Just one more bite

WARNING: This post contains references to my obsession with peanut butter.

Tonight as I kept sneaking back to the pantry for another spoonful (yes, I doubled dipped, but it's also my own personal jar), I reminded myself that I'm supposed to be losing weight. Peanut butter is allowed on the program, but not a cup a day. It also reminded me that much of the weight loss struggle for anyone is controlling the appetite. Read the diet books, join one of the diet programs (Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, etc.) and one thing they work into their systems is keeping you from going hungry. This enables you to partially control the eating. Your goal then becomes to not give into impulse eating.

Here's where people well versed in the Bible will immediately recognize a reference. Some will scoff at how I'm using it though. With each successive spoonful of peanut butter I ate tonight, one thing and one thing alone was happening. I was thoroughly enjoying myself. The taste and texture was incredible. It was a true pleasure of the flesh. It was pure sensual enjoyment. I know some of the people who will be reading this and I already know the less than pure thoughts going through your minds. Don't leave them on my comment board!

Eating peanut butter (or your own favorite food), getting a buzz whether it be from nicotine, alcohol, or something harder, and yes even sexual pleasures are all things that require our self-discipline to control. I wanted more peanut butter. I can safely say that for about five minutes, I was consumed by peanut butter instead of me consuming it. Before you label me as demented, how many times have you done that with a bag of potato chips? You know can't eat just one!

As I ate that last spoonful tonight, I contemplated how I just wanted more. I evaluated my self-discipline. I also thought about the Holy Spirit and my relationship with God. Do I view the experiential aspect of my relationship with God the same way? Do I seek, do I crave more of the presence I feel in worship? Do I desire to know him more when I experience the breadth, height, and depth of his love? Or is that the area where I choose to exercise self-control and limit myself to how much of that I can have? Just a thought.

Why?

As I was watching the movie Hotel Rwanda Saturday night, the night before Easter, that was question that kept running through my mind - Why?
- Why would people act so violently and cruelly to their fellow man, trying to kill an entire people group?
- Why did the world turn their head to this violence and not intervene?
- Why would God give his only Son, why would Jesus willingly die and suffer so, for the human race that had become so capable of this? Why do this when we would all reject this act of love without his grace that somehow enables us to respond positively to it?

The only answer is love. God's love has to be immeasurable. There is no other reason. Logic cannot explain it. There is no rational understanding that can be applied. It truly is unfathomable. It is unbelievable. Yet it happened.

Though we are not told this in the movie, I guess that answers another why question. Why would someone like Paul Rusesabagina risked his life the way he did, without any support from those who could have and should have helped? It had to be God's love working in his life, whether he realized it or not. I do know that his wife kept fingering a cross she had hung around her neck the entire movie. This cross seemed to always be prominent when she was in the scene.

I guess the next question we all need to answer is why we do what we do, good or bad. Just a thought.

Mikhail Gorbachev Admits He's a Christian!!

Here's the story. Just goes to show you don't really know what is going on in people's lives from what you see on the outside.

Going Green

No, this isn't a late St. Patrick's Day post nor will it be extolling the virtues of driving a Prius, using cloth shopping bags, or reducing my carbon footprint. It would be more accurate to say I'm shooting for a more organic lifestyle. And for my second set of disclaimers, that doesn't mean I will be buying a pair of Birkenstocks and shopping only at Whole Foods.

I want my life to be more organic and less mechanistic. When I say organic, I mean life is fostered. Contrast this with a mechanistic approach where production is the important metric. Our society is largely a mechanistic society. You see it in economics, politics, sports, even in agriculture (smile!), family life and religion. The key metric by which success is determined is what has been produced. I'm not campaigning for an anticapitalist revolution. But I do believe that our post-industrial revolution mindset has crept into areas where it shouldn't be. Areas that are relationship based and more organic in nature.

Organic living fosters living in others. When my family relationships are healthy, my children, my spouse, and my extended family members grow. I'm not trying to force some type of production - compliance with a certain set of behaviors or specific responses to my actions. Those are mechanistic. If we're living organically, then I am fostering my children's development into healthy adults because of their growing, not because they give me the conditioned response.

Our spiritual lives are definitely meant to be organic. If you read the Bible, all the key imagery of healthy living occurs in an organic mindset. We were created and put in a garden, not a factory. God is the gardener and his people are a vineyard. Jesus taught about producing healthy fruit, not about making the best pots or furniture. When our relationship with him is organically healthy, then we grow. Others grow around us.

Instead, we have tried to make our faith journeys mechanistic. If I perform A, B, and C in my faith journey, I will produce characteristics X, Y, and Z. If our church will implement this procedure, we will see that result.

There's a lot more that needs to be said. I'll have to leave it to this for now. Just a thought.

More cheese, please

Sorry, but yesterday's quote by Chesterton has really set my mind to thinking. Mainly, whether or not he really said what Lowes Food claims he said. A quick Google of "chesterton cheese" directed me to a sonnet written by Chesterton in honor of a Stilton Cheese. You'll have to forgive my infatuation with this subject. I guess it makes me feel a little less strange to know that even men of Chesterton's stature could be motivated to write on such mundane topics.

Believe it or not, I can relate this to your faith journey. Not that there are any similarities between cheese and having a relationship with God. But there are similarities to the strange things that some of us become enthralled by, infatuated with, inspired to write about, etc. and what motivates similar energy outputs for our faith journeys. I think we can also stretch things a little more and say that faith is supposed to be real and ordinary at times, affecting every aspect of our lives, even the mundane and cheesy things.

Somehow, I think Chesterton is probably rolling over in his grave.

Interesting Quote

I was in the grocery store picking up a gallon milk tonight when I came across an interesting quote. There, on the wall above the refrigerated dairy section, specifically the cheese section, was a quote from one of the last century's most influential writers, G.K. Chesterton. To quote the wikipedia article, his diverse output included "journalism, philosophy, poetry, biography, Christian apologetics, fantasy, and detective fiction." Among the many great things he is credited with saying, perhaps this is his most memorable. There in the cheese section, I came across these words:

The poet have been mysteriously quiet on the subject of cheese.

Thank you Mr. Chesterton for these provoking words and thank you Lowes Food for reminding us of his greatness.

Sacrifice

This past weekend was a fun one for the boys and me. We spent Friday and Saturday night on the USS Yorktown at Patriots Point in the Charleston Harbor of SC. It was part of an outing we took with their Cub Scout Pack. It was very, very cool. In addition to touring the Yorktown, we took tours of a submarine (USS Clamagore), a "tin can" destroyer (USS Laffey), a Coast Guard cutter (USCG Ingham), a replica of a naval support base during the Vietnam War, and Ft. Sumter. It was a lot to take in and we by no means got everything out of it that we could. The programming was supplemented by a showing of Tora! Tora! Tora! on Friday night.

One thing that really hit home with me (and I tried to convey to the boys) was the level of sacrifice that was given during WWII. We read about destroyers who steamed full speed ahead at the Japanese fleet, even though they were out of torpedos and other deadly ammo. They gave their ships and their lives for the rest of the fleet in order to give their comrades on other ships a fighting chance. We read about the forty plus submarines that were sunk in battle, taking all their crew down with them.

The sacrifice did not only happen on the warfront, although that is justifiably the most significant. We heard about how total annual plane production (civilian and military) went from 2100 in 1939 to over 100,000 in 1942 once we entered the war with Japan. After the original Yorktown was sunk at the Battle of Midway in 1942, it's replacement was built and commissioned in only six months. These kind of production marvels were only possible because of the material rationing and willingness of the American worker, male and female, to work long hard hours.

As I contemplated all these things on the ride home, I wondered what I would be willing to sacrifice for my country. Not just the esoteric, vague concept of "country", but the realization that my sacrifice was really for the millions of men, women, and children who live in my country. The sacrifice would be for millions of people who may not agree with many of the important ideals and views that I hold. My political leaders, perhaps even my commander in chief, may be members of that group with whom I disagree. I'm not sure if any of the men and women who gave sacrificially during these times ever thought about it in these terms or not. It may be best that they did not - it could certainly have been a cause to rethink one's actions.

I also could not help but frame these thoughts within the idea of my faith journey. What am I willing to sacrifice for my relationship with God? What am I willing to sacrifice for the sake of the faith journeys of others? I don't have any answers to those questions yet, and again, it might be for the best. It's probably best to go through life making sacrifices without counting the cost. The Gospel writer Luke might disagree with that notion. I'm still processing what it means for me. I'm also curious what it means to you. Anyone care to share?

Just a thought. I'm sure I'll have more soon.