Coffee Culture Kingdom

Lots of cash

Having posted that wonderful quote about brothels and God-seekers earlier this week, I was intrigued to find this fascinating website, More Intelligent Life, discussing the economics of high-end prostitutes.

Just as "rich" were the comments to the article, which included several self-professing prostitutes (both male and female, straight and homosexual).

It seems that they understood better than the rest why people would pay so much for sex--and it isn't that different than desires everyone has. We all have a yearning for acceptance, for love, for others. Some feel they can only get such things if they pay for it.

One of the points touched on is that there's something about paying a lot for something that causes us to think it is more valuable than something else. This relates to our pride. Same product, different price tag. Yet we feel better spending more if our pride is of a certain sort.

But missing in any of the discussion however was a frank acknowledgment of the nature of sex and addiction, and how broken hearts and bent psyches seek out something, anything, to fill the void. (Reminds me of Eliot Spitzer, which, by the way, Forbes has an excellent piece analyzing Eliot Spitzer's sex addition here.)

All that to say, the quote from earlier this week speaks in quite the contemporary way to our times.

Though dead, Chesterton still speaks. Not as loud as Abel, to be sure, but speaks nonetheless. Or, in the words of Chris Martin, of the band called Coldplay, "Those who are dead are not dead; they're just living in my head."

Gmail

That's the profound chorus line of a Gmail promo video that I watched some time ago. Does anyone have the link for that goofy bit?

Well, here's my story.

I switched over to an all-web based email client about four years ago and haven't looked back since. What pushed me over the top was the fact that I found myself--my O.C. self--constantly filing away email. Then I heard about an email client that turned email filing on its head and said, "Why file when you can archive?"

Great question. Can you see everyone in the cubicle office look up like you're crazy? Good, that means you're on to something.

Since then, my only headache, well I've had a few, but each time there is a new kind of pain reliever that is produced by folk smarter than me and my headache is gone.

• Need multiple email accounts in one "box"? No problem.
• Need to set up an account really quick? Its a snap.
• Need to connect your handheld to your email seamlessly so that you don't have to see stuff twice? Gotcha.

My only remaining headache, besides the fact that I do way too much emailing, is that whenever there is a web-link asking to email a reply, my desktop email client is always launched, which i never use. Grrrrr.

But not anymore. Lifehacker figured out a way. (Their motto: "Tech tricks, tips and downloads for getting things done") I love those guys!

One other thing: as for doing way too much emailing, my email now has a feature that says, "Take a 15 minute break and get some real work done." And guess what? They really do lock you out of email for 15 minutes. And you really do get some real work done!

A great work on missions

After spending more than 20 years as a missionary in India, Lesslie Newbigin returned to England to discover himself a stranger in a strange land.

Things he had never seen before in his own culture stood out now like a sore thumb--and sorely in need of change.

Coming particularly from the point of view of a Christian missionary, Newbigin's culture shock brought him to some discoveries about missions and the nature of the Gospel that shaped much of his writing.

Most of his books focus on subjects related to culture and kingdom. In fact, Newbigin's insights have influenced me a great deal, even to the naming of this blog--but that's another story.

I'm working on two of Newbigin's books: The Gospel in a Pluralist Society and Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture.

Both of these works give excellent insights into the true nature of a 21st century missionary. I was first turned on to Newbigin by a network of church planting churches I am a part of, called Acts 29. I've since seen threads of Newbigin's ideas running backwards into teachers and pastors I respect and admire, which I take as confirmation of being "on the right track."

For example, for anyone who has heard of Van Til's presuppositionalism, Newbigin does a very solid job of laying out the principles of the transcendental argument, and an apologetic that both engages, and challenges, significant non-biblical ideologies.

What makes Newbigin worth reading, though, is that he challenges significant so-called biblical ideologies as well.

There are a lot of us that need coverting to Jesus, in the end, aren't there?

Joseph's temptation

Bono's yearning lyric, from one of U2's greatest albums, The Joshua Tree, speaks to the most basic human need to discover satisfaction: "I still haven't found what I'm looking for."

We are never told what it is that Bono searches for. But we don't have to be told.  Its a poem, and its true enough as it is.

There's something painful in searching and not finding. It is a kind of suffering. What we experience is not what we know we ought to be experiencing. The way things are is not the way things ought to be. We want and cannot have. We have and still want.

Chesterton, good old Chesterton, supposedly once remarked that "every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God." (I read this quote in a review of Piper's book Sex and the Supremacy of Christ by Mark Hartzell of Harvest in their fall 2007 newsletter.)

Lewis, in his book, Surprised by Suffering, makes the point that heaven is more, not less, than the joys and pleasures of this life. If that's true, then searching for ultimate satisfaction here and now makes no sense. It will ultimately prove to be a fruitless search.

We have to go somewhere else to find what we're looking for. This is a good thing!

Lewis' Spiritual Autobiography

Last spring I committed to always reading something of Lewis. I've kept that, more or less, over the past many months. I've completed Miracles and The Problem of Pain. It has been great. I've posted on some of my gleanings elsewhere on this site.

I've started Surprised by Joy, which is something of a spiritual autobiography for Lewis, and loved this Milton quote at the head of chapter

    Happy, but for so happy ill secure

I've not read anything by Milton--a function of an impoverished education, I'm sure, but I'm reminded how much of Lewis's imagination and thoughtful interaction with all things theological spring from his reading deeply in the ancient classics.

For some, this is part of why they reject Lewis. For me, this is what draws me

a jaguar

Reading here about a conversation that's started up about renewing denominations, I'm struck with my initial sense of apathy: is there any hope for real denominational life?

We're taught by professional theologians that denominations are a "must" in a fallen world. Best as I can figure, this is basically like international boundaries or fences between neighbors.

(Ever wonder what the wildlife on the border between Mexico and the US think about the border fence? I can see it now: the endangered Sonoran desert Jaguar is stopped at the border and asked for his identification papers as he migrates north to find a mate. "Shoot!" the Jaguar says, "...woah, buddy. I didn't mean that literally. But darn-it, I left 'em on the kitchen counter!)

Anyway, denominations. My sense is that our structures constrain us, and when we toss them, newly unconstrained, we create another whole set of problems.

So denominations are intended to keep us connected. But, I've heard about connectional churches that are practically independent. So independent churches are supposed to keep us from becoming wrongly ruled by someone else. But I've heard of independent churches that are, for all intents and purposes, connected to other churches.

Whatever the answer, it seems like a good reason to pray. Pray that the Church would as St. Paul urged her to do, "walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which she has been called."

Where I live, city officials and developers are pursuing something like a humane redevelopment of a rebirthed urban core. As a way to this goal, reviving a noble pedestrian existence has made the top of many lists. Such an existence is one in which walking to and from work, home, and play is not just a figment of the past, but a present reality.

In a recent issue of the New York Times magazine, a fascinating web 2.0 Internet application was featured that attempts to quantify just this kind of walkable urbanity with a number. That site is called Walkscore (www.walkscore.com). Type in your address and you can find out how easy it would be to live in a place without a car, or, put differently, to live in a place where you could walk to most of the things you needed.

Here's how it works. The more things you can walk to in your neighborhood means that you're going to be more healthy, you're likely to have more transportation options, getting places will be better for the environment, and you'll see an increase in social capital--an elusive measure of how livable a place is.

A score above seventy is deemed to be an indicator that it is pretty walk-friendly. A score below twenty-five means you're likely driving everywhere. Plugging in my address registered a barely double digit number. (Better keep the gas tank filled!) On the other hand, plugging in my city's downtown registered a whopping 92.

While this is great for folks who live THERE, suburbanites like myself are not without options. I've started riding my bike here and there and taking the bus to work. I even rode my bike to the Chinese restaurant nearby the house with my daughter to pick up our carryout order the other day. What fun!

So, wherever you live, your "walkscore" can be the start of something good for you and for your city. Check it out and see what your score is. Then, let me know what ideas you come up with!

Amid all the hoopla extolling our new urbanism, one down-to-earth mom defends suburbia here.

the frog princess

I love folklore. Lewis's conversion is spurred, I'm told, by a conversation with Tolkien in which the old mythmaker challenged Lewis's atheism/agnosticism with this idea: "Christianity is the One True Myth."

This proverb makes all other myths borrowers from the Real Story. So, I read folklore like a gold miner.

I read a Russian folk tale recently that I had heard before, but never read in this form, called the Frog Princess. You can read it here. I loved this line: "Morning is wiser than evening." I find that to be true as well, though as a recovering night-owl, my findings are coming at a great personal cost.

Getting up early (and the corresponding commitment to get to bed before too late) has seemed to open up options. And yes, morning seems to give wisdom that the evening doesn't give. But, is morning wiser than evening as a rule? I must admit that even as I write this, I am still convinced that night counsels deep wisdom that the morning never knows. David knew this, and writes in his famous 119th Psalm, "At midnight, I rise and give you thanks."

Aaahh...vindication!

a trumpeter swan

Speaking of death, I read a poem today by a friend, Mary Setliff, recently recognized by a local poetry festival, in which she potently describes cancer taking a friend. Her poem is called "The Bones of a Swan (for Will)."

Reading it, I was reminded of something that I read recently: swan bones are used in mythology to describe a magical building material out of which anything can be made. Imagine that: enchanted swan bones givng us "make-anything-you-can-dream-of" two-by-fours.

With my swan bones, I would build a city where anything you can dream comes true. And in that city, cancer, and death, wouldn't take anyone, but would transform them.

What a miracle that such a city has already been built, not with swan bones, but with the flesh and blood of a perfect Man, Jesus, whose death and resurrection works the most Perfect Magic of All.

And then, the last enemy, death, shall be defeated.