Luna & Nova at 6 Weeks: A Temporary Farewell

 The family room feels empty.  Luna's pen sits with gate ajar, the puppy bowl gone from inside and with it Luna and her pups. It's quiet, without the mewling of puppies.  After 10 days with 10 dogs, poor Nova is just rattling around in this room.  Luna has gone off to the farm to raise and wean her pups and will be back with us in maybe two month or so.  Right now it feels like an eternity.  I miss her so much!

Luna gave birth on Tuesday, October 29, with first puppies making their arrival around 7:15 AM and the last puppy coming on the scene around 10:20 AM. Since then the puppies were as easy as we'd been promised. Blind, deaf, and barely mobile they stayed in their bowl and Luna did all the work of caring for them. In order to protect their sensitive immune systems, only Kai and Barbara handled them, during our nightly puppy weighing.  I held one of the puppies for the first time today, just before they were shipped off.  Luna was hormonal--mercurial and cranky at times, but I found that since giving birth she was less fearful of me.  And in the last few days she's actively come to me.  I found the connection I'd first sensed with her when I met her returning.  So it's hard that she's gone.  I'm sad too, to miss watching the puppies grow up.  I always looked forward to the nightly weighing sessions to see how each were coming along.

Nova misses her sister too I think. She's been quiet and subdued and seemed more spooked when I took her outside for her evening walk.

I would like to introduce you to each of the puppies.  We would love for them to find homes with people we know so that we can continue to stay in touch with them throughout their lives.  Please let us know if you are interested so we can let the rescue organization we work with know.  Rico Pet Recovery has been amazing; we couldn't have done any of this without their support.

Here's the whole gang--all 8 of them

First up is Amora Fluttershy.  She is the darkest of the puppies and lacks the prominent brown features that many of the others have. I love the little brown beauty mark above her right eye. So cute!

Amora

Next is Tidalwave Kai, one of two male puppies and one of two merle dogs, noted for their distinctive spotted pattern. Tidalwave is my oldest son's favorite dog as you may have guessed.

Tidalwave

Brody Brake Johnson is our big boy.  He's been the biggest fella on the block since birth and was well over two pounds as of yesterday.

Brody

Snowpaw Twilight is the smallest pup, though she wasn't the runt at birth.  I love her cute little white paws. For some reason these little ones seem to be opening their eyes sooner.  Snowpaw has one eye open and the former runt has both eyes open as you'll see.

Snowpaw

Our other merle is a girl. Her name is Danica Rainbow.

Danica

This is Darling Rarity.  She's always very sweet and demure and sits quietly on the scale for weighing without any fuss.

Darling

And then there's Song Pinkie, who is always noisy at weighing with a lot of mewling and crying each time.  She's the "brownest" of the puppies, and has a white stripe on her chest. She is Barbara's favorite.

Song

Finally, last and no longer least is Phoenix AJ, who was the original runt of the litter though there are now other puppies that weigh less. She and Song are probably the hardest to tell apart since Song's yellow collar and Phoenix's white collar fell off.  We usually have to check their chests to see which is which.  Phoenix has a white diamond shape on her chest.

Phoenix

Oh and here's one more photo:  The deadbeat dad.  This is who we believe is the father of Luna's litter. This photo was taken by Luna's foster and you can see Luna in the background.

Bear the baby daddy. Is he the father? I guess we'll have to go on Maury Povich to know for sure

Both mom and dad have found forever homes. Please let us know if you would like to provide one for their precious children.  The foster we've been working with who is caring for Luna and the puppies at her farm will let us know when Luna is settled in and comfortable and then we'll go out to visit regularly, so we'll have more pictures in the days and weeks to come.

Welcome Luna and Nova: One Month: Pregnant with Puppies!

 

Nova in her donut collar, needed to protect her incision after getting spayed

Luna, our mama-to-be

It’s been almost a month since we brought Luna and Nova home and what a month it’s been.  For the first two and a half weeks the main stress was getting Luna housetrained.  It seemed like she was actively waiting until we got back inside so that she could relieve herself indoors like any civilized person. 

The girls out for their walk in the days before we knew Luna was pregnant

But then on October 15, Barbara took the dogs in to get spayed and suddenly poop piles and pee puddles were the least of our concerns. Luna was found to be with puppies--seven at least, possibly as many as nine, according to the X-ray.  The vets said we should expect the birth within the next ten days--which brings us to yesterday.  And still no puppies.  The little ones haven’t even arrived yet and we’ve already been in a heightened state of anxiety, getting little sleep, worrying over how we’ll handle all of this.  Our family room has been taken over by the dogs, with a big pen set up to keep Luna separate from her sister when the puppies arrive.  Our TV doesn’t even work anymore after Nova got a hold of the cord and chewed through it earlier this week.  Once they are born, we’ll keep Luna and the kids for up to two weeks and then transfer them out to the farm of a wonderful lady affiliated with the rescue group we got the dogs from.  She’ll take care of them until the puppies are weaned and then Luna will come back to us. We just don’t have the space or the schedule to handle a close to a dozen dogs once those puppies become mobile.

Luna's "birthing pen" in what was once our family room

How did this happen, you ask?  Well it appears that Luna was knocked up by one of the other dogs in the foster home she was staying in before we adopted her. The foster didn’t realize it happened, and of course neither did we, until that fateful vet visit.

Despite the stress, we love our dogs.  They are both especially close with Barbara, and Kai has a special bond with Nova.  Ezra also loves the dogs and they love him back, though he seems to spend less time with them. I’m the only one they still fear.  If I walk into the room they’ll immediately scoot to the other side of the room.  If I crouch down low so I’m not looming over them, they won’t run away and will let me approach.  Once I’m there they’ll let me pet them--Nova in particular is greedy for petting and if I stop petting her to put my attention on Luna, she’ll paw at me to bring me back to her.  They are still skittish in general and Barbara is the only one who can get them to go outside for their walks. I’m sure these things will change with time and love.

Welcome Home Luna & Nova: The First 24 Hours

 

Waiting and watching

On Friday, September 27, we welcomed two new additions to our home--Luna and Nova, sisters that were rescued from a really bad situation earlier this year. They are about a year old and just the sweetest dogs and we've all fallen in love.  But, the first 24 hours have been challenging.  For me especially, I've gone through a lot of emotions--mostly negative ones.  I feel overwhelmed and despairing.  I'm honestly not sure at all that I can do this.

Probably the single biggest--and really the only challenge we've had so far, is house training Luna.  at 1:57 PM, she's been here for less than 24 hours and she's pooped once and peed three times.  The poop was last night, not long after she got here.  The foster hadn't even left yet.  The first two urinations were last night--the first being mostly out of fear and anxiety, when we were getting ready to take her outside for the first time.  Getting the dogs outside is always tricky--more on that later.  The second was a more regular urination after we'd come in from our first trip outside.

The third was this morning after we'd been outside for about 40 minutes.  We came in, and she went to her water bowl and drank quite a bit and then about five to ten minutes later she had a major elimination--a big old pool in what we fear is becoming her favorite spot, near the piano in the living room.  We cleaned it up, using the enzyme cleaner to neutralize the odor.  Since then it's a waiting game. We've taken her out a few times and nothing.  The last two times were after she'd taken a big old drink of water from her bowl. So we know she must have to go.  We just need it to not be inside.  So right now, it's constant supervision. I sit in the living room where I can watch them.  By the end of the first 24 hours there'd been no more peeing in the house-but none outside either.

We always called Kimo the perfect dog, but we had no idea.  It's like we've never had dogs before.  Because with Kimo, we never had to house train her.  She just arrived in our lives with no desire to pee or poop inside.  Not one accident in 9 years! We never had to be concerned with things like crates. She had the run of the house from day one and we never had any kinds of problems with her.  We love our new additions but they broke the mold with Kimo--there's just no other dog like her.

Convictions: Jesus

 "On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand."

                                                                             --Edward Mote "My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less"

Yet it's amazing, how often we keep trying to stand on other ground.  We try to stand on the church, but it's Jesus that's the head of the church.  Then there's the Bible. Now that looks very stable--how firm a foundation is found in His excellent Word, right?  But it's Jesus who is our Rock, our Cornerstone.  The Bible exists for Jesus and not the other way around. The Bible has value because it testifies of Him.  The church has value because though I am a child of God, I'm not an only child.  To be a follower of Jesus is by definition to be part of a family, and that family is called the church.  These first three posts of my Convictions blog series are called Foundations where I reflected on the three aspects of our faith that we treat as foundational--the church, the Bible, and Jesus.  But in the end there is but one foundation and it's Jesus Christ our Lord.

Our faith is ultimately about a person--about Jesus, who is God with us. God who has come near and who we can relate to because He became one of us.  Jesus is the resolution to the thorniest problem that underlies all pain, suffering and death in this world--the problem of sin. Every philosophical struggle will ultimately be resolved through His sacrifice on the cross--his defeat of death and his eradication of sin.  Jesus also represents God's desire to be connected to us as He had always intended.  Jesus reveals in ways that we can understand who God really is and what His character is like.  This week's Sabbath School lesson says that the law of God reveals God's character and I had a hard time seeing that. But I think it's Jesus that reveals God's character, and shows us what God's law perfectly fulfilled looks like. 

You can't place too much emphasis on Jesus. And yet often times I find that we tend to underemphasize Him in favor of other things.  A "relationship with Jesus" seems soft, hazy, in line with harping on grace, love, and mercy--those less severe qualities in comparison to the sterner, clearer, harder virtues of obedience, righteousness, and the law.  But I think our preference for the those more "demanding"  virtues reveals our tendency towards idolatry, towards a faith that we manage and control. The thing about following Jesus is that He is in control, and we don't always know what He's going to do (ask His disciples!).  

 I think we'd prefer to take the playbook out of his hands, and just do what it says as best we can. It's easier to focus on tasks and check lists. It feels safer.  But that's idolatry.  

It's more appealing to have a vending machine God that spits out whatever we want. It feels more certain to believe that if I follow the formula I will get exactly what I want.   But that's idolatry. 

 It's more comfortable to demand that God "just tell me what to do so I can have eternal life" rather than be bothered with the complications of actually following Him.  But Jesus tells us that our faith is not about a to-do list. He does not offer us the option of a Jesus-free Christian package. 

My most fervent prayer for my children is very simple:  that they would know Jesus.  That's all.  I don't pray that they'll "stay in the church" because they could do that and still not know Jesus.  While, I do pray that they'll make decisions and live good lives, I still pray that would be the outgrowth of knowing Jesus.  Because they can make the "right" decisions and still not know Him. 

The only reason I'm a Christian is because of Jesus. It's His story that moves me, His message that convicts me.  And most importantly, it's His continual activity in my life that keeps me faithful.  It's that He's real to me, that I feel His presence every day, that His character inspires me to believe in what a good world can really be. This is why I believe.  I find a Christianity devoid of Jesus doesn't really have much to recommend it above any other religious belief.  We don't have the market cornered on a code of moral conduct.  We're not the only ones proffering an all-powerful, all-knowing God. We're not alone in providing a path out of suffering and death.  But we are the only ones who have Jesus. And He makes all the difference.

"For I resolved to know nothing.  . .except Jesus Christ and Him crucified."

                                                                        -1 Corinthians 2:2

*A note on the images I selected for this post. The portrait of Jesus was a tough one. Images of Jesus are so fraught.  I think there's a strong argument for taking the Muslim approach of refusing to depict God in visual form.  Many of the traditional pictures of Jesus are of a European man that is most likely inaccurate.  There are a host of Black Jesus options available too, but I have my doubts about Jesus being African either.  There a contemporary portrayals as well such as Jonathan Roumie's portrayal of Jesus in The Chosen, but while that might ring true to fans of the show, others will see a popular TV star not Christ.  My favorite portrait of Jesus can be found here, but I've noticed people find nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance in this portrait, nothing to attract us to him and they object to that.  (Did you see what I did there?)  So even though that picture might be perhaps the most Biblically accurate I didn't use that one.  In the end I settled on this drawing of ethnically vague Jesus as, if not ideal, at least satisfactory.

The last image is actually of Rich Mullins, one of my favorite Christian musicians.  He said he wanted to be simply be an arrow pointing up.  This is the heart of Christian faith in Jesus, to be arrow pointing to the uplifted Christ who draws everyone to Him.

Convictions: The Bible

 "I think if we were given the scriptures it was not so that we could prove we were right about everything. If we were given the scriptures it was to humble us into realizing that God is right and the rest of us are just guessing."

            --Rich Mullins

I love the Bible, I really do.  But lately I'm finding that I'm very annoyed by the Bible-thumpers, the Bible-beaters, the Bible-hawkers. It's not the message of the Bible I find offputting, it's the messengers.

They make my skin crawl, they make me cringe with their certainty, their self-righteousness, their lack of humility.  

But I don't have that reaction to the Bible itself. I find peace, comfort, and strength in its pages. I find hope in its promises.  This is not to say that I always understand the Bible or find that it consistently reconfirms what I already believe.  I often find it challenging, discomfiting, and even upsetting at points. I find it hard to understand as often as not.  But I have come to believe that I don't have to always understand, be comfortable with or "get" what the Bible says for it to be useful.  The big themes of the Bible are clear to me. I know the Author so I don't have to understand everything He says all at once or all the time. In fact the more I read the Bible, the more I realize how little I really understand--and the more I realize how big God really is.

I'm more and more convinced that much of our fidelity to the Bible, is really a fidelity to our understanding of the Bible.  It seems to me that people follow a well-worn track most of the time, a track usually established by their denomination--the same key verses, the same proof texts lined up to reach a conclusion that at one time might have been fresh and exciting but now feels forgone. We crave stability and certainty. And I get that.  It's a normal human desire. But I don't know that that is what God is looking for us to have.  I do know that if you're getting certainty from everything you read in the Bible, you're not reading the whole Bible.

I find a lot of of people on the verge of worshiping the Bible--Biblolatry, I call it. I know people who are steeped in Biblical knowledge and yet it doesn't seem to have had any meaningful impact on their lives. At least when it comes to how they treat other people.  All that Bible study and yet they still do horrible things. 

Here's what I'm convicted the Bible is not, and what it is:

What the Bible is not: A factual history book in the traditional sense. What the Bible is: True.  It is the true story of God's interaction with and investment in human beings  

What the Bible is not: intended as guidebook to practical matters of living in the 21st century. I've become very skeptical of notions of  the "Biblical" approach to finances, marriage, health etc:  What the Bible is: a timeless guide to what matters to God, what His goals are, who He is. It is true that "all scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we re wrong and teaches us to do right."  2 Timothy 3:16. But we are talking big themes here--not an uninformed application of what we think it says, regardless of culture or context.

What the Bible is not: a means of Salvation. What the Bible is: the foundation for our faith. As 2 Timothy 3:15 says right before the famous passage  about all scripture, the Scriptures have "given us the wisdom to receive the salvation that comes by trusting in Christ Jesus."  The story of Jesus, of salvation, of resurrection and the hope of eternal life--all of this is found in the pages of Scripture and nowhere else.  We can never discard the Bible and still somehow call ourselves Christians. Without the Bible, we would have nothing.

What the Bible is not:  merely about collecting information, knowledge, and correct interpretation:   What the Bible is: validation for what we've experienced with God and vice versa.  We've tested what the Bible says and found it true. In 2 Peter 1:19 right before the famous passage about no prophecy of Scripture, Peter says that because of the experience they had with Jesus, they have even greater confidence in the message of proclaimed by the prophets. What I read, I am experiencing.  What I'm experiencing, I find reflected in the Bible.

The Bible, like church, connects us to the larger community.  It's not meant to be studied or understood in isolation.  The Protestant overcorrection of the Catholic's church's traditional approach that encouraged only the experts to engage with the Bible, is our tendency to think that any ordinary person can have a complete and thorough understanding of the Bible through just their own private reading--with the Holy Spirit's guidance of course.  Can an ordinary person find inspiration, correction, guidance, and faith through their reading of the Bible? Absolutely.  But are they qualified to make authoritative declarations about what it teaches that brook no argument?  Absolutely not.

I think we need to be much more cautious than we have been about authoritative "Thus Saith the Lord's" and especially cautious of declarations about the "plain Word of God."  We don't always understand what God is saying--and that's okay.  And the Word of God is not always plain--even, and perhaps, especially when it seems so and it happens to suit our own preferences and prejudices.  You ever notice that when someone is using the Bible to reprove and correct, it's invariably someone else who needs the reproof and correction?  In our limited understanding, we know enough  about what the Bible teaches to enter into a relationship with Jesus, but we are far, very far, from knowing everything.

I find that those who smugly quote 2 Timothy 4:3 that "a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers that will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear" aren't actually challenged by the Bible much at all!   They are confident in their understanding and interpretation. Nothing they read upsets them. . .though there is plenty to upset those loose living liberal "Christians."  It begs the question of whether it isn't in fact the arbiters of the Word who want their ears tickled with messages that confirm what they already believe.

I'm convicted that while the Bible is essential to our faith, it is not the center of our faith.  That center is found not in a book, but in a Person.

"You search the scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to Me!"

                                                                               --Jesus, as quoted in John 5:39

Convictions: Church

 The first in a new blog series that explores my faith convictions. In a sense these are letters to my sons--to explain to them what I believe and why.  I know they'll chart their own course, but I want them to at least know what my spiritual convictions are in the hope that perhaps they'll find the same Joy in the journey that I have.

I actually completed-or thought I'd completed this post--almost 9 months ago.  But for some reason I sat on it. I think I wanted it to marinate a bit--make sure that I'd really gotten my convictions articulated correctly. Then I got busy and never got around to posting it.  Since then I've had some new insights which I've added in near the end of this post.  I think originally this post was primarily about church attendance and less about the concept of church itself.  I want to think more about the church beyond a place we do or do not visit each week,

This post and the next two could be subtitled Foundations.  For me these three--the Church, the Bible, and Jesus are the foundational elements of Christian faith.

Church

Up until March 2020, I had a strong conviction about the importance of church. attendance  I felt it was a non-negotiable in the life of the believer.  But (and this should serve as an important caveat to this blog series--even the strongest of convictions can and should be amenable to change) I found that my beliefs on church shifted with the arrival of the pandemic.  I found the absence of church to be rejuvenating.  I hadn't realized how tired I'd been.  How Sabbath had become a gauntlet of church-related must-dos.  The weekly struggle to get the family dressed in their Sabbath best and out the door before the sermon started, the services running into the early afternoon, not eating until 3 or 4 PM.  In the winter, I'd often find the Sabbath essentially over before I was finally able to rest.  And then there were the extra-Sabbath church commitments.  I'd always been a prayer meeting-skipper but there was still Adventurers for the boys and various church adjacent commitments like my drama ministry.  All of that evaporated with the arrival of Covid, and I found I didn't miss any of it.

Now to be fair, I did still have a weekly habit of meeting with other believers.  The second weekend into the early-pandemic lockdown my family started meeting for worship every Sabbath over Zoom.  What began as a one-off virtual family reunion of disparate and distant relatives on my mom's side of the family turned into a regular family gathering that is still a spiritual highlight.  We met weekly for more than a year before shifting to every other week as some members of the "First Family SDA Church" started going back to in-person services or other weekend commitments.  More recently we moved our worship time from 11:30 AM EST to 1:30 PM to make further allowance for those who wanted or needed to attend in person church and but still wanted to attend Family Church (and to allow our West Coast participants the luxury of sleeping in on Sabbath morning).  While most in our little congregation are satisfied with making our Zoom services their only church for the foreseeable future, others still desire to have some sort of regular in-person attendance as part of their spiritual practice.  To my amazement, I am one of those others.

No one was more surprised than I was when last year I accepted the position of church elder at Ephesus SDA Church here in Columbus.  I was very hesitant about taking on the role, even though I was ordained as an elder more than 15 years ago and served for many years in Saipan.  My initial gut response was a hard no.  But after much prayer, God turned my heart around and I decided to give it a shot.  On top of that , I soon accepted a role of teaching adult Sabbath School as well--another redux of a church position I'd held in Saipan and found thoroughly rewarding.

But my return to church is not a return to the old way of doing church.  I refuse to adopt the autopilot approach I had in the Before Times, where I just went and did and served simply because I was "supposed" to.  I had always been a prayer meeting rebel--absolutely deaf to years and years of guilt trips and wheedling from the pulpit to get me and other prayer meeting truants to Wednesday night services (same with Sabbath School service which I resolutely skipped--though not the lesson study.  That was always a highlight).  Now that I'm returning to church, I am back with that same flat refusal to be guilted, harangued, or coaxed into any more church than feels right to me.

I'm unapologetic in my insistence that I will not attend church every single week.  I simply will not.  Every week without fail is too much church for me.  Every other week, as we do with Family Church, is about ideal, though I understand in my role as elder that may not always be possible and there will be times when I show up Sabbath morning for a string of weeks in a row. (And I enjoy Sabbath School lesson study so much there may be weeks--especially when I have Family Church in the afternoon--when I zip over Ephesus for that and then go home, skipping the main service-an inversion of what a lot of people do).  I am also unwilling to overload myself in church and church-related commitments. I've always tended towards a "That should be fine" attitude towards service commitments--where as long as I can, I do.  Now I understand that just because I "can", doesn't mean I should.  Not least because a lot of times what seemed manageable in my mind proves to be far less so in reality.  A good example would have been when I first took on the role of elder. I agreed to do both the offertory and an Easter-themed monologue in the same service (and was also supposed to be on duty with the sound team that morning).  It was highly stressful and too much!

I'm not saying that everyone has to feel the same way about church as I do.  I understand that there are many who find solace in the weekly (or more) routine and ritual of worship.  There are those who desperately need those traditional church structures and appointments.  I don't think that church as a whole should conform to my needs.  But I do think each of us as believers should consider what our actual spiritual needs are and seek to meet those rather than just checking the attendance box.  And likewise I think that church should normalize multiple ways of fellowship as equally valid.  As long as members are connected in some form, that should be acceptable even if it doesn't necessarily translate to showing up at 11 o' clock every single Sabbath morning.

I do believe in the necessity of Christian fellowship and the value of corporate worship.  At it's heart, Christianity is a faith that can only be truly realized in community.  It's not to say that Christianity is a faith for extroverts. But ours a belief system that is rooted in love--God's love for us and our love for another.  We can't really live that out if our entire spiritual practice is conducted in isolation.  While there's nothing wrong with communing with the Creator alone in the woods, that alone can't be the sum of our spirituality.  Though the Christian faith has had a long tradition of various types of monastic practice, I'm not sure how well that fits with  a faith where love for other people is an integral part. After all how can all men know that we are His disciples, if we have "love for one another," if we are never actually around anyone else?  But that community should not have to be defined by attending a worship service at an appointed "divine hour" every week--or any week at all.  It can be found in community service on a Sabbath afternoon, a weeknight small group, an early morning prayer-line, a drama or music ministry, a Zoom meet up, and a thousand other iterations. 

In the months since I first put this post together I've been further convicted by the power of the church as a source of community.  I honestly can't think of anything that provides quite what the church does.  This is a community that, ideally, is open to everyone (though that's not always the case; I'll get to that in a minute)--you are never too young or too old for church.  It is a lifetime community.  You're not required to have special talents or skills to participate. You can go almost anywhere in the world and find a similar community that has essential ties to the community you left behind. It's really quite remarkable, and it's never more noticeable or more important than in moments of crisis.  In the time since I first wrote this post, I've seen church communities rally around those who have experienced profound and sudden loss.  Dozens of people drove seven hours or more to be there for their former pastors, a married couple Jeremy & Brooke Wong, who had just lost their little daughter, JJ, to cancer.  Around that same time dozens of people rallied to support the spouse of Pastor Sam Ulett.  He had died suddenly after receiving a kidney transplant, and in addition to her family and friends, it was Sharla's church families that helped to support her in that time.

All of this served to remind me of the incredible power of church community.  And in a cruel irony, I'm also reminded that it's the very power of this community that makes hurt within that the community and/or exclusion from that community so deeply devastating.  Imagine the pain of being harmed or abused within the space of the community that it is supposed to be there for you at your most vulnerable.  Imagine observing the close-knit community and knowing deep down that the community is open to almost everyone.  But not everyone. Not you.  We as a church should probably give more thought to whom we might be intentionally or unintentionally excluding and at what the cost to those marginalized people.  We are perhaps too quick to close the doors to those who need acceptance, a home, a safe place, because we feel they will threaten our safe sense of righteousness.

One of the Church's biggest pitfalls in the millennia since Jesus called His motley band of 12 together is the power it holds over it's adherents.  Far too often it has become an institution that exists to perpetuate itself. It becomes a refuge not for the hurting, but for those who would like to set up their own little kingdoms within the earth-bound structure of the Heavenly Kingdom.  The Church has long been instrument of social control, of people management, utilizing people's deepest fears to preserve it's power.  The fact that the church is made up of broken people should be a comfort--but that very brokenness can become weaponized when it is wedded to an institutional power structure. Church hurt invariably comes about when some within the church claim and wield moral and spiritual power over others. 

Ironically, while I'm very skeptical of the church institution, I am actually a big fan of many of our church institutions such as our educational and medical systems.  There is certainly something to be said for the reach of organized, and yes even bureaucratic, church work.  But those benefits should not be come a substitute for genuine spirituality nor should they be a justification for social control.

I'm convicted that one of the ways that the Church returns to it's proper definition as the community of believers instead of an institutional power structure is when we who are the church refuse to allow the institution to dictate how we interact with it. As long as we make a personal commitment to community and fellowship, that should be enough.  And the best churches will work to facilitate those commitments and provide accountability, understanding that attendance is not the same as commitment, and doing church work is not the same as faithfulness. 

Church

"And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of His return is drawing near."

                                                     -Hebrews 10:25

And the Leonard Goes To. . .

These days I mostly watch TV (when I watch anything. Life is so busy that watching TV and movies is generally reserved for once a week while I'm folding laundry.  Well, except for Survivor.  My favorite show of all time is still old-school appointment viewing every Wednesday night at 8!).  There are so many great TV shows out there and the 30 minute to one hour chunks you can view them in, with many episodes over multiple seasons works well with my life style.  But I still enjoy the occasional feature length film and over the past years, I've made it a hobby to view all of the movies that are nominated for best picture of the year and then rate them. My number one choice is the movie that I think was the best of the bunch.  That film receives my version of the Oscar, "the Leonard"--think of the gold statuette but skinnier and with glasses!  Where did the name Leonard come from?  Well, I needed a name and let's just say that Leonard is an inside joke that only a tiny handful of people will get.

This is usually just a Facebook post, but I wanted to keep the FB post short, so I figured people could click through to the blog if they wanted more detail on the films. 

Without further ado, the Leonard goes to. . .

1. Past Lives-My favorite film of the batch.  Two school friends fall in love South Korea. The girl has to move to the United States and the friends are separated.  They reconnect over Skype when they are both in college, and again years later, they finally see other again, when they are both adults.  It's a story of love that never quite realizes itself, at least romantically, and a friendship that runs deeper than romance.  I found the characters so engaging, and the story really authentic and relatable.

2. The Holdovers-This is an empathetic and moving portrait of three people who are alone and lonely for different reasons: A history teacher at an exclusive boarding school, his student, and the cafeteria supervisor. All three are, holdovers, stuck on campus with nowhere to go while everyone else has left for the holidays For at least two of them, they are people that we might easily write off as unpleasant, mean, bitter people. Honestly, they are unpleasant, mean, and bitter.  But they are also more than that, and they have the capacity to be better.  They come to see it in each other and we come to see it in them. A moving, humane film and enjoyable to watch.

3.  Killers of the Flower Moon-A story of unbelievable evil and greed. If we must choose a big "important" best picture, I'd actually choose this one over Oppenheimer. Killers tells the true story of the systematic murder of members of the Osage tribe in Oklahoma during the 1920's. The Osage were, for a time, the richest people in the world per capita after oil was discovered on their tribal lands.  Their wealth drew opportunistic people eager to get their hands on the mineral rights.  The worst part is how they did it--befriending and marrying into the tribe and then killing off their supposed "loved ones" and their families in order to inherit their land.  Of course the murders were poisonings that looked like mysterious illnesses and unsolved shootings and house bombings. 

4. Barbie-Barbie has a lot to say and says it well. It’s fun, energetic, funny, fast-paced but also makes a strong social commentary. It will make you think and will make you uncomfortable (especially if you are a man). Director Greta Gerwig threaded a remarkable needle in both critiquing the influence of Barbie in our culture, while suggesting a narrative of empowerment that Mattel could live with (even as their company is mercilessly mocked throughout the film). It’s quite a balancing act and she pulled it off. A lot of food for thought and discussion in this film, though I think it might be good for men to listen more than talk when it comes to responding. In the end I think Barbie is less about stoking the “gender wars” and more about realizing the full humanity of all human beings. Don’t let all the pink fool you, this movie is deep!

5. Poor Things- This movie tells the story of a drowned woman who is "resurrected" when a mad scientists implants in her the brain of the child she was pregnant with. Emma Stone is amazing in this film. Watching her stylized progression from infant to child to teen to adult is remarkable. It's quirky, set in some sort of steampunk past.  A Frankenstein/Pinocchio story of her journey to becoming a "real person."  A big part of her journey is her discovery of and eventually owning of her sexuality so expect some pretty graphic scenes. 

6. The Zone of Interest-No graphic violence, no horrific scenes of abuse. In fact no atrocities pictured at all.  The most you get is sounds--background noise, but even that is mostly distant, not loud and in your face. The rumble of the factories and the crematorium, barking dogs, the occasional gunshot and vague cries of agony. But the effect is chilling. The Nazi camp commander and his family living their ordinary lives, filled with ordinary concerns.  See him reading to his daughter, laughing with his wife. It's all hints. Deeply disturbing and thought provoking. It is a picture of complicity and the most effective illustration of the banality of evil that I've ever seen. It makes you realize that "the bad guys" are not so different from us.

7. Oppenheimer- Most likely to win--and sure enough it did. Long--longer than it needed to be., spectacular vision with compelling human performances.  Oppenheimer was long, and utilized a lot of jumping back and forth in time. I spent a lot of time early in the film wondering “who are these people again?” and “What’s going on?” The film could have ended with the successful test of the first A-Bomb at Los Alamos, but I think Nolan didn’t really want his film to be strictly about the race to build the bomb, and more about the price Oppenheimer paid for being associated with communists/communism. I have to admit by the end of the film, everything comes together and makes sense and there is a twist at the end.

8. Anatomy of a Fall--The last film I watched of the nominees. I finished it a couple hours before the awards began.  I found myself thinking a lot about this movie after I watched it.  It's the story of a woman who is accused of pushing her husband to his death.  The question is--did she do it, or was his death the result of suicide or perhaps even an accident. I felt pretty certain I knew what happened, but I found myself questioning those assumptions afterwards, almost as if it were a real event and not just a movie.  The more I thought about it, the more I came to agree with the way the film ended. My favorite part of Anatomy of a Fall though, was the argument scene between Sandra Huller's character and her doomed husband.  That scene really captured what even the best of marriages go through at times.

9. American Fiction--While I enjoyed this film well enough, it was slower-paced than I expected. It's lower ranking is primarily due to failing to live up to expectations. It's the story of a black writer of erudite, literary novels that can't seem to get the commercial success that his colleagues do by writing streetwise stories of black trauma that play into negative stereotypes about black people.  In frustration, he dashes off his own absurd blaxploitation novel, intending it as a satirical critique of the genre and not expecting it to be taken seriously.  Instead the publishers love it and--surprise!--it's a smashing success!

10. Maestro-I found this film dull.  Just not compelling. It's a biopic of famed composer and conductor Leonard Cohen. It chronicles the stormy relationship he had with his wife and various men that were his lovers throughout his life.  It was well-acted, and well-made, but honestly, this was a movie that was a duty to get through, rather than a pleasure.