Play That Funky Music White Boy!

Its a music week in Oracularstan. I survey my fief and find that they, the citizens, have burst into song.
First, my lovely daughter Michalangela, is releasing her first album with Blue Whisper Records and is coming to town to have a CD release gig at Bucers this Friday, September 19.

Second, the heir apparent laid down a track in a recording studio with Jason the Rad (whose authority I respect). It is mind numbing rock.

To listen go here.

Lastly, the Amazing Missus (and her band which includes Graeme) performs this Saturday, September 13 at the fair, main stage 4:30



This does not even include Bella Jazz Ensemble which started practicing this week and Gunn playing piano and singing Ben Folds and White Stripes stuff at The NuArt Open Mike Night.


I, whom you trust implicitly for guidance in things not musical, I listen. Hope you do too.

This or That Side of the Line

I John 3:4 Every one who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.
That was simple. It would also follow that the "sin" done was done against the purveyor of the law. Sins exist in a hierarchy parallel to the governments which issue the laws. Whatever the case, sin is evidently law dependent. It can't even exist without a law. A line has to exist before I might cross it.
Romans 4:15 For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression.
Romans 5:13 .... sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.

So sin is not a force. Sin is rebellion. And law is not the answer but the necessary cause. But the law is good. What sort of good? It is (in whatever realm of law) the measure of that realm's authority as to what is the wise extent of its citizens' freedom. This very rarely would align with the citizen's desires for his freedom. It is why the lawgiver has to say something and attach punishments to any violation. The law is only a measure of wisdom not a method.
Galatians 2:21 I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification were through the law, then Christ died to no purpose.

Christians the world over and through many centuries have had a dim view of sin. They naturally, when seeing sin, see the law that made it such and also see "this side of the line drawn" as holiness and the other as transgression. Correct thus far. We have erred in our definition of the problem and consequently we err in our attempts to stave off evil. We see ourselves traveling across the line into sin and so we attempt make the line a speed bump, then a fence, and then a wall and the a DMZ complete with concertina wire and land mines. The problem is not that the law and its punishments are not loud or vigorous enough but is the disconnect between our desires and the lawgiver's which brought the law into being.

We, in Christ, are being changed into His likeness. As the Holy Spirit works in us we are remade into His desires. The Christian is one who has found, like Christ, that God's design of His world is our new desire and His wisdom is becoming our wisdom.
Galatians 5:16 -18 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you would. But if you are led by the Spirit you are not under the law.

The Oracle is, to quote a prophet, one of your own (Outback Steakhouse commercials), "No rules, just right."

The Actual and Its Decoration

At a wedding, we used to decorate a woman's virginity with a white dress. Such is no longer the case. Women who have lived with their boyfriend for years opt for a white dress because it has become the traditional women's wear for the occasion. It is often the case that that which we valued enough to decorate is replaced by the decoration itself. At least the decoration become as important and folks need to do hard thinking to merely see the thing and its decoration discretely and separately. Do we need a Christmas tree to value the Incarnation? So it is with the Gospel. What is the message that saves and what is its decoration?

"What must I do to be saved?" asked the jailer in Philippi. What would you answer? St. Paul suggested that the jailer "believe in the Lord Jesus". That is the sufficient and necessary condition for salvation but what does this "belief" contain? Does it contain baptism? Does it contain repentance from sin? Does it contain calling on God? Does it contain church membership? The list goes on and many brands of Christian adherents would be happy to suggest additions to that list. Some decorate with the patina of age, some with art, some with new ideas hatched by evangelicals.

Saint Paul in Romans 10 makes it clear:
4 For Christ is the end of the law, that every one who has faith may be justified. 5 Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is based on the law shall live by it. 6 But the righteousness based on faith says, Do not say in your heart, "Who will ascend into heaven?" (that is, to bring Christ down) 7 or "Who will descend into the abyss?" (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). 8 But what does it say? The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart (that is, the word of faith which we preach); 9 because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved. 11 The scripture says, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame." 12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and bestows his riches upon all who call upon him. 13 For, "every one who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved." 14 But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? 15 And how can men preach unless they are sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news!" 16 But they have not all obeyed the gospel; for Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?" 17 So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ.

The Oracle sez: A propositional agreement to the claims of Christ's person and atonement with the response of turning from your sins and calling on God for forgiveness will bring to you the grace of God unto eternal life. Nothing less will work and nothing more is needful. All the rest is decoration. In some cases we decorate as authoritatively instructed and in some our decoration is ripe with our own artistic developments, now or in the past. Don't confuse the decorations with Faith Alone or it will not be Faith Alone for long.

If Pride is Wrong, Ought we Honor?

"Outdo one another in showing honor" (Romans 12:10). Honor is an odd thing. Most Christians would think that any thought of joy in your achievements would be the immoral Pride of Life. Honor then seems, in their minds, like showing up at church in a short skirt and plunging neckline. If Honor is a pleasurable gift we give to those we honor at the recognition of their dignity or accomplishment, are we not tempting them to pride? Why, in heaven's name, are we are told by the Apostle to do it? Maybe the pleasure serves a purpose for which it is worth risking pride.

We all agree, of course, that flattery is wrong, but why? The Scripture tells us to honor and not to flatter. In this distinction people need, before God, to know who they are, and honest honor is "another lips praising you and not your own" (Proverbs 27:2). This helps them know, confidently and with pleasure, the reach of humanity that they have arrived at being. They need to know, for God has delegated to them this Self, and that Self will one day be judged by God. They need to know accurately (risking, but not necessitating pride) or they, with conceit, would be pleased at the false. "For by the grace given to me I bid every one among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith which God has assigned him." Romans 12:3. Why is it Christians have, over the years, suspected that any pleasure for self was evil? Why did God make sex feel so good? And art so sublime? And honor about an achievement so satisfying? Those pleasures were made by God, and God, it says, "tempts no one". These things draw us as much to the good that God intended in their creation as to the bad.

All these gifts of God have a service which God desired and to which we must make payments. Husbands and wives must give each other conjugal rights. That there is, in fact, an erotically charged book in the Bible intimates that God wishes His good gifts to be pursued. Praise is an obligation, just like sex in marriage. And just like sex in marriage, it is the other which we serve with our action. The Lover, the Artist and the Praise-giver have their own share in the pleasure, but their task is clearly the communication of pleasures to the Loved, the Audience, and the Honored.

So as we honor, honestly and persistently, we announce the gains a man or woman has made to the ears of that man or woman. We tell them that their efforts have born fruit. Yes, they really do deserve that trophy. Just as when we praise God and we declare His great deeds, so it is with praising others. We announce to them that they are truly becoming that which a man is or can be. Since he is defined by the extent and success of his will, your honor to him is a scale, measuring what he willed and how he succeeded.

A world that markets Fear, be it in the News, the commercials, the worrying mothers, or the wusses we used to call "fathers" or "men", is playing a part in this game as well. While flattery is the usually insincere and certainly inflated measurement of the standing of he whom we honor, Fear is the measure of what still stands outside threatening the success of our will. In the purveying of Fear is the constant suggestion that defeat and loss are its currency. It says "you are not man enough to withstand this...". Fear announces, sometimes truly, that other things, Accident, Luck, Providence, the governments, or God Himself are real agents who rule an area outside our will. Flattery is dangerous because it tells us to go where angels fear to tread. And it is natural that we should fear going where we have not the chops to successfully rule. But where is fear bad? Fear is bad when it makes of us cowards. Fear is bad when your very humanity is jeopardized by an incorrect belief that you could not do what you certainly could and should. You become "safer" and your world becomes a zoo, where you can look "wild at heart" but never wander past unnatural confines. The fences are high, all the rocks are rounded, and they offer a diet and medicines promising to abate all futility— all this because you are too afraid to run your own life at the measure which God assigned. And that fear made you back up from and give up key elements of your humanity. You are left, not with rule by reason and wisdom, but with a packaged and plastic play area in which your most ignoble urges can play.... with a helmet. Perhaps if we honored others like we were told, we could hinder this culture of the terrified.

The Well of Fear

The well of Fear is deep, perhaps bottomless. It will never run dry. We as a nation used to run on Hope, hope in our abilities and hope in our future, and for some hope in God. But now in commercials, news broadcasts, pulpits, and homes the key to most of our choices is fear. Death and calamity lies like a screen before all our eyes and promises to have at us. BREAKING NEWS! We run around in panicked circles, encouraged by the constant cries of alarm, slapping helmets on our children, increasing our chances by 8% against heart attack with Garlique, and finding our stomachs churning at the death of any soldiers in Iraq. The percentage of women in our nation has risen from 50-51% to almost 85%. Timorous wusses.
The smell of our own terrors washes through our homes. The mothers of the land have the support of all communication and product. Little Johnny, just as his Self starts to consciously commune with the Other, finds, (instead of the natural balance of Hope and Fear), finds Fear alone. The parents believe they are protecting him with his helmet and his homeschool but they have merely moved the threat level to High and he has a greater possible likelihood of pulling back. Mother doesn't like him to go very far into the Other anyway. Let us just put up another barrier. Lets not talk to the Other at all. Let us shut the door behind us and have it be the kind that neither we or they can unlock.
No, it is not a mature choice. And no they can't explain it. Yes, someone else's little Johnny got hurt badly on his bicycle. This Fear is inordinate.
So it does not surprise me that more and more children are choosing autism. Safety first.

Now About Your Salvation....

Many years ago I was in a discussion with a gentleman whose view of the Gospel was such that it was designed to help his theological team "win". You know, the denomination or systematic which arrives at the Last Day with the most adherents wins something, not sure what. He saw the failure to include a key point of his theology as trafficking in a "false gospel" (the damnable kind) instead of a saving message which once believed transferred a soul from death to life. I informed him that neither he nor the inventor of his systematic distinctive had been hoisted onto a cross for my moral and eternal benefit.

I wanted to write up a statement of the Gospel for which he, I, and any other regenerated person would bless God and say "Amen!" This image is a graphical display of that effort. No, it is not clear on everything it addresses but it is clear enough for the sinner.

Feel free to send it on to whomever and wherever. I have an 11x17 vector file PDF if anyone wants a printable version.

For all the detritus that comes through my email with star bursts, rainbows, and puppies, perhaps the message of Jesus Christ would land in the unbelievers mailbox and convict of sin, righteousness and judgment. Or perhaps some believer, who like my friend, can't and hasn't distinguished the forest from the trees and mixes that which saves with all the wisdom or folly of his church, that he would know what he needed to say if he were to faithfully preach Christ and Him Crucified.

Of Arcadia: What Sports Mean to Me

It was the sound of cleats on pavement. That and the artificial mass of shoulder pads claiming more grandiose things for the pleasuring of woman than the scrawny teenager within could compass. For heaven’s sake, we looked like a herd of bison, big helmeted heads lolling before the massive humps, with our equally artificial flanks tightly shoving us across the parking lot to the showers. If only any desirable girl, (and the standards were pretty low as to what made one of those), happened to be standing for unknown reasons somewhere proximous after school for a couple of hours, if that desirable one lifted her head, shook her auburn hair and smelt the testosterone on the breeze, she would look, with a meaning that her nubile frame could not decipher, our way. The herd would announce their seriousness regarding football on the echo chamber that was the faculty parking lot of our notable, Michigan high school. The grass of the practice field had barely acknowledged that these were the glory days of metal cleats. There, in wind sprint after wind sprint, grass and spike only met to give us a foothold, but the asphalt, it gave us standing. It said to all that the herd was advancing from the prairie to its pen and would be available for the lusty stare, which my get up and make up assumed, of one desirable woman. She would scan the lumbering mass of a 160 spent frames and would single out a certain jersey, mine, with huge purple digits naming me for her.
I have no idea what my number was. This is not because I have a bad memory, (which I do) but because I am not entirely sure I new what it was then. The number was unimportant. It was unlikely that that number would be called upon to do anything on the field of play. The number was a shape, a graphic whose effects, on which I counted along with the lusts the cleats evoked and the shoulder pads broad seduction, would be incomplete without that number. She would know me in the herd because I was the one spinning her fortunes out on loom of Spalding Athletic gear. I can only assume that all the rest of the team enjoyed the game. Perhaps these teammates, more the bison than they realized, hoped to be made heroes on the gridiron and thereby elevated to a good college or just to the bed of one of the cheerleaders. They obviously couldn’t write a story to save their lives. I stepped along side of them as a creature of myth, using their sincerity as a prop for a greater tale. She, the desirable babe, would see me alone among them because my soul, an artist, a man with sight, had donned the uniform and served humbly in the trenches along side fellows who wouldn’t know beauty if it slapped them on the fanny. How could she want anyone else?
The lot was crossed without even successfully spotting the she creature that had picked me for breeding. Suddenly the secret bliss of being deservedly desired fell away and the locker room erupted with smell of sock, jockstrap, and exertion. The only memory of the field behind us was the salty sweet taste of homemade Gatorade and a grass stain where Maurice Reese had applied 245 black pounds of first string Newtonian physics to my 145 pounds of white-assed, third string, “red squad” body at only temporary rest. I was lucky to get away with a stain. She certainly would not have watched the practice itself and could not have witnessed my downfall. She was there late in the afternoon for entirely different reasons and was probably somewhat antagonistic to the sporting life. Hence her eye should fall on me, a dichotomy she knew from some art class, who was not like the other jock brains but one who merely had strapped on the pads to cause a tingling in her resistant temper. Just enough male for her female and more than enough insight for her soul. Surely she had not watched practice for any length of time, at least not the time where my body found itself wrapped about the foreparts of Mr. Reese as he expressed his antagonism for whitey.
A shower later and with the realization that my second string brother was waiting in the parking lot because he had the car keys and the driving duty, brought me to my exit, last out of the school and into the late summer light. She would have seen all the supporting cast come out. She would look up with faux casualness from a book by Herman Hesse at those who were devoted to the sport, the game, the competition but, sadly, not the narrative. She was probably sitting on the hood of her car, no, someone else’s car, for it was written that she would need a ride which I would compel my brother to give. Yes, and the ride to her home, surely in our part of town, would be replete with tired footballed wisdom laced with an exciting undertone of future conversations which would be on subjects which she could only imagine me expressing myself on. My brother would say nothing and would operate as an object who operated the other necessary object of our parent’s station wagon.
My showered, fresh and ready self was being called on stage. I strode down the hall , and in the empty school quiet I planned to be looking right to the horizon so my brother would call out to me by name. A duffle bag swung in nonchalance and my hand hit the door handle with a memory of the sound of cleats still singing.

And We'll Have Fun, Fun, Fun....

Fun. What is this annoying invasion of our peace? I have never been an advocate of fun or a close friend of those who encourage it. While at sports academy in Connecticut I would hide in the mountain caves to avoid those grinning counselors who waded in the junior high sea arranging the next bit of fun. Most of the children liked it. I presume that they did as I was alone in my cave.
"Such stories," you say, "explain far more of you than they do fun."
I must nod and agree.
But fun is something is it not? Why do you call some things fun and others boring?

Fun is the slightly(the more slight the more fun) controlled disarray which measures successfully the borders of the overarching controls in place about you. Why do I say "measures succesfully"? Why did your mother (she who overarched most of your early fun) remind you that if you keep doing "x" you will put your eye out, it'll freeze like that, or you'll regret it all when someone gets hurt? She is measuring just how close you and your friends are to letting the disarray throw you face down in the gravel. After which, she was right, no fun.

In other words, fun is the casting off of the governance which fabricates your very humanity and descends into the gratifying abyss of unreasonable urge, after jotting a quick note to those who remain on watch to keep an eye out. We have so measured fun as a Constitutionally protected right that the great moral action regarding drunkenness is not refraining from getting plowed but the having of a designated driver. The out of control protected by the controlled.

We climb down that ladder to various rungs of fun. A game creates an arena of wild responses within its own close confine of rules. Screaming, gesticulating, falling out of your chair is all allowed but you have to do a certain thing. Games are fun because we know these 'mothers" of our moment are intending that we have fun, run amuck, work up a sweat pantomiming some word for our teammates.
Some fun lovers go further down and find that they can't have fun unless the throbbing music, dim but flashing lights, copious amounts of adult beverage all conspire to give them an event in which nothing of import, wit, or sense is uttered. These clubs are not as good a government as your mother or the game board.
We wish to savor an animal license within the wise confines of a humane liberty. I think such can be a valid grant. Pleasure can be rightly pursued when having a solid wall about you. There is a place for the passions but the degree of passion needs be met by the degree of government which protects it from exposure and vulnerability. Most will want those two things divided into 1) their abandonment to the fun and 2) someone entirely else granting the protection of the fief in which it occurs. Such is naturally expected with children who couldn't govern their own bowel movements or cook their own meals. When older it should be different. The wise man, in his fun, should never allow that it require a second agent to drive him home.

Been a Long Time, Been a Long Time...

The last blog reader was slowly leaving the room. His/her hand had reached tentatively for the light switch as the persistent quiet could only be matched in future by darkness. His/her eye scanned the room looking for he/she knew not what. Was that a scratching noise? From under his/her feet it seemed to rise. Unseen heretofore was a richly aged, lichen encrusted, and dirt obscured handle and latch of which Tolkien had failed to write a complete history. A male or female hand reached down, and with knuckles whitening with the strain and shaking in fear, pulled. The gaping, black hole of the Pit hearkened to either the Crack of Doom or perhaps (he/she hoped) The Narrow Way. The smell of wormwood and souls baking in sweaty, humid, and chaffing torment rose to the nostril of the last acolyte. A damp form crawled out like a majestic sea lion and threw itself on the floor of a dryer Idaho.
"I've been to Charleston." said the heaving mass.

Das Capital

A short word, if I may. Most of the time I write and design for the pleasure of it. The Amazing Missus sees boxes of textbooks, and thought, and posters, and coffee mugs not as the residue of my joy but another task crying out for completion. So sell it I must. You now can worm your way into a greater degree of affection with the Oracle (and certainly his wife) by going to the place we store our Loot and buying stuff like there were no tomorrow. I have added a link to this Mall of Oracular Stuff (bringing my approved sites up to 4) in the sidebar. The site takes PayPal, which, I assume, means I can gain American dollars from you at a distance.

Check back at that site with regularity as I hope to get more stuff produced. I hope that things like The Pitney Canon or a novel, The Book of Knights and Days might reach self publication status ere long. Maybe some bookmarks. Big Haus aprons. Feel free to clamor in the comments section for something I may have forgotten. My great futilitarian work on the sum of all human desire is a ways off (working title "Benediction: a good word on the way it is") so no clamoring for that. You may note in the comments that you await it with patience.

Völkerwanderung

Pleased?
You betcha!

What you see in this picture is my family. They are perhaps the greatest set of friends a father has had in the history of Western Civ. Other fathers may feel free to think it of their own overweening storge but I, he who has post-Enlightenment Rationalism as his middle name, I have checked.

Let me introduce you to the moment. We, last weekend, had flown to the East to pay homage to my eldest child's (Lincoln Davis, second from left) success at Seton Hall Law School. We, of course, spent our days wandering Manhattan and this shot is in the graveyard of a church next to Ground Zero. It has become a shrine, not for the death and resurrection of Christ, but a shrine for the rescuers of 9/11. Nifty old church but "next to Ground Zero" is uniquely apt.

To Lincoln Davis' right (the furthest left as you look at this picture) is Graeme Stanford. He is my gift to the expansion of The Empire and serves in the U.S. Army. To Davis' left, that good looking honey is Michalangela, jazz singer of Portland, Oregon. Marching further right down the ranks we have Evan Gunn, a senior in high school who could order a beer anywhere in the United States and not get carded. In fact, Friday night we dined at Del Frisco's Rockefeller Center and the uber-confident staff offered him wine. In keeping with the theme we next meet she who will continue to be carded though aged to five decades. The wife, Leslie Ann, the Amazing Missus, fit in easily to Neuva York. I had a flare up of a heel problem and so as we marched Manhattan, I shuffled along as the grey bearded gimp to the rear of the party, head down and muttering. The Missus consequently was mistaken for my daughter.

What's not to be proud of? They are a good lookin' batch of humanity. I was proud to have shuffled along after them.

I Don't Make the Rules, I Just Apply Them.

Back in my youth it was always said, "Just because you were born in a garage, it don't make you a Volkswagen." The truth bearing nature of aphorisms notwithstanding I always took that to mean (in the creedal sophistication of the Jesus Freaks) that being born in a Christian home did not make you a Christian. In fact the term "Christian home" itself is slightly silly, like those that think they feel a spirit of oppression when they drive into Utah. An institution has actual regeneracy? The mind fogs. Back to the point.
As the Baby Boom reaches past its midlife crisis and into a heightened religious sense and they pull up heaving at the near side of the Tiber or the Golden Horn, more credit is given by them to the contrary of this "saying". The adjustment of the residual evangelical faith they once held has them amend the saying thus, "Unless of course you always believed that you were a Volkswagen and committed yourself to the Chilton's manual of Volkswagen repair and subscribed rather strictly to all things relevant in the storied history of VW" Of course we cannot allow the illustration to get away from us by suggesting that this claimant to VW-ness had a Beetle and Jetta for parents at which the "please-save-my-kid-by-church-magic" set says validly, "Aha!" I pause before I say "Aha!" back at them. Don't want this to turn into a shoving match.
"Aha! Not only did I refrain from pushing the metaphor further then it could communicate but never, I repeat, never has a single Volkswagen in the history of the Cosmos been brought into being by a Beetle sharing a night of passion with a Jetta (I don't care how smokin' hot she was). So it is with Christians. The genetics and the period of incarceration make nothing of a man except perhaps peer status with the demons. But you have always believed and ..and...sola fide, faith alone.

You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe -- and shudder.
James 2:19

The catechism of the First Church of Pandemonium is solid on the doctrine of God. Not only does the creed of that institution affirm it, they individually claim the belief. How long have they believed? They can't remember a time when they did not know that this was true.

Do you want to be shown, you shallow man, that faith apart from works is barren?
James 2:20

James has been on this topic a bit by the time he gets to verses 19 & 20. He seems to think that belief that matters to God (not a dead faith) is that which has promoted an action. And what form would the action take in those that believe the claims the Jesus died for sinners?
Romans 10:8-14 has an idea.

The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart (that is, the word of faith which we preach); because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved. The scripture says, "No one who believes in him will be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and bestows his riches upon all who call upon him. For, "every one who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved." But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher?

The verbal confession includes more than saying the great creedal truths. It involves calling on the Name of the Lord. How can they call without belief? The demons believe and don't call. Is their faith not true? The Bible says that their faith is true about these things but it is silent about another belief which genetic "Christians" with them might not affirm at a level which would bring about a saving faith. They don't believe that they need to. Not sinners or not sinful enough. Regenerate from the womb, always a Christian, never unconverted. Only the sinner cries out to God, "O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?"

I John 1:8-10 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

This is the upshot. St. Paul lets us know in Romans 7 that, yes he was born alive spiritually but as the law entered his life, sin came to life and he died. This is the death from which the work of Christ on the cross came to redeem us. The child of Christian parents is certainly benefited by the presence of the truth surrounding them but the truth is this: by the time a mind is capable of even understanding the articles of the Faith (which they will naturally believe as some naturally believe in Santa Claus) they will have fallen to the sins that come to life as they encounter the moral law. They must believe that Christ died to save sinners but they must come to also believe that they are precisely that, sinners. Those two beliefs, the need and the answer, bring about the the work of a real faith, calling on the name of the Lord to be saved. God's grace is to sinners and those who think they can just grow up knowing the truth and learning to be obedient are denying that grace.

I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification were through the law,
then Christ died to no purpose.
Galatians 2:21

Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?
Galatians 4:16

This persuasion is not from him who calls you.
Galatians 5:8

Hauskeeping

Do you want to understand The Big Haus Society?
Go here.
Do you want to help offer The Big Haus to others?
Go here.
Do you want to visit The Big Haus to gain what it is we offer?
Go here.

ART, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY, AND FAITH
At the Big Haus,
It's the Thought That Counts.

Pastoral Bestiary

I ran across this old cartoon today cleaning out my files.

All the Best People Will be There

All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
Ecclesiastes 1:8

That said, The Male Box is throwing an arts extravaganza tonight and tomorrow. I will have some unsatisfying visuals hung in their gallery and the Amazing Missus will be belting out sounds that fill not thine ears mid-Friday nite.

I will be moving the keyboard later this afternoon.
Full of weariness? You betcher!
Utter it? Watch my dust.

"God Willing"

The pious are those who take serious measure of the gods and place themselves accurately in that measure. In other words the theism of the righteous is both referential and reverential. What is your reference for the Living God? Remember that the rest of us can tell the quality of your reference by the pronounced quality of your reverence. "The God Who Made Heaven and Earth" is either just a verbal reference with equivalent verbal (and verbal only) reverence or it is how your categories and personal governmental theory has found Him placed.

The squishy melodies affirming "My God is an awesome God" sees impiety from many of the lives of the voices who sing it. The need is not only that the reference be true (He is Awesome) and that the reference be where His name appears in the index of Christian thought (God, one each, triune, awe inspiring) but where He appears as highest in the List of Lords each man recognizes and wills to govern himself. Again, piety is a personal thing and impiety is as well. It is the government of circumstantial passion that makes some bozo sing the word "awesome" juxtaposed with the Name of God fervently in one place, and in another, find that the Name is companion to "dammit".

"My brethren, it ought not be so."

The Oracle: Quit relying on the church for your reference to God. When it is distant and "endlessly repeated" you will feel that level of piety (in other words, none, or what passes for piety but is really some gaseous aesthetic brought on by Handel and Gothic architecture). Bow the knee when you are not shielded behind the force field of Christendom.

Bow your knee.

You are certainly

not bright enough

to run your own morality.

You need a god.

The Insult that is Sin

Hmmm.... Let me see.....stuff that is important.
If man is created for the potential of autonomously chosen pursuit, obedience, and worship of He who created him, then the quality we call sin is perhaps not best argued at the level of "don't do that or this". Sin (capitalized not just because it begins the sentence) is all about your personal theory of governance. The question "who is in charge here?" asked of just about everyone is easily answered by the casual tapping of their own chest. Another question comes charging up. "How is that working out for you?" Admit it, you are lousy at Life. You are not smart enough and neither is Dr. Phil. Oh yeah... and then you die. Dumb as a stump and worm feed ere long. God has given you feelings and perceptions and hopes and fears punctuated by mortal and immortal death. With that lineup He expects you would consider taking His resume, looking over His qualities for running the job to which you promoted yourself. Allowing that God is the wisest guide, Righteousness is the wisest governance of all pains and pleasures. Sin will actually be the governance that follows, not wisdom, but the folly of urge. Run to pleasure (be it drink, sex, etc.), retreat from pain (fear, cowardice, dishonesty, etc.) and nothing has governed, nothing has ruled but passion, wanting what promotes itself in Desire. To want without will is not just evil but bestial as well. The Christian, living in the light of God's governance is not just holy but humane.

Let me give you some help.

Sin is not a pattern of icky crimes but shallow ones. It is not the biology of sex that makes it bad in various circumstances but the variety of the circumstance. In fact folks are pleased with being taboo or seamy or sordid about their sin. Only a grade schooler will fall for the "icky" spit swapping barrier to kissing. Who shall I blame for this error in assessment? The church will do just fine. Augustine held that sex was even sinful in marriage. John Paul II suggested that lust was wrong even within marriage. They and their ilk built and sustained the Manichean Icky School of Sin and the sinner is oddly happy to graduate from it. Pleasure can trump icky in a heartbeat, in fact icky makes sin more pleasing still. But Sin is not the icky. Sin is the white trash level of confidence that you are capable to rule the monstrous joy of sex. A man looks a woman not his wife, or the teens park the car at the scenic overlook, or the pederast cruises the chat rooms, and each will say (to maintain the metaphor of how trashy are your choices) "Here, hold my beer and watch this."

The Chronicles of the Oracle

My abject apologies for failing to even post the mundanities of my life. You ought understand that local oracular duties take precedence over the far flung of more hyper spaces. Big thoughts were thunk, you can be sure. Vortices of conversational epiphany lay scattered like jetsam cross the hardwood floors of Big Haus. Young men tug at their forelock as they passed the manse and they murmur a slight but fervent prayer that they would grow up big and strong of mind.

Coming out of Easter things have gone from busy to bustin' loose. Davis was here for the holiday which has its own soul cleansing bout of rigorous thought. We had a church breakfast that day, then church itself, after which we invited everyone over (totaling 45 persons) for luncheon at the Haus. We then had a couple from California visit for a few days as they spied out the land. I spent that week whipping up interest and materials for The Mojo Oracles. It had a good turnout on Saturday (17 male minds awash in futility and food). The three days before the Mojo we added to the family by entertaining and welcoming cousins (1 real, 2 step) from Canada that I did not know that I had. Nice people. Add to the general hoorah Leslie's Bella "Let's look at the score from the Jazz Festival" meeting and her band practicing and that brings us to this week. Starting Monday I have been laboring to create a notebook for a conference I am doing tomorrow in Colorado (Leslie and I leave at 3;30 tomorrow a.m.). We get back Sunday night late and have to be ready Monday morning first period to teach the philosophy of Manners (The Word of a Gentleman and the Way of a Lady) at Montrose Academy. That goes all week winding up with a banquet at the Big Haus on Saturday with Leslie Wilson and Heartless performing an evening concert at the Nuart Theater after. That means I had to fabricate the textbooks for that week this week along with the other prep. My brain has started to effervesce. All I can manage for the fans of Clan MacEvan is this recounting. That and ask for your prayers that we might survive. I am trying also to get out a fundraising brochure for the ministry here. It is done but needs to be printed and mailed. Some of you will see it. If you think you might not be on our mailing list and would like to be sure that a Big Haus shakedown for support reaches you, put a comment to that effect and I will let you know how to safely get us your address.

We think we might have a free weekend in a couple of weeks. I suppose that could change. Dang free will.

An Oracle for Wednesday

Peace is not a thing but a reaction to Order. The kind of Peace gained by Order is related to the arena; if emotional, domestic, military, or spiritual.
Order the realm and gain the Peace. If you cannot master the realms of life, find a master who can.

The degree to which you successfully govern your Self and Circumstance defines your Dignity and what Honors are requisite to it.
We are Humane to the degree we govern ourselves, Civilized to the degree we are governed in an ordered society, and Noble to the degree we are of governing service to it.
We are Pious to the degree we are governed from On High.

Went Down to the River (DaDaan da Duh)

So we went down to see my baby, Michal Angela, as she has labored to become a working singer in the Portland, Oregon jazz scene. We wanted to go out on the town with her in this professional moment.

First pic: Mike getting her performance groove on.

Second: Pick out the 50 year old.


Third: Mike and the Blessed, (our "second daughter").


Fourth pic: Jake and Bethany Calene came out for the gig (which was out in McMinnville, Oregon at the NW Wine Bar.)

Next few: Mike singing with her pianist, and recording studio owner, Jonathan Swanson (he is dang good). The bass player is some old guy who sat in but Michal has played with his son and grandson who are also bass players.

Art Shot at the end (meaning by that it was out of focus and was run through some PhotoShop filters): Leslie got to sing a couple of numbers at the end of the evening.