IVP - Strangely Dim

Thumbnails in Jail

Some of the best discoveries are accidents. My best recent discovery happened just so, as I waited for my lunch to complete its microwave cycle. Who knew how much fun you could have with forks?

I had a fork in hand, dangling loosely over the counter, on which I had laid a magazine. (I guess you'd call that a working lunch.) I noticed that the tines of the fork were obscuring parts of the contributor's face, much like the bars of a prison cell obscure the face of a prisoner. So now I will spend the rest of my afternoon having Fun with Forks(TM), envisioning what various IVP authors and countless bloggers would look like in jail. You can try it yourself on J. I. Packer, author of the IVP classic Knowing God, or Karen Sloan, author of Flirting with Monasticism. Fork not provided.

Fun with Forks(TM) reminds me of another inane game I played in college. My friends and I would randomly append sentences with the phrase "In jail!" using an obnoxious, cartooney voice. For example: "Hey Dave, what are you doing this weekend?" "Oh, I'm going to visit my grandparents--in jail!" Hours of senseless entertainment. Try it; you'll hate yourself for loving it.

Doing my part to make InterVarsity Press the leading publisher of thoughtful Christian books that make a difference in the kingdom of God, I remain

your humble servant,

David A. Zimmerman

Virtually Online

Yesterday at an all-InterVarsity Press meeting we got a sneak peek at the revamped Likewise Books website. It's going to be, I daresay, nifty, with new content (including original artwork and a brand new blog), interviews with authors, and links to books and other interesting stuff. You can get a taste (and I mean just a taste, like those little spoons they give you at the ice cream shop, not like those shot glasses they give you at an olive oil tasting) at likewisebooks.com. Probably when it launches the Strangely Dim URL will change, so be ready.

Virtual Contemplatives amid Structural Agnosticism, or Something Like That

The book I'm writing has me reading a lot of stuff by Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk of the mid-twentieth century. That sounds so exotic that you'd never believe he lived in Kentucky, but there you go. (All respect to Kentucky, of course.)

Where was I? Oh yes, Merton. Though he eventually landed in Kentucky, his life took him all over the world, even from his early youth. After his mother's death, for example, his father took him to France to build a home and paint the days away. They found themselves in the rustic, pungent bourg of St. Antonin. "And . . . the center of it all was the church."

The town was set in a valley and structured so that a cathedral sat in its middle. All other structures, both professional and domestic, and even the view from the hills all around the town, looked toward the church. As if that weren't enough, every so often someone at the church would ring a bell, reminding everyone who couldn't not see it that it was still there, marking the town's time, centering the town's universe.

Oh, what a thing it is to live in a place that is so constructed that you are forced, in spite of yourself, to be at least a virtual contemplative! Where all day long your eyes must turn, again and again, to the House that hides the Sacramental Christ!

A virtual contemplative in a pre-Internet Trappist monastery in Kentucky, reflecting on his childhood experience in rural France. The mind boggles.

Contrast Merton's experience in a rural throwback to medieval France to the contemporary experience of a post-industrial post-Christendom. There's a sense in which we can never recover that medieval centrality of faith: our cities are not built around churches anymore. While sacred spaces in the United States still don't have to pay real estate taxes, neither do they get a pass from local zoning boards, nor do they get the pick of the litter when it comes to prime properties.

Of course, part of the reason for that is that there are so darn many churches gobbling up real estate. The church (in the more abstract sense) is itself decentralized, in a whole variety of ways. The net effect for the church is a shift from the center of a community's culture to some peripheral other point--or points, for that matter. A friend of mine (according to the Facebook understanding of friendship) lists his "religious views" as "I can see 4 churches from my window." Har har.

Nevertheless, a structural reminder of Christ's proper place at the center of the universe has its appeal. I hear from a lot of people that they'd like the future church to link back to the ancient church, and there are ways, I'm sure, of doing that in personal and even communal ways. Merton's way of framing it goes even further, daring to suggest that the whole community--in the church or out of it--benefits from an explicit reminder that its center is not the individual or the family or channels of commerce or politics, but a God who rightly orders the universe he has made.

I'm curious how people who fancy themselves virtual contemplatives these days recover this luxury of having their eyes turned, again and again, in spite of themselves, toward Christ at the center of creation.

Seriously, I'm curious. Please post your suggestions.

'Tis the Season to Be . . .

I've got seasons on the brain, in part, I think, because fall is my favorite season. Or maybe it's because even though it actually is fall, Hallmark has the Christmas ornaments out, but it feels like summer. I think our poor trees here in the Chicago suburbs are a little confused: their internal clocks say it's time to change, but Tracy Butler from ABC News says it will still be over eighty and humid today, like it was all weekend. What tree wouldn't be confused?

Even though we're still mostly green here, though, there are some spots of orange and red bravely showing up on leaves. I notice a little more, a new burst of color, almost every day as I drive to work. And that's one of the reasons I love fall: I notice it, and what I notice thrills me. My generally ordinary commute suddenly contains beauty, wonder, awe. Not bad for a drive to work.

Another aspect of fall I love is the apples. I am a firm believer that an apple a day doesn't just keep the doctor away; it also significantly increases quality and enjoyment of life. Especially if you add peanut butter (which can only make anything better). The Michigan town where I grew up boasted more than one apple orchard, so fall always meant an abundance of apples and apple cider and homemade applesauce and apple crisp and fresh cinnamon-sugar donuts . . . When my parents moved to Pennsylvania last year, my sister and I searched out and visited an orchard in the area to replace our annual fall weekend trek to Michigan and stock our apartment with aforementioned appley goodness. Last weekend we returned to the same orchard, and I think it will become an annual fall tradition now.

I love living in a place that has four distinct seasons, and I love having traditions associated with each season. Lisa McMinn writes in The Contented Soul that "rituals call our attention to the present and encourage us to be mindful of the underlying activity of a particular season." Food is one of the examples she gives as a way to think intentionally about each season. She says she realized one year that she had "stopped appreciating the seasons and had been forgetting the succulence of fresh locally grown produce." Her comments have made me think more intentionally about eating foods that are in season (though I have to admit that I can't give up apples the other three seasons of the year!). My sister and I now have meals that we associate with specific seasons, and we look for new recipes that use produce that's in season. The rituals and traditions become a way of helping us pay attention.

We have seasons besides the physical seasons, though. I just finished reading a wonderful manuscript (forthcoming from InterVarsity Press; stay tuned) on the church calendar. I've never attended a church that closely follows the church calendar, but this manuscript shows the richness that comes from paying attention to and participating in the cycles of the church calendar, remembering, celebrating and anticipating the story of God's past, present and future work.

I'm also, as I mentioned before, in a season of preparation for grad school. Part of that preparation is setting aside time to write. And when I'm writing consistently, I notice things. I love poetry for the same reason I love fall: it forces me to pay attention to moments, color, details. The more writing I do the more I notice around me, in me. Writing is itself a practice that slows me down and helps me pay attention.

I'm still missing a lot, I know, even as I try to pay attention, but maybe I'll leave a few more extra minutes for my drive to work to notice the leaves changing. Maybe I'll choose silence sometimes over music or TV so that I have space to reflect. Maybe I'll take a walk so that I don't just see fall; I also feel the cold (or hot, as the case may be) against my skin. And maybe I'll savor a bowl of homemade applesauce, eating it slowly instead of gulping it down on the fly, and eating it with gratitude for the work of farmers in growing the apples and my sister in making it.

Let's pay attention together, right now, in the same and different seasons we're in. After all, 'tis the season--this fall season, the writing season, the good season, the hard season--to be.

You Really Got Me, You Really Got Me

So far I've been scooped on the "Rabbit" trail this October 1 by four or five people. They've all been pretty cocky about it; Lisa's was the smoothest, as she sauntered by me in the hallway muttering "Yeah, rabbit" under her breath, just loud enough for me to hear it but not loud enough to explain my sudden, loud, exasperated groan of defeat. Even she, however, got beat to the punch by Dan, Craver VII and Kara. I can tell it's going to be a rough month.

If you're on Facebook, by any chance, join the group "Rabbit Uber Alles" and you can play along with various friends of Likewise Books.

I'm sure the next post here at Strangely Dim will be full of profundity, but as is our tradition, today it is merely full of fuzzy bunnies. Enjoy!