Conrad on the Business of Writing

I have no doubt, however, that there had been moments during the writing of the book when I was an extreme revolutionist....I was simply attending to my business. In the matter of all my books I have always attended to my business. I have attended to it with complete self surrender. And this statement, too, isn't a boast. I could not have done otherwise. It would have bored me too much to make-believe.

—Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent a Simple Tale

I See the Devil Driving Your Bus

An Open Letter to Mystic Lake Casino

Dear Mystic Lake,

I live in one of the poorer neighborhoods in Minnesota. Many people in my neighborhood are homeless, jobless, or living in poverty. Few sights boil my blood more than seeing your buses picking up the poor in my neighborhood.

You don't regularly give free rides to the affluent people of the suburbs, those who can afford to throw money into your coffers, perhaps. I never saw your buses coming to where I grew up. But I see them now, picking up the poor, the dejected, the hopeless, the minorities. This is an evil preference, and behind your pleasantly purple buses promising a good time lurks the claws of a malevolent prey ready to eat up the disadvantaged.

Experience has proven that hard work and moderation is the way to happiness and health. You lie through your hungry teeth, telling the poor that they ought to be rich. You swindle them into believing luck will save them from their troubles, and bring them happiness. You offer wealth and happiness, but you take for yourselves the paychecks of the desperate. Oh wicked deceivers, do you not know that the devil is the father of lies?

Are you so fat and greedy, you detestable pigs, that you cannot stuff your face with the excesses of the rich and the materialists, who drive in hordes to your casino in their SUVs and sport sedans? Why are you not content with the many sheep that come to your door, but insist on dragging the disappointed off his stoop to the door of doom? Indeed, must you squeeze the last cent from those who have but few? How insatiable is your lust for filthy money?

And how dare you talk to us about charity. Ivan Karamazov would not follow God for building his kingdom upon the tears of one little girl. How many tears do you build your kingdom upon? How many broken homes, addicted parents, and angry fights, or drunken binges have you inspired? Is not the tears of one little girl, going hungry once again because her mother gambled away her last paycheck under your roof, is not this enough to forever reject your charity. No, don't tell us about the parks, and community centers, and programs your bags of mammon fund. There is no kindness in your dirty dollars.

I know it's not fashionable to believe in the devil anymore, but I see him driving your bus. I am not the sort to throw bricks through windows. But I do ask God to see to it that you fail. May your roof fall in, your foundation erode, and your halls become vacant. May the music of your machines be replaced by the hissing of desolation. May your ill gotten money become bitter in your mouth. Choke on the bones of your wealth, be filled with sickness and sorrow. And forever give up this detestable business.

Finally, to those politicians who whore after your money and deal deceitfully with your lobbyists, may they come to a miserable end. There is no place for you in a free country. May your breed wither and die.

Time, Productivity, and the Timeless King

I've been thinking about time recently, and what it looks like to use time well as a follower of Christ. I have found that I usually think of time using a productivity framework. Time is a quantity, and is measured in how much can be done.

I really don't like this model of time. I don't like that the bottom line is always efficiency. I don't like when this model bleeds into my devotions, or my friendships, or my ministry. It breads self-reliance, and leads me to evaluate myself based on what I have done. 

Leland Ryken offers a helpful corrective from Redeeming the Time:

Time is not primarily a quantity but a quality. So are work and leisure. In a sense, the moment is simultaneously everything and decidedly secondary. It is everything in that it offers the possibility of our being all that we can be at that moment. It is secondary in that its true meaning lies beyond itself in its relation to an eternal world and a personal God. 

When Walking on the Water Is a Very Reasonable Thing to Do

I'm sure you have heard the expression "a blind leap of faith." Somewhere along the line belief in God, or living by faith, became unreasonable, irrational, and wildly speculative, like leaping in the dark. I've been thinking about leaping ever since a Brazilian rice farmer, who now runs an orphanage in Ethiopia, challenged my church to "Get out of the boat." He was referring to when Peter walked on the water with Jesus. And he was challenging us to rely upon the power of God, to do things that don't make sense to the world.

The immense gulf between blindly leaping in the dark and the measured faith of Peter stepping out of the boat really struck me this week. Walking home in the dark, I knew how stupid it would be to walk across the street with my eyes closed. No, I checked both directions first. But Peter didn't have his eyes closed as he stepped off that boat; he was looking into the face of Christ, the one one who created water.

Consider the evidence—the empirical evidence—the disciples had for trusting Jesus. The disciples had seen Jesus:

• Turn water into wine
• Calm a raging storm just by speaking
• Restore demon possessed men
• Heal the paralyzed, the blind, the mute, and lepers
• Heal numerous other sick people
• Raise a little girl from the dead
• And immediately before their boating trip, they saw Jesus turn five loaves of bread and two fish into food for 5000 people, with leftovers. 

What is too much faith when you are standing next to the Lord of the universe? Peter did not hear rumors or read books, nor was he asked a theoretical question. He had seen Jesus do things to water that no other man has ever done. He witnessed with his own eyes and ears and hands the authority of Jesus Christ over all things. Nothing about obeying Jesus command to "come out of the boat" was blind.

If we see Jesus the way that Peter does, the way Jesus wants us to see himself, we see it is not our faith that is unreasonable, but it is our unbelief that is blind. "The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him." This is true blindness, a leap in the dark. Walking away from Jesus is absurd.

Jesus tells us to go, to step out of our safety boat and trust him. And it is a seeing faith, a faith that understands who Jesus is—having all authority in heaven and earth, that answers yes. He has promised us "I am with you always, to the end of the age." Not stepping out of the boat is the foolish thing to do.

Another Way to Do Email

I subscribe to a number of prayer updates via email, and I have never known quite what to do with them. The problem is when I go to my email inbox, I go there to get things done. I'm in productivity mode. I want to move through things quickly, and lingering in prayer over something doesn't really fit.

It is surprising how unbelief can hide in plain sight. The problem isn't the emails that I feel guilty about rushing past without praying. The problem is that I've been going through all my emails prayerlessly. I've foolishly been treating me email as something to "get done" after I finish praying, not as a task that should be prayed through.

I'm well aware that some people get tons of email. And really, there's lots of email that deserves only a cursory glance, junk that deserves to be trashed. I know no one who wants to spend more time going through email. But imagine for a moment being freed from the productivity-grind of online communication. What if each email was not a checklist item but an occasion to pray?

What if:

• A note from a friend became a reminder to pray a blessing over them
• An email about an event, or a meeting, or a gather caused you to pray for God's will to be done in that situation
• An online receipt becomes an occasion to praise God for his provision and ask for faithfulness with our money
• Reading an e-bill bring us to praying for God to give us our daily bread, and provide for the needy
• Seeing an advertisement prompts us to ask God for protection against idolatry
• Reading a newsletter caused our hearts to praise God for his faithfulness and control in history
• Going through a missionary updated brought us to our knees for the kingdom of God, and for his servants
• We paused before pressing 'send' and besought God on behalf of the receipient
• We truly sent God's blessings with each email, not simply a Christian signature line

Zen and the Problem of Tornadoes

Francis Schaeffer wrote about the way Eastern thought was becoming prevalent in the Western world. Schaeffer was writing in the early 70s, but I think this trend has certainly continued. As a nature photographer, I often hear people talking about nature in vague spiritual terms. I've been tempted in that direction myself. Here's the problem with that line of thought:

When Christ stood in front of the tomb of Lazarus (John 11) He was claiming to be divine, and yet He was furious. The Greek makes it plain that He was furious. He could be furious with the plague without being angry with Himself. This turns upon the historic, space-time Fall. Consequently, the Christian does not have Camus's problem. But if one is putting forth a pantheistic, mystical answer, there is no solution to the fact that nature is not always benevolent. One has no way to understand the origin of this double fact of nature; one has no real way of "fighting the plague."

Without the fall, there is no way to love the beautiful parts of nature, while at the same time grieving, and even getting angry at the ugly side of nature. As Christians we can understand death's proper place, and even healthy function, in the world. But there's still something ugly in it, something that occasionally pisses us off. Only in Christ does one have the right to be angry at the cost of death when one hears about a deadly earthquake, and then open your window blind and smile at the sunset.

Quote: Francis Schaeffer, Pollution and the Death of Man, p33

The Shock of the Real

A weird, lovely, fantastic object out of nature like Delicate Arch has the curious ablitiy to remind us—like rock and sunlight and wind wilderness—that out there is different world, older and greater and deeper by far than ours, a world which surrounds and sustains the little world of men as sea and sky surround sustain a ship. The shock of the real. For a little while we are again able to see, as the child sees, a world of marvels. For a few moments we discover that nothing can be taken for granted, for if this ring of stone is marvelous then all which shaped it is marvelous, and our journey here on earth, able to see and touch and hear in the midst of tangible and mysterious things-in-themselves, is the most strange and daring of adventures.

—Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

Good Solutions Are Small, Obvious, Simple, and Cheap

[W]hat I have described here... is a big problem, and it is the overwhelming tendency of our time to assume that a big problem calls for a big solution. I do not believe in efficacy of big solutions. I believe that they not only tend to prolong and complicate the problems they are meant to solve, but that they cause new problems. On the other hand, if the solution is small, obvious, simple, and cheap, then it may quickly and permanently solve the immediate problem and many others as well.

—Wendell Berry,The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

After all the insightful and prophetic commentary Berry gives us on culture and agriculture, this may be one of the most radical things he says, on the last pages of his book. This really gives me pause in all my hubris and youthful passion to see the world made right. It's a clarion call for wisdom, for understanding, for patience.

A Blown Opportunity

As an American I am rooting for my country to succeed.. I'm not super patriotic; I simply care about my neighbors, my country, and the best parts of what America represents. I believe most of us do. If we are to succeed, we must still share this common love and care for our homes and country.

Because of this, I was rooting for Barack Obama on Tuesday, during his "State of the Union" address. I was disappointed, mostly. Barack should have come into that speech with one mission, one purpose only. Obama should have proved he was a true leader, worthy of being reelected and admired. He campaigned instead. 

America has faced enormous economic pressure, nearly disaster, in 2011. We've also seen the people of America growing increasingly frustrated with a seemingly impotent congress, and a broken political process.  Facing this deeply divided congress and senate, which reflects a divided country, Obama's one mission should have been to unite us around the few values we still share—the values that shape America.

We need a leader who can inspire us. We need a vision-caster. Not a vision for one party, or for a new model of compromise. Vision for a nation facing hard times. We need someone to tell it straight, like it is, and inspire every one of us to fight for a better tomorrow. We need words bathed in the light of our history, soaked with wisdom, and fired with the fervency of a believer. 

Instead Obama sold his policies and task forces to the nation on Tuesday, and that was a poor substitute for brilliant leadership. 

To be fair, he did raise above this political-hucksterism on several occasions. He did well to call congress to look for small solutions to create a more efficient government. This is a truly nonpartisan call to arms, while admitting each side's differences. The last several minutes of his speech were also very good. And he may have said more great words in the portions of the speech I missed.

But if Barack's speech would have been cut to the last two minutes of the speech he gave, it would have been much better. How many people have truly been inspired by a speech stretching well past an hour? If Lincoln delivered the most famous speech in American history in just over two minutes, how much more do we need leaders who can speak so poignantly and pointedly today? This is the generation of YouTube, and two minutes is long. Only pastors and dull politicians address the nation for over an hour. If this be a drastic part from tradition, so be it; the times call for drastic measures. 

Why I'm Regretting My Kindle Now

Well, that's not completely true. I still love reading from my Kindle, and spent some time reading in it today. I also love all the free books I've downloaded over the past year. However, there is a problem with the Kindle ecosystem, a problem that has me wishing today that I had waited to invest so heavily in the technology.

The problem isn't simply that I purchased an e-reader from Amazon.com. The problem is that I bought into an ecosystem that's, for practical purposes, closed. I committed to buying my ebooks primarily from Amazon, and  entirely in their native ebook digital format. I've given my long term stamp of approval to a gigantic multinational corporation.

What if I discover Amazon treats its workers terrible, in sweatshop like conditions? What if Amazon does business with terrorists, or regimes that oppress human rights? What if Amazon starts featuring pornography on its pages? Is buying digital books, and reading on my Kindle supporting these practices?

Pre-Kindle the answers might have been simpler: skip saving a couple bucks and shop locally. Buy used paperbacks from local booksellers, and shop at Itunes for digital content. Now my dependency upon Amazon is more complicated. Not only is Kindle content sold outside the Kindle store scarce, but Amazon actually owns all the content I've purchased. One does not buy Kindle books, but "purchases" the right to use them--a right Amazon can revoke at any time.

I'm not saying now that Kindles and their owners are evil, or part of some grand conspiracy. I'm simply concerned at how complex certain dependencies have grown. There's always costs to early adaption, and this appears to be one of them.

How about the future? Hopefully amazon doesn't become truly evil, and even does better at ethical responsibility and transparency. But I don't have much hope in corporations saving the world. I am hopeful that people will stand up for private property rights, and push for a better, more open ebook ecosystem.

Strength of Body: A Joyful Expenditure

"[A]s a people, we must learn again to think of human energy, our energy, not as something to be saved, but as something to be used and to be enjoyed in use. We must understand that our strength is, first of all, strength of body, and that this strength cannot thrive except in useful, decent, satisfying, comely work.

"There is no such thing as a reservoir of bodily energy. By saving it—as our ideals of labor-saving and luxury bid us to do—we simply waste it, and waste much  else along with it."

—Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

This true in my experience. Quotes like this get me excited to work as a landscaper and agrarian.

The Front: #21

Attention all visitors, furry or not, welcome or not: we don't take kindly to poop appearing behind our microwave. Poop goes into the toilet. If you happen to be a mouse, poop somewhere else, somewhere we'll never see. You're welcome to take crumbs from our floor, but you are not welcome to defecate there, or any other surface, or even be seen. Be warned.

This sucker is #21 in a loosely tracked war we've been waging against pooping pests since summer. No more: we're keeping track of every kill.

So far we've deployed sticky traps, pounds of key-lime oats (mouse poison), Heineken bottles, broomball sticks, and snappy traps. We've even placed Pandora's Boxlid of Mouse Apocalypse into action (a special combo weapon that will have to be explained later). We will not cease until our invaders desist, preferable deceased.

This is a fight to the end. We live on The Front.

Time to Pray

If you are not praying, then you are quietly confident that time, money, and talent are all you need in life. You'll always be a little too tired, a little too busy. But it, like Jesus, you realize you can't do life on your own, then no matter how busy, no matter how tired you are, you will find the time to pray.

-Paul Miller, A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World

Favorite Music Albums, 2011 Edition

Writing blog posts that are already outdated seems to be something I do, and like doing. I do this every year, so might as well do it again. Here are my favorite music albums from 2011.

1. Bon Iver, Bon Iver
I listened to the samples, and originally skipped this one. But by 2012 it take much thought  to find my top album of the year. Beautiful, haunting, simple, relaxed. This shares many of the strengths of Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago, while also positive progression. Blood Bank didn't do that for me--it was more like an interesting experiment. This self titled album adds the band, and complexity, to music that still reminds of lonely winter days in Wisconsin woods, in all the best kind of ways.

2. Mylo Xyloto, Coldplay
This a return to form for Coldplay in my opinion. I was disappointed with their last record, but this one hit the spot just right. They took their music in a new direction, again, but stayed rooted to their Coldplay sound. Every song is a ephemeral brushstroke of sounds and bright colors. True, nothing profound here, but overall the most fun record to play through the year.

3. Destroyed, Moby
Moby describes his album as "broken down melodic electronic music for empty cities at 2 a.m." And that's pretty accurate. It smells of insomnia, with a woman's voice crowning on one track "I'm in love with this isolation." And humanity has it's place too, as Moby sings "I will always be right here." The instrumental track "The Violent Bear It Away" is one of Moby's best, in my opinion. A great album for working late at night, or night driving.

4. Departing, The Rural Alberta Advantage
This has been my favorite I-need-something catchy-and-upbeat-while-I'm-working album. And it's loaded with lots of folk sound and sensibilities. A good sophmore album, even if it sounds incredible simular to their last effort. I look forward to hearing more from TRAA in the future.


5. Minnesota, Mason Jennings
Oh, love, loss, and Minnesota. Mason Jennings does it so well in this short album. With his penchant for interesting sounds, his loopy but attractive singing, Mason brings simplicity and straightforward song writing to this effort. You want to listen again as soon as it ends.



There's been a lot good music released this year. I also enjoyed with My Brightest Diamond's All Things Unwind, Peter Wolf Crier's Garden of Arms, and Thurston Moore's Demolished Thoughts. And others. But this all I have time for now.

What music did you find striking this past year? What releases are you looking forward to?

Listening to His Voice

Screw resolutions. And no, I didn't just brake mine twelve days into January. I've blown them all before like some hell-bent boozer. Busted in January, broke in June; under my name there's a record of failures scattered across calendar months and years.

They're calling for my attention, for my improvement, that pile of books on my desk. Wendell Berry is speaking like a prophet, Edward Abby is beckoning, Tolstoy sputtering on. Puritans are hanging on my nightstand. Drink this older wine, they tell me: it helps the stomach, and goes down smooth. Magazines lie across the floor. The internet glistens with images and fonts and the damned weight of the present. "Know, know, know!" Hyperlinks draw my soul into a world of information that will surely set my feet strait, level my head, and polish hobbies into obsessions.

Then there's the journals sitting behind me—one red, one black. The lie with beautiful empty pages: spill the glory of your intellect here, and it will materialize into genius. My Google Docs tab is sitting open in the corner of my screen. It houses all those blog posts that swelled beyond the blog into gargantuan writing projects that will one day change the world. Screw them too.

The dust sits heavy on the corners of my desk. It sits pretty much everywhere else too. I've stepped over that pile of laundry ten times today. The crap on my carpet, waiting for a vacuum, bothers me. Dishes gather stink in the sink. There's fuzzies on my teeth (ok, just brushed my teeth. Too gross to wait).

All these amount to a forest fire of voices, screaming in my ear, burning up my world, pushing me beneath the covers again. "Improve yourself." "Know your world." "Stop being a slob." "Be a man, for God's sake!" "Stop sitting on your ass." "Be serious for once: devote yourself, be serious, be passionate." The problem is they hit all too close to home, close to truth.

I can't stop listening, caring, obeying. Not most of the time. These voices attack my faults, and I hate my faults. I'm tired of these voices, of their tyranny, of their occasional wisdom. I want to open my window and scream obscenities at all the urgent voices in my head, in my room. I want to screw every 'ought to', 'supposed to' and 'should' I see.

There is another voice. It whispers, just audible. I ignore this one too, especially ignore it. It doesn't do blurbs, or advertisements. It doesn't preach improvement or offer steps to a better life. It offers life.

Yeah, you all know what I'm talking about. Before you regulate all my writing to the trite and cliche, listen to another's words. Listen to his words:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. 

In these last days he has spoken to us by his Son...He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. 

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning  the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.

How dare we ignore this voice, this voice who is a person? How can we turn a deaf ear to the word who is man, and God? There is nothing trite or false in these words. His word are full of truth and life. They are life. And yet the mundane and practical and urgent rages on.

Sometimes I needs resolutions. Some days I need to pray. Today is a praying kind of day. A day I ask my Father to fill me with his Word today, for 2012. I don't need self improvement. I need to listen to his voice. I need the Spirit to change my heart to treasure and love and pursue all the beauty and joy and glory and treasure of His words.