IVP - Strangely Dim

Now Even Dimmer!

Strangely Dim got a new look yesterday. Finally you don't have to look at my glisteny face while you read. I can imagine the process:

That's the stupidest thing I've ever read.

"Whaddaya think, huh? huh? huh?"

"Oh, it's . . . nice."

Yes, now with complete anonymity and privacy you can read and mock Strangely Dim to your heart's content. And don't forget to go mock Loud Time while you're at it. Twice the strangeness at one low price!

Good Noise

I'm about to become Charlie Brown. I'm playing the part in a sketch for our church's Christmas pageant. I've got the dance down, which does me no good, because the part doesn't call for dancing. Instead, I've got to figure out how to match Charlie Brown's odd speech patterns and, more than anything, how to move naturally between having no mouth and having a huge, gaping hole of nothingness as I speak.

The scene we're doing is from the Charlie Brown Christmas special--Charlie Brown is talking to Linus. It's an interesting movement from Charlie's desperation to Linus's serene retelling of the Christmas story. I was cast because I'm good at being loud; my counterpart is pretty soft-spoken and a really good dramatic reader.

We ran lines last night, and whereas my big problem was how wide to open my mouth, Linus stumbled over one phrase: "good news of great joy." This was the herald angel announcing the birth of Jesus to the shepherds keeping watch at night, et cetera et cetera. On our first pass the phrase was conflated into two words: "good noise."

There's a paradox built into the Christmas story: heavenly peace, on one hand, and really loud angels on the other. We're often inclined to equate silence with godliness, stoic impassibility with holiness. But one of most significant moments in world history--the birth of God--was a spectacle of sound and light.

There is such a thing as "good noise," I think, and particularly as it relates to "good news." The prophet Isaiah speaks to it:

How beautiful on the mountains

are the feet of those who bring good news,

who proclaim peace,

who bring good tidings,

who proclaim salvation,

who say to Zion,

"Your God reigns!"

This seems as good a time as any to let you know about my new blog, which will run independently of this one. I've long been a fan of "loud time" as a way to balance an inordinate fascination with the evangelical practice of "quiet time," so I've inaugurated Loud Time as a place to explore and live out the concept of spiritual life together. Check it out and let me know what you think.

In any event, may you have good noise this Christmas, and may you sleep in heavenly peace.

Not Just Anybody

All the mania surrounding The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe notwithstanding (some of which has trampled me underfoot; see yesterday's post), "Narnia Eve" shares a date with another significant milestone: the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of John Lennon.

I've tended to be a Paul McCartney guy, myself, but as a songwriter and founder of the Beatles, Lennon was a force of popular music. You can still hear his influence even on people who don't know they've been influenced by him.

I was ten when John died. I don't remember the moment, but I do remember the aftermath. My family went to the library the next day, where we joined a room of people watching news reports. I acted like a ten year old, running around and goofing off, and I was rebuked and chased away by the gathered crowd. It was a brief foreshadowing for me that the world is not as innocent and playful as we're allowed as children to imagine it.

I was ill-prepared today to commemorate John's passing, but fortunately I was able to borrow the soundtrack to The Royal Tenenbaums, which features a little song by John: "Look at Me." I'd not heard it before, but it's emblematic of some of John's most intimate writing:

Look at me. What am I supposed to be? . . .

Here I am. What am I supposed to do? . . . What can I do for you? . . .

Who am I? Nobody knows but me. . . . Nobody else can see--just you and me.

Maybe he's singing to Yoko or his mom or his dad or the universe or me, but the genius of it is that it sounds like something you whispered just last night to a lover or a parent or the universe. Anyone can sing it to anyone at any given moment. I might sing it to God; God might sing it to me. Either way, it'll occupy my thoughts long after it's sung.

In the wake of these lyrics or these thoughts I'm reminded of my own finiteness and of the grace of God, who comes to us and reveals himself to us and abides with us--a great favor to a world of people who can only comprehend so much. I'm reminded of a quirky little line from St. Augustine I came across in David Benner's book The Gift of Being Yourself:

Grant, Lord, that I may know myself that I may know thee.

If I Were King of the Forest

Well, we're a week out from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe hitting theaters. Yesterday I got a good, up-close look at some of the merchandising. There was Peter, there was Edmund, there was Aslan--with biting action?

I confess I'm not well-schooled in the Chronicles of Narnia, but I don't usually think of Aslan as biting stuff, although I suppose that's what lions do. I think of Aslan as talking and roaring and motioning and singing the world into existence--none of which are particularly compelling to a toy-buying public. Still, Aslan with biting action is kind of like Jesus with karate-chop action: certainly possible, it nevertheless kind of misses the point.

I was also a bit surprised not to find a Lucy anywhere in the table-top display of Narniastuff. Isn't she the cat's meow, so to speak? But I guess boys don't buy girl action figures.

I shouldn't be too critical--the Narnia movies have to fit into a Disney template, which means in order to earn its keep each Narnia film needs to generate merchandising sales. And if it's going to generate merchandising sales, it's going to have to ruthlessly analyze the market and bend Aslan, the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve to its purposes. I'm sure that when The Horse and Its Boy hits the theaters, we'll be treated to a Bree action figure that shoots glue out of its hooves. (That one's for free, Disney.) It'll be edutainment.

I Don't Know Alaska

Last month I went to Alaska for the first time; technically I've been there before, but only technically. My family crossed a bridge from Canada into a border town, Hyder, just to say we did and to load up on t-shirts.

So technically this was my second trip to Alaska, but my first chance to really see it. I flew in to Anchorage and was met by a friend of mine, who then drove me three hours to our destination, a retreat center outside of Soldotna, the home of Alaska's only Dairy Queen. I wouldn't expect an ice cream shop to be a big draw for people living in "nature's refrigerator," but I'm told that people in Anchorage will make a day of their trip to Dairy Queen. Of course, that day would by necessity involve a lot of driving.

That's OK though, because driving in Alaska is a pleasure. There are mountains and rivers and forests and lakes. There are bald eagles (which I saw) and bears (which I didn't). And oddly enough, though you may be a day's drive from the nearest Dairy Queen, you're never more than a few minutes away from a cup of espresso.

Alaskans refer to the contiguous United States as the "lower 48" and take mild, amused offense at the tendency of map-makers to locate Alaska, for the sake of convenience, off the southern coast of California. If you leave Alaska you're going "outside," which is funny, since during an Alaskan winter the last place you'd want to go is outside.

While in Alaska I ate halibut ("for the halibut"), moose (in a taco--go figure) and reindeer. I'm told that in all likelihood, because our retreat center was a state-registered charity, I probably ate roadkill. None of this seemed too world-shaking for the people I was with, but as an "outsider" I was pretty wigged out. It took a couple of high school girls to help me come to terms with the fact that I was in all probability eating Rudolf for breakfast: "Just call it caribou."

Alaska is as surreal as it is serene, because it has this mystique surrounding it. And the odd thing is that the mystique has to do with just how down-to-earth Alaskans are. People who are pragmatic, people who are neighborly, people who are not alarmed by the appearance of elk--people like that are uncommon to the lower 48. People like that are mysterious, quirky.

We spent the whole weekend talking about superheroes, which made me feel more at home, which I suppose makes me quirky too. Quirky enough, in fact, that one of my favorite jokes depends on Alaska for its punchline (it also depends on you reading it out loud, so don't post a comment until you've heard yourself repeat it):

Q: Did Tennessee what Arkansas?
A: I dunno. Alaska.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! That's brilliant!