for love of billy collins

I was never a poetry person. Sure, I dutifully read my two poems every night, as per Nate Wilson's orders (poor NSA freshmen...we had it so hard). But it was generally out of a sense of obligation or (more to the point) a desire to remain current with my assignments that drove me to the massive volume of poetry at 11:55 pm each night. Aloud, I read them quickly but never truly saying them, never really hearing the sounds bounce off the walls and imprinting the images into my imagination, never savoring the sweet rhythms that lay hidden on every line, just waiting to be enjoyed. That is, until I read Billy Collins. I think it was his poems that made me appreciate poetry, its sounds and smells, its stories and syncopations. And this website just reawakened my love for his works. Ahhhhh.....

ignatius: a satirical look at youth pastors

Ignatius from travis hawkins on Vimeo.

death and tacos

Waiting in line at a taco stand for my number to be called
I started talking to a six-year-old kid kicking his little foot against
A curb and waiting for his dad to come out of the bathroom.

And he said, “Why do you cough so much?”
And I said, “Because I have cancer.”
And he said, “Bummer.”
And I said, “Yep.”
And he said, “Does it hurt?”
And I said, “Only when I breathe.”
And he said, “Why don’t you hold your breath?”

And I puffed out my cheeks like Lois Armstrong and
Let him see it and held it for as long as I could
Before exploding into a hacking eruption of
Stupid sounds and saliva.

And he laughed.
And I coughed and laughed.
And he said, “Feel better?”
And I said, “A bit.”

And I showed him how much better with my
Thumb and index finger. And pointed at a green thread
of mucous that had dribbled out onto my chin
He said, “Gross.” And wiping it off
I said, “Yep.”

And he said, “My granddaddy had cancer before he died on the hospital.”
And I said, “You mean in the hospital?”
And he said, “Yeah on the hospital.”
And I said, “Oh, yeah?”
And he said, “He used to give me candy all of the times I ever saw him.”
And I said, “Sorry kid, I don’t have any candy.”
And, deflated, he said, “Are you gonna die on the hospital?”
And I said, “You mean in the hospital?”
And he said, “Yea, are you gonna die on the hospital?”
And I said, “Probably.”
And he said, “OK.”

And, upon giving that gracious consent, the boy’s dad came out and
The boy said, “Well, bye!” And I said, “See ya.”
And he ran off.
And, for a while, between the two of us,
Dying became so very ordinary, like candy or tacos or semantics,
And death itself suddenly just this obnoxious third-wheel
A pitiful nuisance with nothing better to do with his time
Than to tag along with me and this six-year-old kid.
And I sat smiling in the sun and imagining death at the moment,
A sad sack of lonely-self slumped somewhere in the distance,
As I waited for my number to come up.

- Nathaniel Whittemore

how to save the lost

From Slice of Laodicea:

I wonder if the 12 Apostles staged Greek-style wrestling matches to draw young men to Christ? No record of that anywhere in the Scriptures. Chariot races are also not mentioned anywhere in the book of Acts as a method drawing a crowd to hear the Gospel. All the Apostles had was the Holy Spirit who worked through their preaching to save the lost. That was all they needed.

Pastors today don’t believe in the Holy Spirit. He doesn’t exist to them. That’s why they behave like fools in ever more desperate attempts to draw a crowd. Here’s a pastor in South Dakota who says that the church is having a hard time attracting young men. That’s because the “church” was never intended to attract young men or anyone else. The Holy Spirit alone draws through Spirit-empowered preaching. Such preaching is absent today in our prayerless, man-centered churches, and that’s why pastors are reduced to becoming jesters and exhibitionists to draw a crowd.

words, words, words

An interesting observation about word definitions and their (mis)use...

Yesterday, I ran my first Articulate Seminar. It was tremendous fun and I found that talking about writing with people from different industries illuminated old problems in new ways for me. Andrew Yeomans came along from Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and afterwards he sent me his delightful deconstruction of press release hype:

“This amazing, prestigious and sophisticated product is a quantum leap forward and performance is a greater order of magnitude, and will decimate the competition. The enormity of this tremendous advance indicates our commitment to servicing our customers in a forensically sound manner.”

Various dictionaries give:

• amazing 1. Causing distraction, consternation, confusion, dismay; stupefying, terrifying, dreadful.
• prestigious 1. Practising juggling or legerdemain; of the nature of or characterized by juggling or magic; cheating, deluding, deceitful; deceptive, illusory.
• sophisticated 1. Mixed with some foreign substance; adulterated; not pure or genuine. 2. a. Altered from, deprived of, primitive simplicity or naturalness. Of a literary text: altered in the course of being copied or printed. 3. a. Falsified in a greater or less degree; not plain, honest, or straightforward.
• quantum 5. Physics. A minimum amount of a physical quantity which can exist and by multiples of which changes in the quantity occur.
• magnitude 3. A class in a system of classification determined by size. a. Each of the classes into which the fixed stars have been arranged according to their degree of brilliancy. Now regarded as a number on a continuous scale representing the negative logarithm of the brightness, such that a decrease of five magnitudes represents a hundred-fold increase in brightness and a decrease of one magnitude an increase of 2·512 times.
• decimate 4. transf. a. To kill, destroy, or remove one in every ten of.
• enormity (-nôrmt) n., pl. e·nor·mi·ties. 1. The quality of passing all moral bounds; excessive wickedness or outrageousness. 2. A monstrous offense or evil; an outrage.
• tremendous \Tre*men”dous\, a. [L. tremendus that is to be trembled at, fearful, fr. tremere to tremble.] Fitted to excite fear or terror; such as may astonish or terrify by its magnitude, force, or violence; terrible; dreadful; as, a tremendous wind; a tremendous shower; a tremendous shock or fall.
• advance \Ad*vance”\, v. t. 7. To furnish, as money or other value, before it becomes due, or in aid of an enterprise; to supply beforehand
• commitment \Com*mit”ment\, n. 4. A doing, or perpetration, in a bad sense, as of a crime or blunder; commission.
• service \Serv”ice\, n. 11. Copulation with a female; the act of mating by male animals
• forensic Relating to, used in, or appropriate for courts of law or for public discussion or argumentation.
• sound a. Meaningless noise. b. Thorough; complete: a sound flogging.

So the translation is:

“This confusing, dreadful, deceitful, illusory, adulterated, dishonest product is the smallest possible small step forward and provides less than half the performance, and will kill very few of our competitors. The monstrous evil of our releasing this dreadful product before it is ready demonstrates our crimes in screwing over our clients, see you in court where we will speak complete nonsense.”

my band

1 - Go to "wikipedia." Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.


2 - Go to "Random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.


3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.


4 - Use photoshop or similar to put it all together.


Here's a list of 100 awesome "so fake that they could be real" CD covers.

and now for something completely sacrilegious

I love all three Terminator movies (although number 2 is definitely the best of the bunch) and I simply cannot wait for the fourth one to come into theaters this summer. Christian Bale as John Conner? Can it get any better? I submit that it cannot!!!

So to get you all super pumped for the latest addition to the Terminator family (that's right; stop listening to Christian Bale's stupid rant or its various incarnations), I have found this little tribute to the Governator's finest role, courtesy of MadTV. And no, it's not kosher.

interesting stuff from leviticus

For all those bald-headed people out there: you are not unclean...unless, of course, you have an infectious skin disease that is manifesting itself upon your scalp.

"When a man has lost his hair and is bald, he is clean. If he has lost his hair from the front of his scalp and has a bald forehead, he is clean. But if he has a reddish-white sore on his bald head or forehead, it is an infectious disease breaking out on his head or forehead. The priest is to examine him, and if the swollen sore on his head or forehead is reddish-white like an infectious skin disease, the man is diseased and is unclean. The priest shall pronounce him unclean because of the sore on his head." (Leviticus 13:40-44)

I'm not sure what I found that rather hilarious, but I did.

Leviticus is proving to be a much more interesting book than I remembered. I mean, the entirety of the Bible is amazing, but sometimes a person gets a little bogged down in certain areas. That's why repeated Scripture readings are so valuable. Sections that originally felt dry and lifeless suddenly become relevant, interesting, and alive. New meaning swarms the senses, igniting the memory, drawing together pieces of my own life and readings from other books to give the verses more than a simple superficial implication.

All that to say: I found something interesting. Whether this is the meaning I should be taking from these verses or maybe I'm getting it complete wrong--either way, the first bit of Leviticus 17 seemed to reinforce some of the things we've been discussing in our ladies' Bible study.

The LORD said to Moses, "Speak to Aaron and his sons and to all the Israelites and say to them: 'This is what the LORD has commanded: Any Israelite who sacrifices an ox, a lamb or a goat in the camp or outside of it instead of bringing it to the entrance to the Tent of Meeting to present it as an offering to the LORD in front of the tabernacle of the LORD -- that man shall be considered guilty of bloodshed; he has shed blood and must be cut off from his people. This is so the Israelites will bring to the LORD the sacrifices they are now making in the open fields. They must bring them to the priest, that is, to the LORD, at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and sacrifice them as fellowship offerings. The priest is to sprinkle the blood against the altar of the LORD at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and burn the fat as an aroma pleasing to the LORD. They must no longer offer any of their sacrifices to the goat idols to whom they prostitute themselves. This is to be a lasting ordinance for them and for the generations to come.' (Leviticus 17:1-7)

Steve Wilkins' book Face to Face is a fascinating read on true Christian friendship and hospitality, and as such, it places great importance on the interaction between believers, particularly on how it relates to our regular Lord's Day worship. We are supposed to gather together, we are supposed to fellowship, we are supposed to worship with one another. But we are not supposed to do these things on our own. And yet so many people seem to think that Christian worship does not require anything more than a "me and my Bible" attitude. And I'm not just thinking of individuals here, those stereotypical solitary people who climb to the top of a mountain in an act of worship, refusing to join a church since all s/he needs is Jesus and no one else. We're thinking of home church situations, those (usually) homeschooling families who have had it up to here with the church and feel that a better job can be done in the living room. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with a home church situation. All the ladies in my Bible study, for example, either had been involved in a home church at one point or knew someone who had. But this should be a last ditch resort. One should never start a home church as an end in itself but rather as the first step to something better--namely, the beginnings of a church. And in a way, I think these verses in Leviticus are saying something similar. The Israelites were sacrificing outside the camp for a long time, in the manner of their pagan neighbors. And while this was initially tolerated, the Lord made it clear that this was not the way it was to be done. Sacrifices (read: worship) needs to take place in the sanctioned place among the chosen people. Out in the wilderness (the symbolic residence of demonic beings), the temptation would be far too great to follow in the footsteps of the pagans, first by following their worship practices (sacrificing in these solitary places) to the ultimate end of worshiping their gods. Within the community of believers, God had provided a measure of safety. And while it was by no means perfect (as we all know from the rest of the Old Testament), it was the way ordained by God. We can't pretend to know better than God by pulling ourselves away from the Christian community at the first sign of error. For even though the wilderness seems safe at first, there are often more dangers that live among the rocks and crags of our chosen centre of worship.

Anyhow, that's my two cents worth of exegesis.

the spoon

Some days I think I need nothing
more in life than a spoon.
With a spoon I can eat oatmeal
Or take the medicine doctors prescribe
I can swat a fly sleeping on the sill
or pound the table to get attention.
I can point accusingly at God
or stab the empty air repeatedly.
Looking into the spoon’s mirror,
I can study my face in its shiny bowl,
or cover one eye to make half the world
disappear. With a spoon
I can dig a tunnel to freedom
spoonful by spoonful of dirt,
or waste life catching moonlight
and flinging it into the blackest night.
-- Richard Jones

demons are very unfunny, to be completely honest

OK, I'll admit it: even though I finished my thesis on demonic possession about a year ago, I'm still interested in the subject. But not on a creepy I-want-to-join-the-occult kind of way. More in a my-thesis-just-barely-scratched-the-surface-of-the-subject kind of way. So that is why this picture brings me such joy. Gotta love someone who gets right to the heart of the matter. Man, I wish I could have made this point somewhere in my 80-page thesis.