We've got jokes

This is the kind of thing that's funny only when you live in a seminary town.

But I do, so it is.

A calvinist arrives at Heaven's gates and sees that there are two queues going in.   One is marked "predestined," and the other is marked "free will."  Being a good calvinist he wanders over to the predestined line.  After a few minutes an angel asks him, "why are you in this line?"  He replies, "I chose it."  The angel looks surprised, "well then, you should be in the free will line."  So our calvinist, now slightly miffed, obediently wanders over to the free will line.  Again, after a few minutes another angel asks him, "why are you in this line?"  He sullenly replies, "Someone made me come here."

Link.

For a different type of chuckle about calvinism, try this piece from Christianity Today.

I'm Down with O.P.C. (Other People's Content)

Yeah you know me.

Life's a bit hectic right now, so instead of posting my own brilliant (or, more accurately, "brilliant") thoughts, I'll just link to some better-articulated thoughts from more articulate people.

First, a quick shout-out to my friend Dan's new startup, Wylio.com. Wylio is a tool for bloggers who need good (free) artwork. Enter your search terms and it finds creative-commons material that you're free to use in your blog. Choose your size and orientation (twss) and get your embed code. It's dead simple, and I've used it for every image in this post.

photo © 2008 H. Michael Karshis | more info (via: Wylio)

My friend Jim Zartman not only plays a pretty mean guitar, he's also a pretty good thinker. I REALLY liked his post on Gollum, but for sheer quotability you can't beat this post on doubt.

I was watching this movie where the main character was talking about the philosophies she lived by and one of them was, “Never take advice from someone you wouldn’t trade places with.” I like that, not as a general rule, but as specific to situations. For example, I wouldn’t ask advice on being a father from someone who I thought had bratty kids. When I look at the lives and read parts of books from guys like N.T. Wright or C.S. Lewis, I know I would rather be like them than like Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins.

photo © 2007 Kevin | more info (via: Wylio)
And via kottke, here's a fantastic mind trip on the egalitarian merits of Coca-Cola and America. I'd meant to use this to explain why, contrary to trendy opinion, Walmart is the greatest economic equalizer in the history of the world. But odds of getting that written are small. Instead, I'll leave you with the relevant quote and let you work the logic out yourself.

What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.

photo © 2007 flickrnospam | more info (via: Wylio)
In case you weren't aware, Benoit Mandelbrot died last week. As in, the Mandelbrot set. He was kind of a big deal. The-man-the-legend-Jonathan-Coulton (who wrote the most famous song about a living mathematician that I'm aware of) had a fantastic pseudo-eulogy, which contains this gem.

Not to get too heavy on you, but truth itself has a kind of fractal component – you can be right at one scale, but then zoom in and discover you had it all wrong. I stopped trusting people with absolute opinions the day I understood the answer to the question “How long is the coast of Britain?” is “It depends.” Not coincidentally that was the same day I discovered Mandelbrot. That was the question that led him to invent a new branch of mathematics by creating a way to quantify and discuss this kind of weirdness, and it changed the way we think about all sorts of things.

photo © 2005 Chris Jackson | more info (via: Wylio)
I'd say that Rachel Held Evans is the best professional writer I know, but that wouldn't be saying much since I don't know many professional writers. Instead, I'll say that she's one of the very best writers that I read, which is saying quite a bit when you consider that I get over 800 items a week in my RSS reader. Even when I don't agree with Rachel (which doesn't happen very often), I can't stop reading her prose. It's fantastic. For example, try this recent post on cultivating a gentle spirit:

I don’t know for sure, but I think that maybe God is trying to tell me that I’ve got to stop reacting so much, that I can’t allow the little ups and downs in my day to affect me to the core. Gentleness begins with strength, quietness with security. A great tree is both moved and unmoved—it changes with the seasons, but its roots keep it anchored in the ground.

photo © 2006 Simon East | more info (via: Wylio)
One of my favorite athiests, David Friedman, wrote a fantastic short piece entitled "Separation of Church and State or Public Schools: Pick One." David is "an academic economist who teaches at a law school and has never taken a course for credit in either field." He's riffing on a previous post of his, which is itself a riff on Volokh's recent reprint of its classic "How Separation of Church and State Was Read Into the Constitution (Hint: the KKK got its way)."

This suggests a more general point—is the existence of a public school system consistent with a serious commitment to the separation of church and state?

I think the answer is that it is not. While teaching a fundamentalist version of the origin of life is indeed taking a side in a religious dispute, teaching a conventional account of biology and geology is is also taking a side in that dispute, just the opposite side. I do not see how I can honestly tell a fundamentalist that it is a violation of the separation of church and state to teach children that his religious beliefs are true but not a violation to teach children that they are false.

I've had several normally thoughtful people tell me recently that this election campaign was the least civil ever, and that our country is trending away from civility. It's possible, I guess. I certainly wouldn't know, since I don't own a TV or watch election coverage (actually, election coverage in 2008 is what convinced me to finally cut the wire completely). But my general suspiciousness of "it's getting worse all the time" thinking received a boost from this brilliant piece:




Some final thoughts:

There's no speed limit.

Here in Lexington, man eats his own beard.

Donald Miller is, and always has been, the man.

Well, this blog post is long enough for now. If you're interested in seeing what I'm reading, follow me on Reader or subscribe to my Shared Items RSS feed (top right, "What I'm Reading).

(Not even remotely) Authentic Thai Peanut Chicken

Hello, Blog! Instead of deep thoughts, today I'm using you to jot down a recipe for a friend. This dish is not what a food critic would recognize as Thai Peanut Chicken. It does have four things going for it, though:

1. It's ridiculously easy
2. It's ridiculously fast
3. I always have all of the ingredients in the house
4. My kids love it.

Without further ado:

1. Start boiling water. Trust me, the sauce is fast. Cooking the pasta is the hard part. Use whatever pasta you want to get rid of... I generally go with either macaroni or spaghetti noodles. Once the water's hot, give it salt and oil. If you have peanuts in the house, throw in a handful.

2. Throw some minced garlic and chopped garlic in a cast iron skillet. Top with some EVOO and give it some heat... start getting the flavor out of the aromatics.

3. Add 2T of soy sauce, 1T of rice vinegar, 1T of lemon juice, and 1T of brown sugar. Mix it up and add a can of chicken.

4. Once the chicken seems to be a little bit flavored, add half a cup of creamy peanut butter. I've done will with Kroger, Peter Pan, and Jif. Doesn't matter that I can tell. Go wild. Add 1T of milk. Keep stirring the mixture and make sure it doesn't burn. It'll probably get too thick; just add some of the water from the pot o' noodles. Get a nice creamy / slightly runny consistency. Cut the heat to the skillet.

5. Drain the noodles (and peanuts, if you've got 'em), add to the skillet, and mix. Serve with a small bottle of Frank's Hot Sauce... I find this dish to be really bland as-is, but my kids love it that way. Judi and I are pretty free with the hot sauce, which makes it a ton better. We also ruin the authenticity even more by mixing in peas. Sounds odd, but it tastes fine and it gets the kids a vegetable.

Enjoy! If you make any improvements, I'd be glad to hear about them.

Profession, Vocation, Occupation

Preface: This was written but not published when we were getting ready to move. Now that I do have a job, I came on to blogspot for the first time in a month and realized I'd never actually sent this out. So here it is, in its time-warped "glory."

===================

One of the most common questions I've been getting about the move (and I've been getting this from my grandmother, some high-school acquaintances, and everyone in between) is what I'll be doing once I get to Lexington. When I give the honest answer ("I have no idea") the followup question is always the same: will I be in professional / vocational / occupational ministry. I don't usually play the deconstruction game, but let's check this out a bit. Imagine this conversation between myself and a hypothetical friend.

HF (hypothetical friend): So, Micah, are you looking for a role in professional ministry in Lexington?

MrO: Let's talk about that word "profession." We take it to mean a line of work or a trade. But if you check it in the dictionary, you'll find that it's actually a matter of allegiance... we profess vows to a religious community, or profess a faith, or profess a belief or opinion. Only one of the four definitions given by Messrs. Miriam and Webster has to do with economic activity, and my understanding is that even that was once a matter of allegiance... I profess allegiance to a guild or a trade.

I used to joke that pastors are professional Christians... they get paid to do what we're all supposed to be doing anyway. But that's not really the right word on my part. The reality is that ALL followers of Jesus should be professional... we should "Hold firmly to the faith we profess." So in that sense, any ministry I do should be professional.

HF: You know that's not what I mean. What I mean is, are you looking for vocational ministry in Lexington?

MrO: That's a funny word, "vocation." It's from the latin voca, which means "to call." Your vocation is your calling. It's what people are talking about when they're "called" into ministry. Eugene Peterson, though, has an entirely different take on it.

During his seminary education in New York City, Peterson worked with a group of artists. They were dancers and poets and sculptors, and they all worked blue-collar jobs as taxi drivers, waiters, and salesmen—whatever they had to do to pay the rent and put food on the table. Soon enough Peterson realized that “none of them were defined by their jobs—they were artists, whether anyone else saw them as artists, and regardless of whether anyone would ever pay them to be artists.” That is to say, being an artist wasn’t a job for them, but a vocation. Their jobs simply kept them alive so they could pursue their vocations. “Their vocation didn’t come from what anyone thought of them or paid them.”

So if I'm getting paid by a church, that might mean that my ministry is NOT my vocation. Not saying that's definitely the case, of course, but the real question is "would I do this even if i wasn't getting paid for it?"

HF: That's not what I'm talking about. What I mean is are you looking for an occupational ministry in Lexington?

MrO: You know, "occupation" is another funny word. We use it to...

HF: Your being needlessly pedantic, and it's really annoying.

MrO: Hey man, you're just a literary device that lets me order my thoughts. It's a pretty well-established one, too, started by Plato. I mean all of the Socratic philosophy we have is just Plato pitting Socrates against...

HF: Dude.

MrO: Right. Anyway, there's two ways you can take "occupation." It could be a trade, but it could also mean holding territory for an invading force. And that's what we believe about the Kingdom of God... that we're the beachhead of a Kingdom that is breaking through into this world. It's fully present but not fully realized; both "already" and "not yet." Right now it's only here in part, but soon it will be here fully. The dam is currently bursting... right now there's a trickle of water at the ankles but before long there will be a wall of water that sweeps a new Kingdom into existence. It's a Kingdom entirely without borders or even governments, except for one King.

And so for the next season of life, my next occupation is Lexington. That's the beachhead I'm occupying, that's the territory I have my eye on. That's where my ministry is, and that's what it means to do "occupational ministry."

HF: What. Are. You. Going. To. Do. To. Make. Money.

MrO: Oh, my job? I have no idea.

Cleaning out the hard drive...

It's my last week at work, so I'm getting ready to give back my work laptop. I've found lots of stuff on here that I'd forgotten, but here's my favorite. Little jab at all of my friends on Twitter.

Venn Diagram of Personality Disorders and Social Media



Of course, since this blog auto-feeds to my Facebook account, I'm probably well into the "Narcissism" category.

Expect to see a torrent of blogging this week, as I publish all of the little things that I'd stashed away to share "later."

That Martin Luther King, Jr... he's not bad

Everybody knows MLK, right? Everybody knows he's a good guy who did good stuff. But I've never actually been exposed to his writing before. I've heard lots of things ABOUT King, but until recently I've never actually read his own words.

This guy was a force of nature.

If you've never done it, you should go read Letter from a Birmingham Jail. I'm working through it for the first time, and I'm staggered by the guy's depth of thought. This man wasn't just a good orator, he was a great thinker. The whole thing is quotable, but this part was big for me right now:

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever... If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall; let him go on freedom rides--and try to understand why he must do so. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history. So I have not said to my people: "Get rid of your discontent." Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action.

I'm not an oppressed minority. But I do sometimes think "I shouldn't feel this way." I think I should force myself not to be discontent.

News flash: it doesn't work that way.

Instead of trying to force myself to feel differently (or just happily wallowing in my discontent), it's far more constructive when I identify positive behaviors and channel any discontent towards those behaviors. MLK figured it out over 50 years ago, I'm figuring it out today, and you may have figured it out years before me.

But if it's new to you, or if you've forgotten, now is a pretty good time to start.

Happy Belated Father's Day!

Here's another gem from Team Vegas. This was produced a couple years ago by my friends at Canyon Ridge Christian Church. I meant to post it on Father's Day, but I was out of town. Better late than never, I guess. My new brother-in-law sent me this gem, though, so I figured I'd post this video in retaliation. I've shrunk this to fit on my blog, but it's really worth watching full screen. Multiple times.



Little-known fact: at one point, the folks at CRCC asked me to leave my job at the Yucca Mountain Project to come be the Director of Communication for the church. I was slightly underqualified, but they didn't have a ton of applicants. Then, out of nowhere, a new guy named Adam burst onto the scene and got the job. My discomfort with that lasted until I met him, at which point I knew that the church had made the exact right decision. He was way more qualified than I, on multiple levels.

For example, he's the one who drew this video.