply it the coming Sunday. From the start something about this struck me as funny. Instead of starting with scripture she was starting with an image or a metaphor borne out of her life experience. I can't deny that it had meaning to her, but I wasn't sure it would work well conveyed to an audience.

Four years later I find myself in much the same spot. The world is full of countless metaphors, some even that fit with the text for this week, and yet I have some serious reservations. Personal experience is both crucial and dangerous for proclamation. It's crucial because you need to live in the world to make any connection with the lives of the people to whom you are preaching. You can't sit at home and play Modern Warfare 3 all day, or sit in your office and read the Bible all day, and expect to speak a message that has both relevance and gravity. However, personal experience is dangerous because it often precludes the different and opposing personal experience of others. This is why I am cautious to use my life, or a symbol therein, to make a point. I am biased by my own experience, and I will never get away from that.

In my infinite wisdom--having served a parish now for a grand total of three weeks--I am learning how not to use a sermon illustration. I have a congregation of people who want to get to know me, so it's hard, but the end result is that I honor the message for what it is: God's word for the people. When Jesus says that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed it is undoubtedly a great sermon illustration, but much of the appeal of Jesus' words is their timelessness. A sermon is not meant to be timeless--at least it rarely achieves that feat. A sermon is meant for a particular time and place, trusting in the Spirit to move in that moment with that people.

So excuse me if I don't use that illustration. If there's one thing I am sure of it's that it's not about me, and let's keep it that way.

The Luck Effect: Why fantasy football rules the world of geekdom

I invited a friend to join a fantasy football league that I started this year. The idea was to get a bunch of people with connections to Luther Seminary together and have a big ol' fantasy fun time. There was no money put on it, so competitiveness was at a low. Of the 16 of us, there were probably only 8 or 10 that were actually trying to win, which is pretty typical in the world of fantasy sports when money is not on the line.

As is also often the case in fantasy sports, several managers who tried early on gave up as the season went along. Heading into the final week of the season, six teams had risen to the top and had clinched all six of the playoff spots. To give some idea of the level of commitment of the managers who made the final six, I offer the number of roster moves they made over the course of the year. One made 25 moves, one 18, one 17, one 9, one a mere 4, and one.... none.

Wait, what?

You see my friend who I invited last into this league, actually didn't really care at all about being in the league. Not only did he not show up for the online draft, he never made a roster move the entire season. In football, this means that every player on his roster missed at least a single game for their bye week, and not only that he has players in Ahmad Bradshaw and Jay Cutler who have missed multiple weeks due to injury. They stayed in his lineup and scored big fat 0's. He not only made the playoffs... he won his division.

For those who don't understand anything I just said, here it is plainly: he never did anything, ever. He literally created a team, let Yahoo! assign him players and he never once changed a thing. He even has two kickers on his team, something that is laughable in fantasy circles.

But underlying all of this is the attraction of fantasy football: it's a tremendous amount of luck. Yes, there is skill in determining who are the best players and researching the best players to pick up from week to week. Yet, the game of football is so filled with injuries that in the end you can make all the "right" moves and still end up missing out on the prize. In this league I finished with the most points and yet I only just made the playoffs with the 6th seed.

The reality is that Fantasy Baseball is the toughest of the major sports, because the sheer number of games and players means that much of the injury luck factor is mitigated. Hockey too is a good fantasy sport. Basketball isn't bad. But football, with its small sample size and tremendous amount of injuries, is simply full of luck. Not that that's a bad thing. It is, I suppose, why it's so popular. You don't have to pay much attention; you don't have to know much; you just have to... enjoy the ride.

I look forward to the playoffs and hope I can get a shot at my friend, but something tells me this is not my year. I lost my star running back to injury this week, and anyway... I just don't have the luck.

Sermon: Christ the King Sunday

Matthew 25:31-46:
31 ‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. ³²All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, ³³and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. ³⁴Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; ³⁵for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” ³⁷Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? ³⁸And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? ³⁹And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” ⁴⁰And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” ⁴¹Then he will say to those at his left hand, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; ⁴²for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, ⁴³I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” ⁴⁴Then they also will answer, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?” ⁴⁵Then he will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” ⁴⁶And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.’

            There are 156 Sundays in the lectionary cycle and if I ranked them from 1-156, with 1 being the easiest to preach on my first Sunday and 156 being the hardest, this Gospel would come in at 156. This is one of those readings where I sometimes wonder if the correct response is “the Gospel of the Lord?”

            Is this really good news?

            If the choice is sheep or goats, all of us want to think that we are sheep. But then worry starts to creep into the back of our minds. Sometimes we don’t act very much like sheep; sometimes we act like goats. I know a thing or two about goats, as a Minnesota Twins fan and a recovering Vikings fan. In the sports world you can go from chosen one to goat in a matter of minutes, just ask Joe Mauer. In life, it sometimes happens even quicker.

I’ve only known some of you for a week and for many of you today is the first day so perhaps I’m being presumptuous, but seeing that you are all human beings I think I can assume that, if you are honest with yourselves, you probably could see yourself as both sheep and goat. Some days you give to the poor, some days you welcome the stranger, and some days you are just in a bad mood and want nothing to do with anyone. We could break it up into smaller periods of time and see that some minutes of your life have been dedicated to taking care of the sick and then some minutes later to looking out for yourself. In fact, so many actions we take are both good and bad; in the real world, right and wrong is often hard to figure out.

A professor of mine once said that you sin even when you give to charity, because we could have given that money to somewhere else and you chose not to. His point was not that you should not give but that you can’t get away with calling yourself a sheep because of your gift. You don’t get to label yourself; that is Christ’s job.

I was reminded of my professor’s brazen statement this past Wednesday, which was Give to the Max Day in Minnesota, a day meant to encourage giving money to non-profits across the state. I looked on the website: there were 3,181 different non-profit groups asking for gifts on that day. Most of which were causes I could see myself getting behind. So what do I do? Do I give to my seminary or my synod, Second Harvest or Feed My Starving Children, the Wildcat Sanctuary or the North American Bear Center? Or do I look at the bank account and think, Man, I really can’t afford to give anything until my first paycheck.

We all make these kinds of financial decisions. I talked with the seventh-graders at Confirmation on Wednesday about times when they had enough—when they had an abundance—or not enough—a scarcity. Twelve and thirteen year-olds are thinking about these things, so surely all of you are. The decision to give of yourself sometimes isn’t even a conscious choices. Everyone of us has hurt somebody without even realizing it.

So here we are—left with a Gospel reading that tells us some of us are sheep and some of us are goats, but none of us really know. And that, strangely enough, is where the good news starts. In a world that places value on knowing things, this is a lesson that says, “No. You don’t know; you cannot know.” The sheep are as confused as the goats. “When was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food?” they ask. “When was it that we welcomed you, a stranger, or gave you clothing? When did we visit you in prison?” The sheep don’t know. It is not in their hands and it never was.

This passage from Matthew is so very different from the entire flow of the Gospels that it makes sense only when we know what is to come—the death, the resurrection and eternal life. As Robert Capon puts it, “Jesus is interested in the least, the last, the lost, the lonely, the little and the dead.” If you’re not in one of those categories, tough luck. The good news is that you are all in one of those categories: some of us are on our way to pitching the perfect game. And that is what this parable points us toward. It does not allow us to see ourselves as sheep; the Gospel only shows you the Shepherd. As Capon again puts it, “[Jesus] is the Love that will not let us go. If anybody can sort it out, he can; if he can’t nobody else will. Trust him, therefore. And trust him now. There is nothing more to do.”

You don’t need to worry about being a sheep or a goat, at the right hand or the left. All you are called to do is act in dumb trust. That is all that sheep do; they are not very smart. And neither are we. So give. Give of yourself: your time, money, resources, the shirt off your back, whatever it is that you want, but don’t do it to know that you are saved. You can’t know. The more you think about it, the more uncertain you will become. Instead, do it because you cannot help it; do it because you believe in a God that is working for the redemption of the whole world, because you believe in a God that died on a cross for all of our half-hearted attempts to become sheep.

There really is nothing more to do.

Amen.

99 or 1?

I am the 99%... and the 1%?

If you're talking about the United States then I'm firmly in the 99, but if you're talking about the world then I'm in the 1. I want to help those in need, but I am as guilty as any of assuming that I'm on the side of inequality. The Gospel text for this Sunday (Matthew 25:31-46) is one that might put this all into perspective if only we'd read it for what it is. Neither the sheep nor the goats know who they are. The goats ask when it was that they saw Christ hungry, thirsty, a stranger, naked and in jail... but the sheep do the same. Neither know if they are on the right or the left. Neither know if they are the 99 or the 1.

All we have is action in blind faith. There is injustice worth our protest, but be careful that you aren't more worried about your position than about justice. Only the Shepherd knows the sheep from the goats. I am the 100; I am qualified for no further separation. I can't get away from my sometimes implicit, often explicit guilt. I act in blind faith, knowing little, praying for the big and the small; the ones whom Jesus came to save.

Seminary Conversations: The Response

Nearly a week ago I posted a piece reflecting on three conversations I had with students at Luther Seminary. In the following days I was deluged with comments (pro and con) about the truth or fiction about what I wrote. The most encouraging news, however, was that I don't feel like I need to synthesize those responses because I keep hearing that these discussions are now happening. So, rather than re-hashing what many of you are already talking about I have a couple parting suggestions to get you on your way.

1. Students need to take ownership of their seminary experience

The responses I heard centered largely on the distance felt on the seminary campus. Students don't feel comfortable--or even safe. This is a problem, but it is not one so big that students themselves can't work to fix it. Have the conversations. Don't gossip. Be respectful to one another and treat each other like the future church leaders that you are. If somebody needs help give it to them, and be honest, even when that is the hardest thing to do.

Along those lines...

2. Be open to personal critique

I would hazard to guess that the real reason why students primarily feel unsafe has nothing to do with physical safety or institutional coldness (read: your candidacy committee). Instead, I think the biggest obstacle to safety are the walls that students throw up in the face of one another. You are not perfect. You confess it in chapel (if you attend... and you probably should). So, don't take negative comments as a personal attack. Ditch the God-complex; it won't serve you well in the seminary and will kill you in the parish.

3. Your theology doesn't work all the time. That's good.

If you had God figured out that would be a pretty puny God, hardly deserving of your worship. So, get off your high theological horses and listen to somebody who says things with which you don't agree. This goes for people who have so-called "accepting" beliefs as well. Feminists and GLBT-promoters can be just as narrow-sighted with their opinions as fundamentalists.

4. The true measure of your worth to the community is not what you say but what you do

The differences between academic and practical matters are never so clear as in the seminary. At the same time that you are learning about preaching methods and atonement theories, you are encountering fellow students in need of a word of grace and peace. What you believe about God is not nearly as important as what you do in God's name. This is not works righteousness--it is love of the neighbor.

I sometimes think we use the wrong word to talk about eternal life with God, because salvation encompasses not just eternity but our wellness in the here and now. So we use the phrase "eternal salvation" to the detriment of our physical, emotional and even spiritual well-being. If we want to talk about salvation in a kind of holistic way I think we had better start acting like the Christian leaders we envision ourselves to be.

All of this is to say that the seminary is a complicated place with so many facets that seem outside of our control. So is life. My first piece may have come across as aimed at the institution and this one at the students, but the reality is that these should be one and the same. Institutions are nothing but the people of which they are made up. Revolution may be what's needed, but it's a revolution in the mentality of the student body, the staff and faculty, and the administration. It starts with you. I think the conversation that has started is a useful one. Keep having it. Learn from it. Grow into it.

Then, as we move toward Advent we have the same hope of Mary and the hymn writer that "the world is about to change."

Worry and new life

“Are you sure you’ll be ok? It’s very cold out. I’m worried about you.”

On the one hand these are nice words to hear; it’s good to know that somebody cares enough about you to worry about you. Worry is a sign of love. I know. My mom worries about me a lot, and she loves me a lot. These are good things, though sometimes it goes a tad too far. Today she had to drop me off at a coffee shop on her way to work while I waited for my car to get winterized. The coffee shop was about ¾ mile from the body shop. It was cold, sort of, and so she worried.

Her worries cause me to worry that something really will happen to me. It's not that I worry about myself, rather I worry about what would happen to her if something did happen to me. I think I understand the risks of living. I think I understand the fear that lies behind the worry.

I could die. I could. Any number of things could befall me. I could have an accident while hiking or fishing; I could freeze on this walk (unlikely, I think); I could have a car accident (did you know that more people have died in car crashes than in all wars in the history of the world? Think about that!); I could have an undetectable medical condition. Who knows?

The reality is that any of us can be gone in an instant. I don’t want to sound morbid but you could be gone tomorrow (I surely hope you’ll be around a good long while)--hence the ubiquitous songs about living like you were dying. I quite enjoy life and I certainly don’t want to lose those closest to me, but if I were to suddenly cease to be please know that I understood the risks. I may not be the risk-taker that some people are, but I do enjoy going out on a limb, playing Frisbee in the rain, hiking in a thunderstorm, wandering in the woods. Something could happen someday… or I could die at the age of 85 after a long life of playing it safe.

The fullness of a life is only marginally dependent on its duration.

Death is real. To my mind, the best way to honor those whose lives are cut short is to embrace the newness of life. Death leads to life. Embrace new things. Love one another. Be open. Laugh. All of this honors life. So excuse me if I don’t drown myself in worry; excuse me if I don’t wallow in the pain of those who have gone before. I choose a different way to honor life: I choose to walk down strange paths, to take a chance, to say what I mean and mean what I say, to be real.

After all, death, like an hourglass, is turned on its head finally by the same God who has been the God of life all along.

Three conversations on the brokenness of seminary

In the past week I've sat down with three different people in three different phases of their seminary education. These conversations were unscripted and unexpected. One was a seminary newbie (a Junior), one had been here a year and a half (a Middler), and one was post-Internship (a Senior). What surprised me was that they had many of the same frustrations and saw the same problems with their seminary experience. So, in this medium, I'm hoping to draw together their thoughts and feelings in a way that is both helpful and true to the gravity of the situation, which is (I believe) severe.

I wish my seminary education was more practical.

I heard the same thing from all three. Nobody was complaining about learning theology, but they wanted to make it mean something. The lens of systematic theology to view the world as pastor is a failure; not because systematic theology is a failure but because the language it gives us as pastors is limiting to the experience of the people we serve. None of the people I talked with thought we should do away with systematic theology but each thought it sent a funny message that our systematics faculty outnumbered our pastoral care faculty by more than 2-1. One told me that they approached a seminary faculty member about a class on church finance. "Nobody will take that," she was assured. "Bull----," she told me. And I tend to agree. Classes like these are fit into January weekends when students are on Cross Cultural trips or in days filled with other required classes. What's more important, really, is that any seminary professor could feel that students don't want something practical. We crave practical!

I wish we felt safe at the seminary.

In one conversation, I was relayed the story of what happened in a Pastoral Care class with Dr. Latini when she asked the question, "Do you feel safe at seminary?" The class sat in silence... and nobody said yes. On the surface-level we all know that something we say can, and perhaps will, be used against us in the process of becoming a pastor--this is a constant and insidious threat that inhibits the learning process. However, I think it goes even deeper than this. When we don't know our neighbors it leads to mistrust and defensiveness. Unfortunately, seminary is a place where the defenses almost never come down.

The administration has sold the students out for the future.

This is the hardest to talk about because it could feel like a personal attack. So let me be clear: I don't feel like anybody in the administration of the seminary or the church proper set out to hurt the students--in fact, I think quite the opposite. Nevertheless, the idea that we are a forward-thinking seminary is troubling when you count the collateral damage that has been left along the way. Let me explain.

Luther Seminary has prided itself on the image of an institution that understands the economic realities of being the "declining church" in the 21st century. The administration has taken measures to ensure that the financial stability of the seminary is not withered by the markets and declining membership in the ELCA as a whole. For this they should be applauded. Forward-thinking is never easy and requires an eye on both the current needs and what will make the institution sustainable in the long-run.

The problem is this: in order to preserve the future, the seminary has instituted policies that are based on a principle of scarcity that makes more than a modicum of adaptation to the needs of the church in the world exceedingly challenging. Some of this is almost unavoidable. The kind of wholesale change that the student body would largely like to see (an increased influence in the areas of Pastoral Care, Worship, and Church Administration, among other more day-to-day realities in the parish) means that the status quo cannot remain unchanged. There has to be a demographic shift in the faculty. Nobody wants this--and for good reason. I don't want anybody to lose their job. I simply adore many of the Systematics faculty, and even if I didn't it's no small matter to consider measures that cut at the heart of their vocations. But here's the problem...

We've had three suicides in three years... and somehow nothing has changed.

Seminarians have the same problems as people in the church, because--and I can't believe this isn't more obvious to everybody--we are the people in the church. We spend too much time detailing the small way in which pastors are set apart from their flock at the cost of the whole self that is one and the same with all people of God.

Seminarians are hurting. And they are scared to say anything about it. Who do you talk to? Professors who have a vote in your graduation? Staff who are connected to the assignment process? Administrators and community members who have their hands in candidacy? Too often seminarians vent to the silence of Facebook or to the preoccupied ears of their peers who want to help but don't feel open themselves to pastoring one another.

The single greatest indictment of the seminary education is this: seminary students are not equipped to minister to one another.

So what's the fix?

I joked with my Senior friend and said, "Revolution." But maybe it's not such a joke. The problem is it's not going to happen. The system is perfectly self-perpetuating because students have learned to mistrust one another. They cling to particular professors and give others titles: "Systematicians," or "Feminists," or narrow-minded, or closed-minded. Dogmatic. Heretical. Students have hardly a minute to think about what God is doing in their neighbor's life because the defenses remain. What the student body needs is to see one another for who they truly are: sinners of Christ's own redeeming, yes, but more than that, Luther Seminary students are the future for the church-to-come. And we are the leaders who will lead this church out of the desert wilderness, but only if we see each other now as the gifts of God that we are.

Any change that will happen has to be student-led.

I don't want to preach in chapel because it is only an academic exercise.

My Senior friend hit a nerve here because I took the same stance my Senior year. I didn't preach because I didn't think it would be heard. But she got me thinking about what I would say if I did preach--what I could say to open the ears of a student body that's not listening. I realized finally all that I could say and it looks something like this:

What will it take for you to hear me? What will it take for you to stop speaking ill of this message in the halls and the cafeteria of this building? What can I say that you won't critique in ten minutes? Your ears must be filled with wax! The message from this pulpit has been one and same in all the years I've walked these halls: Christ has died for you. Hallelujah. Now stop acting like this is the small word and the big word is my theological move to get there. It's not. What little weight my words carry is a drop of water in the ocean that is the salvation you have in Christ. So sit down, shut up, and listen. Christ has died for you. Hallelujah.
Amen.

The First Semi-Annual Fantasy Box Office Draft

There are some small things that just make life more fun. I'm not a huge gambler, but putting a few dollars on something that's worth the entertainment value alone is cool with me. This is the best way I can explain the allure of our Fantasy Box Office league--a league designed to draft movies that are going to be successful at the box office.

The general idea of the league is this: get movies that people go see and then you will score points over a four month period--November to February in this case. You get 10 points for a #1 grossing movie in a given week, 9 points for #2, down to 1 point for #10. There were five of us and for this first draft we decided to stay small-scale: we drafted only six movies each. Each of us was given a $100 in fake auction cash to spend on our six movies and whoever bid the most got the flick.

The following is a pick-by-pick account of our first draft.

Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 1
To Pipp for $48
I started off the nominations with this, curious to see who would overspend. The way our league works means that this will in all likelihood be the number 1 movie, but I figured somebody was likely to spend too much. In the end, the price was just about right.

The Descendants
To Pipp for $10
Pipp threw us for a curve on this one. He probably should have just nominated it for $1 because there was absolutely no interest. This is the only movie drafted with a limited release. At this point in the draft I started to salivate at the deals that were coming if this movie went for $10!

Happy Feet Two
To Jeph for $35
A bit overpriced for my liking. This movie opens against Twilight with The Muppets and Hugo coming in the next week. It will stay in the top 10 for awhile but I can't see it staying top 5 for more than three weeks and at this price I was happy to pass.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
To Kate for $30
I was glad to see Kate get involved and decided keenly to not bid against her. This is a good, fair price for a movie that will do well, though it goes up against some stiff competition at the end of December.

War Horse
To Kate for $20
This is a classic case of taking the "hometown team." Kate wants this movie because it's about a horse and she'll want to go see it. She overpaid for it, in my opinion, but I'm glad she's content with movies she could actually enjoy... some of which I certainly don't have.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
To Frank for $35
I'm not going to lie: I needed this movie. It's going to do very well, and I told myself before the draft I wanted one of the three top movies. Twilight didn't happen and I wasn't going to bid against Kate for Mission Impossible. This is a sure thing at a reasonable price.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
To Pipp for $37
A woeful overbid in my opinion. Pipp now had three movies and $5 left to spend. Worse still, I wasn't going to spend more than $10 (at most) for this movie. It's opening against Mission Impossible, The Adventures of Tintin and War Horse, with Sherlock Holmes and Alvin and the Chipmunks in its second week. Mark it down: this movie never goes higher than 5th on the weekly charts. Still, I'm going to see it, and I'm going to like it. (A clear case where a movie will be much better than the number of people seeing it suggests)

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked
To Steve for $25
Steve needed a top-rate movie, having been shutout to this point, and this was about what was left. Really this was about what he should have paid for this, so not much to see here.

The Muppets
To Kate for $25
Again Kate goes for a movie she'll like, but this time she got it for the right price. It has an outside shot of opening #1 (though it's Twilight's second week), and it should stay in the top 10 until about Christmas.

We Bought a Zoo
To Kate for $12
I don't buy that this movie will do well, even though it's been promoted like crazy. I would have thrown out a flier on $1 or $2 so I consider this a little spendy, but with the feel-good strategy in place this was a must-have for Kate.

Red Tails
To Frank for $5
I made a bit of a miscalculation here. Now don't get me wrong, I'm very happy to have this movie for a paltry $5, but I probably could have done even better. There was a movie I had rated higher which went undrafted (we'll get to that later). Still, I think this movie will be successful and has a decent chance to be a top 3 movie for a couple of weeks in the desolate January movie-scape.

New Years Eve
To Jeph for $15
It's hard to draft a movie that looks this bad, so props to Jeph for pulling the trigger. I say this because it has bankability, a cavalcade of stars, and you know it will do well because people are dumb and go to movies that have a bunch of people they recognize. This is such a movie and I think it opens #1 before quickly falling off when word gets out that it is no good (and Sherlock Holmes and Alvin come out next week).

Hugo
To Steve for $9
I know Steve was excited to get this at this price, but honestly I'd rather have Red Tails. There just isn't that much upside here. I think it opens at #4 and stays there for two weeks before slowly sliding down. That said, this is another movie I'd like to go see.

Arthur Christmas
To Jeph for $7
I almost goofed and drafted this. I was very, very, very thankful Jeph came back over the top. Really, this should have been a $1-3 movie. Honestly, I still don't know why I bid $5 on it. Seriously. I must have had a brief stroke or something.

Big Miracle
To Frank for $13
Thankfully, I recovered quickly and got the steal of the draft. Even though this league only runs through the end of February that will be just enough for Big Miracle to have four scoring weeks. I don't think it drops out of the top five in that time. If it doesn't, I have this as the fifth highest scoring movie (behind Twilight, Sherlock Holmes, Mission Impossible and the Adventures of Tintin); for $13 that's a steal.

The Vow
To Kate for $10
I was stoked for Kate to get this. It has Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum and it opens before Valentine's Day. Can you say assured #1? The only problem is that it only has three weeks in this format. Still, a bargain at this price.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
To Jeph for $6
Honestly, not much to say here. Looks like a great movie, but I doubt it does well at the box office.

Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance
To Steve for $15
See Tinker Tailor, except the exact opposite. This will be bad, but people will be desperate for movies at the end of February and this is all you've got... but we've only got two weeks of it and Steve will only just get his money's worth if it finishes #1 both weeks, which (unfortunately for American intelligence) it probably will.

The Adventures of Tintin
To Jeph for $26
I was happy to at least push the bidding up on this one. Still, I can't help but feel that Jeph might have gotten a very good deal here. Tintin seems likely to open at #3, but I wouldn't be shocked if it stays in the top 10 for a lengthy six weeks just behind Mission: Impossible all the time. Considering MI went for $30, this is a good price.

Joyful Noise
To Kate for $3
Not a bad way to fill out her roster. This is a solid choice. People will see it because it opens in January and it's going up against not much, well... except Beauty and the Beast in 3D...

Immortals
To Frank for $5
I have to be honest. I wasn't looking to get this movie, but for this price? Absolutely! Especially when...

Jack and Jill
To Frank for $6
...I can handicap the Immortals pick with another movie opening that week. I should have #1 and #2 this first week and even though I got mocked a little because Twilight and Happy Feet Two come out the next week I think there will be some staying power here (even if I wouldn't be caught dead seeing this movie). For the record, I have both of these flicks staying in the top 10 for five weeks. If so, this is a steal.

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace 3D
To Steve for $3
Now this is a wild card pick. Are people going to go see pod racing in 3D? Or are they going to remember that this is one of the crappy new Star Wars?


J Edgar
To Jeph for $2
It strikes me now that Jeph has an odd collection of movies: the animated (Happy Feet, Tintin, and Arthur Christmas), the likely awful (New Years Eve), and the Oscar contenders (Tinker Tailor and J Edgar). What's more interesting, however, is that all of his movies come out before New Years. So basically he's going to be done scoring by the middle of January. We'll see if that hurts him...

Underworld Awakening
To Frank for $36
This is a case where budgeting better may have produced better results, but the truth is that I was so excited to get Immortals and Jack and Jill at the prices I did that I had $36 left to spend on a single movie and this was the top of my list. Once again, I handicap Red Tails with another movie coming out that weekend. Just watch Haywire finish #1 that weekend... wait no, that won't happen.

Man on a Ledge
To Pipp for $1
Wait, Pipp got this for $1? Seriously. Where was Steve and his $48 to stop this? Good things come to those who wait, I suppose, and Pipp got a serious steal here. The end of January is a tough time to parse, but if I were to bet I guess this opens #1 and could score until the end of the competition.

Chronicle
To Steve for $3
Hmm... not what I would have picked here with some of the choices still on the board, but this should score alright.

The Woman in Black
To Pipp for $1
Definitely a wildcard. Daniel Radcliffe could be a draw, but there seem to be many safer picks still on the board.

Beauty and the Beast 3D
To Steve for $45
OK, so Steve didn't budget well, but this is a great last pick. Tremendous upside. If it has similar success to the Lion King re-release we're looking at a top five overall pick -OR- it could be in theaters a week... 

Iron Lady
To Pipp for $1
This is questionable to me mainly because of what is left on the board. Contraband will get points. It might even be a #1 movie. This movie won't. Seriously. Also, we left The Grey and Safe House out of the league, as well as This Means War and Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.

If there's one trend here it's that we're overpricing current movies at the cost of January and February flicks. There's always inherent risk in going for those movies further out on the horizon. For one, the release date could get pushed back (not good) or they might just be a crappy movie, but at the price some of those went (or didn't go at all), there is tremendous value left on the table.

So that's it. I'll post some results as we go along. If anybody is interested in joining the league starting in March let me know. We'll take all comers (within reason), and look forward to the next season of March-May!

Bullying and Survivor

I just finished this week's episode of Survivor and felt the need to offer a few quick thoughts. The first is this: Survivor has all of the insidiousness of other reality shows and from time to time it comes through full force. The rest of this season has the potential to be ugly. You don't need to know much about the show to understand what's happening here; all you need to do is look at a high school cafeteria.

I say this in no small part because, while portraying itself as a game, Survivor has never escaped being personal. Every season the contestants get assigned to tribes arbitrarily and yet by the end of their time in the game they feel as if any breach of the tribal boundaries should warrant something akin to a death sentence. How it gets to that point is something that systems analysts or cultural anthropologists will have to explain. I am more interested in what it says about us as people.

Today, the stereotypical nerd, Cochran, a Harvard law student and all-around smart guy, decided it was in his best interest to go against his tribe. This was a dumb decision for one reason: Because the people he is going to vote out now hate him and everybody treats it as their duty to make certain that people who vote them out don't win. Putting that aside, what Cochran did is essentially what millions of kids fail to do every day of their lives: he stood up to a bully. Jim is a straight-up jerk; Keith isn't much better. Ozzy is kind of like the cool kid, Whitney the cheerleader/hanger-on, etc. Cochran was in a crappy situation and decided to get out of it.

What was Jim's response? The first word out of his mouth was: coward.

Right, Jim. That's what I think of when I see a guy being bullied finally stand up to the bullies. Coward. Brandon's response was apropos: "That's what you get for treating him like that."

My frustration with Survivor and the whole reality genre is unfortunately that it is all too real. There is a prevailing cultural ideology that sees behavior like this as acceptable. Cochran never had a chance to win this game because he was placed with players who decided from the start that he isn't the kind of player worthy of $1 million. Maybe in a different group a person like him would have a chance, but not with this group. All too sadly this is where many people find themselves in lives far more real than network television can ever display.

I'm not sure I have a solution to this. I want to stand up to people like Jim and say, "Coward." But even more I want to stand up to Cochran and say, "Congrats. You aren't winning $1 million, but there are some things far more valuable."

The Anatomy of a Comeback: How to win after making a really bad mistake

Sometimes in life things come very easily and sometimes you mess up. Last night I played one of the worst moves I've ever made in a long chess game--long meaning 90 minute + 30 second increment. In short, I had no excuse for making this mistake. So, with no further ado, let's see what can be learned from such a blunder.

White: Frank Johnson (2352)
Black: Reed Russell (2037)

1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 g6 5. Nc3 Bg7 6.Be3 Nf6 7. Bc4 Qa5 8. O-O Ng4?!

Position after 8...Ng4?!

This is a bit of a mistake and I rightfully punish it.
9. Qxg4 Nxd4 10. Nd5!

Position after 10. Nd5!

10...e6 11. Qd1 Qc5

Position after 11...Qc5

So we reach the position of my undoing. I've actually played flawlessly to this point. Any number of moves are good here, but the simplest is 12. Bb3! exd5 13. c3 when the computer gives me almost 2 pawns advantage. I saw that line and thought it looked good, but I also thought I saw something better. I actually made two mistakes here in one move, because what I thought I saw could have been easily achieved by playing 12. Bxd4 Bxd4 13. Nc7+ which would have been simple enough; however, that still isn't as good as Bb3. So what did I play?

12. Nc7+??

A second after I played it I realized my mistake.

12...Qxc7 13. Bxd4 e5

And I lose a piece.

Position after 13...e5

At this point I had a choice. I honestly thought about resigning and heading home. It was the last round and I couldn't believe my mistake. Instead, I settled in and hoped for a miracle.

Step 1: Calm down

14. Bxf7+ Kxf7 15. Bc3 Qc5 16. Kh1 Re8 17. Qd2

Position after 17. Qd2

I have a pawn and his king in the center of the board for my piece. Not nearly enough, but it's something. It would have been easy to play moves like f4 right away, but Qd2 is a more solid move because it creates multiple ideas. The more my opponent has to think about, the more chance I have at him falling apart.

Step 2: Create threats

17...a5 18. f4 Kg8 19. f5

Position after 19.f5

The idea is f6-f7. The biggest thing was to create problems, any problems. My opponent was thinking hard. I had around 50 minutes remaining, he had around 20.

Step 3: Think on his time
The following moves were played almost immediately by me, because I guessed what he was going to play and thought about my move on his time...

19...Ra6 20. Rad1 gxf5 21. exf5 Bh6 22. Qe2 Rf6 23.Rd3 Qe7 24. g4 b6 25. h4 Bb7+ 26. Kh2

Position after 26. Kh2

At this point black is still much better. In fact, there's a line that basically wins. 26...Bf4! because if 27. Rxf4 Qxe7 28. Rxe7 Bxf6 29. Re1!! white has no adequate way to stop mate. This would have won, but here's the thing: He had to calculate several moves in a line that looks on the surface to be suspect. In short, he's going to have to earn his victory. If he sees that line but doesn't find 29.Re1 then the whole idea doesn't work, which brings me to...

Step 4: Calculate the critical position.

26...Rd6

Spend a good deal of time in the critical position and come up with a clean choice. Then don't turn back. I thought for over ten minutes here and came up with a line. Then I played follow-up moves practically instantaneously. All of this put my opponent in more time pressure.

27. g5 Rxd3 28. cxd3 Qd6?

Position after 28...Qd6?

Finally he breaks! 28...Bf8 was holding but difficult to play because 29. f6 Qf7 30. h5 looks intimidating. In fact, white may have enough to draw now regardless.

Step 5: Don't let up the pressure!

Just because I am equal now doesn't give me an excuse to let up!

Step 6: Psychological Warfare

My opponent had stopped notating. He was under five minutes but with increment you must keep notating the whole game; no exceptions. I could have pointed this out to him immediately, but instead I decided to think about my move and decide what I would play. Then I got up and notified the TD to tell my opponent to keep notating and immediately I moved. Thus I put the maximum pressure on him. I didn't do it meanly; I even gave him my scoresheet to help him update, but I'm sure it rattled him and it cost him 30 seconds.

29. gxh6 Qxh6 30. Qg4+ Kf7 31. f6 Bc6

Step 7: Calculate to the end

32. Be1!

Position after 32.Be1

I give this move an exclamation point for a simple reason: other moves were much easier to calculate. Was this theoretically the best move on the board? No. In fact, after this move black is slightly better if he plays 32...Qg6. And yet, I didn't care. This move embodies all the principles I wrote about up to now:  it is patient and calculated. I counted on him playing Rg8 and I would have immediately followed up with Qc4+ Kf8 Bb4+ ab4 Qxb4+ Kf7 Qe7+ Kg6 Rg1+ Kf5 Rf1+ with a draw. If he saw this, he earned it. But it was not so easy to find.

I got up and went to restroom after Be1 and returned a minute or so later to find 32...Rg8 on the board, but more importantly I noticed immediately that my opponent's flag was down. He had taken too much time calculating it and somehow I had come back and won this game.

Once Upon a Time: There is hope yet for television!

As movies have gotten more formulaic and... well... bad, television has gotten more formulaic and... well... bad. It's a strange thing, because movies have an opportunity to offer something really entertaining, deep and meaningful in a short amount of time that doesn't allow for fluff. Inception is a great example of a movie that understood this, was written well, and widened the audience's perception of the world. It got people talking. Tree of Life has done the same thing in a very different way. Even if a film is unpopular it hardly can have an excuse for being unthoughtful. Yet, we have Green Lantern, Hangover II, and a barrage of other crappy movies that don't so much make you think as they kill your brain cells with mindless action and a plot that seems thrown together at the last second.

Television has the opposite problem. This is because it is built to be repetitive. Every week a show comes on and many of the ones that work have to follow some sort of structure. Seinfeld was a brilliant show because it didn't pretend to be more than it was: funny situations in the ordinary lives of some eccentric but not unbelievable people. The Simpsons has been doing a similar thing now for over twenty years. The reason so much of television is so awful is because it has now adapted this repetitive model and tried to be more than it is--which often isn't much to start with.

The really ambitious televisions series are ones that understand the structure and say, "Hey, we can be better than that!" LOST is probably the best example, though in the end it failed to be coherent. J.J. Abrams understood how to make a "mystery box" but he could not finally demonstrate that the LOST mystery box had anything substantive inside.

I became disenchanted not just with LOST but all of television when that series came to a close. I thought that maybe it was impossible for a show to actually offer the kind of deep meaning that I'm looking for; it seemed that all television series can do is make money and go on and on until they are no longer appealing. In such a desert-landscape, one might as well watch The Real World or Basketball Wives--it is certainly as meaningful as much of anything you'll see on network television. Maybe television was never meant to make us think; maybe it was just meant to entertain. That seems to be the overwhelming sentiment among couch potatoes these days.

So here I was in this muck. Lately I've been watching TV again--too much TV in fact--and I've been disappointed. Some is entertaining; most is somewhere between awful and unwatchable. But in this period I've been holding out hope and searching for something that gives me more, something that feeds me. It didn't seem likely this season. Terra Nova is entertaining but lacks depth; House is fun but doesn't get me thinking; Survivor is, well, Survivor. Warehouse 13 was my favorite discovery by far, but its brilliant characters don't make up for being a sci-fi series for whom depth takes a backseat to techno-wizardry (albeit in a unique and surely brilliant way).

Then, yesterday, I found it. A friend pointed me to imdb.com where they had the series premiere of Once Upon a Time in full the day before it airs (Sunday on NBC). I watched, skeptical for about half the episode, before realizing that this was brilliant. The project of a couple of the writers from LOST, Once Upon a Time doesn't work with an empty mystery box--you may very well guess the ending from the first episode! Instead, it does what fairy tales do best: it allows us the opportunity to reflect on the truth of their stories. Yes, it's entertaining; yes, it's well-acted and the filmography is wonderful; but it's even more than that. It has the potential to be a television program with heart that isn't afraid to tackle a big question: "In what do we hope?"

Watch it. Share it. Think about it.

The appeal of chance

Kate and I stopped by The Source: Comics and Games store on Larpenteur yesterday to pick up a game to play. Inside, the store was bustling with something called "Friday Night Magic," which is basically a Magic: The Gathering tournament. Magic is a collectable card game that follows a narrative somewhat like Dungeons and Dragons, though it is not role-play. In short, it's a game that involves a fair deal of preparation, work, money and, of course, chance.

My first observation about Friday Night Magic was that it is popular; in fact, I couldn't believe how popular it was. My second, related, observation was that this is a kind of strange thing. More than anything else, Magic is a bit of a paradox. It attracts the kinds of people who have long, scraggly beards and are into video games and comic books, but it's also expensive. Seriously, very expensive. In order to stay up on things, a person has to constantly be purchasing new cards. Only a handful of people in the world turn their Magic-playing into money. The rest are into it for the sheer joy of the game. And winning, I dare say.

Poker is one thing, because poker has the excuse of being a money-maker. Many people can and do make money on poker (though it should be noted that that money is always at the expense of somebody else). Yet, Magic is popular--maybe not as popular as poker but in the same neighborhood--and there really isn't money in it. So, my real question after thinking about this is 'Why?'

I used to play Magic and I sometimes play poker, so I'm not completely out of the loop. Magic is a creative kind of game--this is certainly part of the popularity--but I think the real appeal is for a rather simple reason: there is chance. You can spend and spend and spend, and all you are doing is giving yourself a better chance. In poker and Magic both, you can play brilliantly--in fact, you can make the best possible decisions--and you can still lose. This is why both games are frustrating and also very attractive.

Our culture loves games of chance. Actually, I think human beings in general, love games of chance. Incredibly, we hardly even care when the odds are stacked against us. If I told you and three of your friends to give me $1 and randomly one of you would win $2, most people wouldn't do it. But if I tell you and your 50 million friends to give me $1, and one of you would win $20 million many will be all over it. Super-charge the odds and suddenly games become more attractive. It is the power of the 'What if?'

I say this all because I enjoyed Magic and I enjoy poker, but neither works for me. I've played enough games of chance to realize that somebody's going to win, more are going to lose and I feel like I'm wasting my time. These are the kinds of things I love to do with friends on Friday night--almost any board game is a game of chance. But if I'm going to invest my time in something I want it to be something for which I have nobody to blame but myself. This is why I enjoy chess. It's also why I look at a roomful of Magic players and think, "Man, I wish more people cared enough to work at something that is both meaningful and hard." Pick up an instrument, put on some running shoes, crack open a math textbook, or do a science experiment. For me, it's chess. Maybe it doesn't make the world a better place, but I can think of no better way to challenge myself. The appeal of chance has past: time to get back to work.

In Defense of My Generation

Today I'm piggy-backing off my buddy, Eric Clapp's, post defending our generation, though in some ways I don't want to. The proliferation of social media has made my generation's faults all the more evident. Our politics is often narrow and far too idealistic--whether on the right or the left. We are the generation of people like Lindsay Lohan and Michael "The Situation" Sorrentino. We're brash and inexperienced, captive to technology, lazy and often shortsighted. We treat the internet like our playground and become captive by the vastness of it. So often we'd rather just watch tv than change the world.

Some call us the "boomerang generation"

But then again...

We are a generation with fresh eyes, who sees the world's problems and has the capability of saying, "Nah, I think we can do better." We love to give away. We're willing to think for ourselves. We know what's going on in the world--even if our opinions on it are subject to change. We don't carry the burden of hatred that is not easily shed by earlier generations. At our best, we're more than tolerant--we're respectful and interested.

All of this is to say that we are like every generation that has gone before. We are considered immature by the same people we consider dated, and in forty or fifty years we'll be the dated ones grumbling over the immaturity of those to come. Everything I've said above is true, at least in part. We are all sorts of good and bad because we stand on the shoulders of all the good and bad who have gone before. We're different--technology, economics and social structures have made us so. But just because things change doesn't mean that we reject the past. The past lives on through us, and the more we hear about it the more we can learn from it.

Eric says that he thinks we are going to do just fine. I think it can be even better than that. As the world is changing, we have the ability to be the next greatest generation: a generation that helps to end famine, to shed hatred, to fix an economic structure that pits the least against the greatest, to change how we view energy, to revolutionize science and technology all over again, to demonstrate what is beautiful about the human spirit, to vanquish diseases, to answer tough social questions, to love each other for our differences, and to pass off to the next generation the burden that they stand on the shoulders of giants.

I hope we can do it.

Death and resurrection in Hollywood

I was watching the trailer for Marvel's movie, The Avengers, today when it hit me that there are two things we most desperately want. 1) An ongoing story, and 2) a conclusion. Unfortunately, these two are diametrically opposed and so we are left with movies like Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides or The Land Before Time 86, or anything to that effect. All the while we want some grand conclusion... but only if it doesn't ruin the possibility of the story continuing on.

I'm actually excited about The Avengers largely because it isn't the formulaic sequel that Hollywood has been giving us for far too long, which is to say it isn't the same story in a different, and probably exotic, location (read: Hangover II, Sex and the City II, Mighty Ducks II... mmm, just about everything II). But I digress, this isn't just about what we look for in a movie. Box office numbers have shown that even when a movie is crappy we still go, and I don't think it's because people are complete dummies. I think, by and large, we're looking for a narrative that gives our lives larger meaning even if sometimes we don't always go to the right place to find it.

This has implications, however, for far more than movies. We want a narrative that's ongoing and one that is final. Good, effective preaching has to feed both. Mostly we fail in contributing to the ongoing narrative, evidenced enough by the number of church-goers who don't see any connection between the sermon and their daily lives. Other times we try too hard to connect with lives and miss the endgame--the gospel. Good stories do both, but they're hard to come by. On the one hand it's enough to preach the Gospel and on the other it's insufficient (if it doesn't live in an ongoing narrative).

This is the difficulty in bringing the old to life and putting the new to death, and it takes somebody like Jesus to actually show us how. The power of the Gospels isn't just in promise but in death AND resurrection. Sometimes death is the only way to get there. Sometimes Hollywood has to kill something in order to give it power. Too much of a good thing isn't really a good thing at all.

That is Gospel.

Chess tournament preparation and exercise

For the last two years, I have spent much of my free time doing two different things: exercising and studying or playing chess. Over the course of that time I have been charting my chess performance and correlating it with the kind of physical preparation I've had. The results have been a mix, but some trends have emerged.

The up-shot of this is important for chess players certainly, but I think it's also important for studying anything. If you want to improve--whether at chess or anything that requires a degree of mental exertion--the best way is to study or practice. None of what I'm about to say should take away from any of that. What proper physical preparation does is not increase your knowledge or strength; instead, it maximizes the strength that you already have.

Some of the people I have learned the most from are triathletes, because they know how to prepare themselves both mentally and physically for race day. Over time I've come to realize that preparation for a chess tournament is not so different. You can play chess completely out of shape, and yet an in-shape person will be more consistent and overall a better player than the same person out-of-shape.

So here's my advice: prepare for a chess tournament physically as well as mentally. Chess is a workout--even if it's not the kind that will make your legs sore in the morning. To prepare for a tournament, exercise regularly with particular emphasis on the time a week before the first game. Peak in your workouts sometime around 3 days before the tournament. You can workout up to the day before (and you should), but don't push yourself too hard on Friday if you're going to be playing 2-3 games on Saturday.

On the day of a chess tournament don't exercise unless you feel the need to do something light in the morning--say, take a walk or do light weight lifting. Don't do cardio on the same day that you play chess! The more lactic acid you build up in your legs the more your body will have to detox and that's going to make you tired; if your body is tired your brain is not functioning at full capacity.

Next, diet is crucial. Eat well, especially the day before. Fruits, vegetables and grains are all very good. You don't need to carb-load like a triathlete because you're not going to need to burn that many calories, but that's no excuse to pound down a Big Mac, fries and a shake. Not only will this keep you from getting sick, but it will also give your body the needed vitamins and minerals to give you a clear mind.

Most importantly: hydrate. If there is a single thing that even a couch potato can do to improve your physical preparation for a chess game it is this. Hydration is crucial in determining whether you have energy after a long weekend chess tournament. Hydrate while you are playing, but even more importantly the day before. You should be guzzling water the day before a chess tournament. When I go on a run or a long bike ride the difficulty is almost always proportional to how much I hydrated the day before. Water is your friend.

And this brings me to my final point: stay away from caffeine leading up to a tournament. Energy drinks are a big no-no. The day of a tournament is a different story. Everybody is affected by caffeine differently. Personally, I find it difficult to say if the benefits of the rush associated with caffeine outweigh the slightly altered state of mind, but I can understand if you feel the need to have an energy drink before the third game in a day or coffee to wake up in the morning. The problem is in coming down from that high. While runners and bicyclists might not think twice about caffeine, you have to remember that their mental focus need only be on going forward; the chess player needs to be able to process quickly and slowly, with restraint and with accurate calculation.

I hope this has been helpful. If you have any further insight I'd love to hear it!