Like tearing of the nets

Two poems by Jonathan Taube

Song of Songs 2:4

“His banner over me is Love”
and so to sit and ponder this thought
The warmth of the sun is on my back
and still my eyes squint from its strength
I’ve found this love that covers all my sin
And I seem to be swimming
in an ocean of beauty

Like a bird,
bathing itself in a puddle after a fresh rainfall
Or like walking through a parking lot,
reading a lovely book–getting lost in it all

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Skillful culture making

Moving the horizons of culture

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friend of mine likes to quote G.K Chesterton, who said, “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” I’ve just published a book called Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (which may or may not illustrate Chesterton’s axiom). So you might think that I’m eager for Christians - and any member of our society who cares about its preservation and renewal - to get out there and make something, anything, rather than simply marinating in the consumption and critique that so often are our default postures in the world.

And indeed there’s something to that. The best and most important things most of us will do with our lives - friendship, marriage and parenthood, not to mention cooking, gardening, singing, and praying - will probably not be the things we do best, especially at first. They are worth doing badly, especially if the alternative is not daring to do them at all.

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Book review | Culture Making

Andy Crouch
Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling.
Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Books, 2008. 284 pages

Reviewed by Mark Petersen

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ndy Crouch’s creative energies have been simmering and are ready to be brought to the patio table this summer in his latest book, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling. This thought-provoking, accessibly written work confronts a simplistic understanding of how Christians make a difference in our world. Rather than an ostrich-like burying of one’s head in the sand, placarding the excesses of our fallen world, or over-spiritualizing solutions, Crouch contributes both language and framework for thoughtful engagement as Christians. It is far easier to ignore our world’s dysfunction or, conversely, be angry, but Crouch demonstrates the more arduous and ultimately rewarding pathway of constructive engagement.

The author presents his thesis in three parts-culture, Gospel, and calling. He defines culture, demonstrates how it is an integral part of the Gospel and is woven throughout Scripture, and finally invites the reader to awake to the possibilities that the Gospel we embrace also calls us to engage intentionally with our world through the creation of cultural goods. Following Jesus is all about creating alternative, life-giving expressions of culture for the mainstream culture.
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Notes from the curb

Jean and I | January 2008

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ast Wednesday I took Jean to the doctor.  She didn’t want to go, but I was worried about her.  She had been sick with a terrible cough for weeks.  Her bedraggled look was getting worse, and she wasn’t answering the phone.  She even told me that she had lost her appetite, and that was huge — though when I called to see if she needed food, she did ask for milk… and ice cream.  (She didn’t like the little cartons from Meals on Wheels… and because she was diabetic they didn’t give her ice cream.  Jean loved ice cream!)

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Tendon and bone

Two poems by Jonathan Taube

Today I sit near the pond, reading

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oday I sit near the pond, reading
My sweater cushioning bare ankles from the rock beneath.

Today the long, blowing curtain of wind pushes wisps of hair in and out of my eyes.

Near to me is the embarrassed tumble of dead leaves as old men
Their retreat softly playing out the insecurity found in the face of such new life.

In a strange effort to be one with it all
I unsnake a long strand of coarse, wound hair -
to watch it hang for the briefest of heartbeats,
suspended beneath the cloud cover,
Till it is finally absorbed into the slick surface
To float away until caught in some swirling eddy
As small, tentative drops of rain begin to fall.

I hold my hand palm up (waiting for one drop to gently find its center),
Truly marveling at the tendon stretched tightly between bone
and the subtle movement of muscle -
Astounded by this thought:
“In spring, even a simple moment can become heartbreaking.”

Today I sat upon the rock in which Moses was shielded
As the Glory of the LORD passed him by.

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Poem for an HIV-positive mother

 Estonia | Anya Henderson wonders where hope lies

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e met at the hospital. Lena (name is changed) was about to give birth to her third girl. She tried to sound like she had everything under control and that her husband - who, like her, was a client of a methadone program - is a good man and excellent father. So, she told me that she would make it. She knew that I knew about her HIV positive status.

The next day when I visited, she was a different person. In fact, she called asking me to visit her. She had been crying since the doctors came by on their rounds that morning. She felt afraid and lost. Lena had stopped taking her medication and so she and her baby girl were at-risk. “Thank you for coming,” she said, as I finished our visit with prayer. “Now, I feel like I am not so alone.”

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Jesus-Sadhu

… mystical exultation and bitter facts

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undar Singh wore the yellow robe and turban of a Hindu Sadhu (holy man). He was born and raised as a devout Sikh. He boldly shared divine revelations in the strictly closed Buddhist and Muslim kingdoms of Tibet and Afghanistan. His bare feet were always bleeding and his heart was on fire for Jesus Christ.

Sadhu Sundar Singh was born in 1885 in the north of India. He spent a happy childhood of deep participation in both the Sikh religion of his father and the devout Hindu practices of his mother. He was sent to a Christian school to learn English. Upon losing his mother at 15, he began a violent rampage that culminated in buying a bible and then burning it page by page. All three of his faith communities reacted to this with a horror that brought him to the brink of suicide.

At 4:30 AM on the morning he had determined to place his head on a railway track, his desperate prayers were interrupted by a glow in the room.

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Christmas pageant

Moving in the neighbourhood by Rob Perry

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t was Sunday and the day before Christmas Eve at 2:00 in the afternoon, and I was standing in the middle of the gymnasium, the chaotic centre of Christmas pageant rehearsal. In one corner of the gym, our musicians were setting up, desperately trying to find wall outlets that actually worked in order to power the sound system, and fighting over extension cords with the girls trying to decorate and put up Christmas lights. At the back of the gym, my fellow kids workers were frantically chasing their children around trying to drill the dance moves for the grand finale into their distracted heads. The tables at the back of the gym were being laid out with all kinds of Christmas goodies. The friendly hulk of a janitor was quietly and methodically wheeling in rack upon rack of folded chairs to be set up for the expected audience.

This particular year a local elementary school had agreed to open up their gym for our pageant. This school is one of the oldest in the city, with a proud but difficult history. It has serviced one of the toughest neighbourhoods in the country for as long as the neighbourhood has existed. Unlike the stereotype of many inner-city schools, the administrators of this school have a real commitment to their students and community. The teachers work there not simply because they can’t get a job elsewhere. Quite the contrary, they are extremely qualified, and approach their teaching with what can only really be called a sense of calling to work with these particular children and families in this particular community. The school gym is like any other school gym, with banners hanging high near the ceiling, the school’s team logos proudly painted beside the backboards, and climbing apparatus folded against the walls.

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Psalm from Zimbabwe

by Rochelle McAlister | 22/01/2008

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ow long, Lord? How long will you leave us in the dark – waiting for light – even just a few hours of light?

How long, Lord? How long must we continue begging for daily bread? Longing for clean water?

How long, Lord? How long will you send these floods which are drowning our crops? Are we evil, Lord? Do you not see good in any of us?

How long, Lord? How long will we watch young women and girls sell their bodies and their souls for school fees?

How long, Lord? How long must we be beaten in the sun-scorched queues at the bank – just to take out our own money?

How long, Lord? How long before a box of matches will cost less than a million dollars? Before our salaries can actually cover the transport to work?

How long, Lord? How long will we look into the eyes of malnourished infants, saying to them, “Sorry, you were born at a bad time?”

How long, Lord? How long will we turn back old men from hospitals and clinics without any medicine, saying to them, “Sorry, you are dying at a bad time?”

How long, Lord? How long will death prowl through our communities, devouring our mothers, sons, sisters, husbands…?

How long, Lord? How long will we have peace – this silencing, suffocating, suffering peace?

How long, Lord? How long will we sing your praises – waiting for your faithfulness to be great, waiting for you to move in mysterious ways?

How long, Lord? How long before we can hope again, dream again?

Lord, we trust in your unfailing love, your goodness, your salvation.

But Lord, for how long?

Writer: Rochelle and her husband John work for The Salvation Army in Harare, Zimbabwe. Rochelle is the territorial HIV/AIDS Coordinator. They have learned that they always took electricity and food on the shelves for granted, and they appreciate any prayers you can spare for their new homeland. Feel free to follow their adventures on their blog.

Resurrected writers: Sangster

The dead still speak
An occasional series by Maxwell Ryan

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illiam Edwin Sangster, who went to heaven in 1960, has long been one of my heroes of the faith and his books continue to nourish and challenge me. Sangster was a British Methodist minister with a passion for Wesleyan holiness. One of the most able preachers of his time, he was – for 16 years - minister of Westminster Central Hall in London, the headquarters and centre of Methodism for the United Kingdom. He died at the age of 60, and at the height of his powers and influence, of ALS, known as Lou Gherig’s disease.

Following military service during World War I, he studied theology (with distinction in philosophy), and following ordination served in short-term pastorates before being called to be senior minister at the “cathedral” of Methodism. The huge building seated 3,000 and was filled for morning and evening services by crowds that were challenged and strengthened by the virile preaching of Sangster, particularly during the trying days of World War II.

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