Neumatikos

3September2008

B.S., MPH, CNA, Mrs., and M.O.M.

Posted by Convallaria under: News; That Vision Thing; Younguns.

I think I can actually say that I represent the new and improved stay at home mom. I am part of the growing group of young mothers with a good education, mountains of debt, and an intense love for being a wife, mother and homemaker. Even with the occasional fussiness there is nothing that can beat the giggles of a ticklish snugglebug who can be chewing on your pocketbook stap one minute and jumping joyfully the next.
Read on, MacDuff!

11July2008

Mystic

Posted by Puretext under: Essay; That Vision Thing; Theology.

I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m a mystic. But I’ve discovered that word makes some people, particularly non-charismatic evangelicals, nervous, so let me explain. By “mystic” I mean a person whose devotional life is characterized by intensely affecting spiritual experiences. These experiences may be in the realm of simple theological insight, or they may take more literary forms. At times they may cross over into the realm of prophecy; that is, dreams, visions, words, and phrases laden with theological context.

From a natural perspective, mysticism can come from two sources. It can be personal, or social: On the social spectrum, mysticism can be presented as something to aspire to. Some Christian traditions – the Pentecostals, the Orthodox, some revivalist traditions – present mysticism in such a way that it seems to be the only way to have a properly Christian devotional life. At the other extreme, some traditions, particularly the Reformed and Protestants as a whole, seem to perceive mysticism at best as something useless, at worst as something suspiciously unchristian, smacking of Papism, adding to scripture, even beckoning the demonic. On the personal spectrum, a person could be naturally predisposed to have certain kinds of experiences, or they could find themselves completely unable to do so, or they could be somewhere in between. (Please note that, for the sake of simplicity, I’m lumping what a person thinks about these things in with the social scale.)

The difficulty, of course, comes when a person’s natural predisposition doesn’t align very well with the tradition they find themselves in.
Read on, MacDuff!

15June2008

Gathering Ambrosia

Posted by Puretext under: That Vision Thing.

Richard Hobson gives me permission to write this sort of thing:

A few weeks ago, my mother sent me a personality test. A real one - not one of those quizilla things. It turns out that I am an INFJ on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: An introverted, intuitive, feeling, judging type (In this case, “judging” refers to the act of making a decision, or defining something, rather than the act of condeming). We are rare birds, quite literally - INFJs are approximately 1-2% of the human population. If you have 100 friends, and I am one of them, then you might have one other friend who has a similar personality to mine, and if you know who that other person is, I really wish you’d introduce them to me because it’s getting a little bit weird over here being the only one.

The Personality Page has a list of potential career options for INFJs, starting with clergy, then teaching. Next, if you skip over the medical options which are nulled by my aversion to cutting and poking people, there comes psychology, psychiatry, and counseling, which are options I had actually at one time considered. So it seems I have been unwittingly working my way down the list.
Read on, MacDuff!

5March2007

Written vs. Oral Communication: an application

Posted by Puretext under: News; That Vision Thing; Theology.

As I was saying last week, before I was so rudely interrupted by the weekend, I have my own personal little conflict between talking and writing. Talk is easier, but writing is more cogent, more permanent. I have lots of great ideas all the time, nice little five-minute blasts of controversy. When my life is peaceful, these things show up here, in print. But when things are all crazy, like they’ve been for the last six months (or so), writing things down just takes too much effort. I keep having great ideas, but you never hear about them. My poor wife hears them - over and over and over again - because seeing that I can’t expurgate them by writing, I keep talking until I’m done thinking about them.

For instance, last semester, I had a spiritual encounter that was a sort of culmination of a period of thought and study on the nature and purpose of the church. This was a Big Encounter, something on the level of the call I had to go to seminary.
Read on, MacDuff!

14September2006

Puritan Prayer

Posted by Puretext under: Quotables; That Vision Thing; Theology.

Move over Pentecostals:

After the people had gathered in the meetinghouse, “men with their heads uncovered the women covered,” the pastor opened worship with prayer, wh ich lasted “about a quarter of an hour.” …

The major prayer wa alwo about equal to the sermon in length. Thacher wrote on one occasion that he “stood about three hours in prayer and preaching.” On another: “God was pleased graciously to assist me much beyond my expectation. Blessed be his holy name for it. I was near an hour and half in my first prayer and my heart much drawn out in it and an hour in the sermon.”

Jasper Danckaerts likewise attested to the length of the prayers. “We went to church, but there was only one minister in the pulpit, who made a prayer an hour long, and preached the same length of time, when some verses were sung. We expected something particular in the afternoon, but there was nothing more than usual.” On a fast day he even reported that “a minister made a prayer in the pulpit, of full two hours in length.”

In the afternoon “three of four hours were consumed with nothing except prayers, three ministers relieving each other alternately.” THe norm on a common Sabbath seems to have been a major prayer of sixty to ninety minutes, with the sermon about the same.”

This is from Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe’s classic on New England Puritan devotional life, The Practice of Piety. I’d heard of the Puritan practice of 3-5 hour church services, complete with ushers armed with hot pokers to keep the parishoners awake. Even as somebody who loves long services, it was a little unnerving for me. I never realized though, that approximately half of the service was consumed with a single public prayer. I know it probably aims to high for today’s culture, but honestly, this is something I could really get behind.
Read on, MacDuff!

9May2006

A Means to an End?

Posted by Puretext under: Essay; That Vision Thing; Theology.

Nick, a member of Chesapeake Church, a Sovereign Grace church near Baltimore has made some very pointed comments regarding my “roadmap” post from about a month ago. He dearly loves the Sovereign Grace movement, particularly the King of Grace church in Methuen, which has received a lot of support from his home church. My post seems to have struck him as taking a lot for granted from an organization I barely even know, and so he suggests maybe I’m going about it the wrong way. The biggest concern is the impression that I’m looking to Sovereign Grace Ministries as merely a means to an end. I felt his thoughts were significant enough for me to make a new post by way of reply.

Reading back through what I wrote, I can see how it might strike a passing visitor that I was being flippant, even arrogantly presumptive, especially from the perspective of a member of the community upon which I am declaring intentions to inflict myself. And to a certain extent I was being flippant, but my intent was for it to be self-directed.
Read on, MacDuff!

15April2006

Roadmap Part 2: The Long Term

Posted by Puretext under: News; That Vision Thing.

O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?…. What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet; so Romeo, were he not called Romeo, would retain that dear perfection which he owns without that title. Romeo, doff thy name and for that name, which is no part of thee, take all myself.

By any other name, “long term planning” is really just fantasizing, isn’t it? Very well, in the long term, I plan to have a large, rambling house in a wooded, sparsely settled area. We’ll have eleven children, of whom six will be girls and five will be boys. One of them will be a medical doctor, one a lawyer who works for a major religious organization, one a physicist, one an engineer, and one a theologian. The theologian, of course, will be the oldest. I myself will be the president of a conservative seminary, and Valerie will be head and founder of the nation’s largest midwife association. People will love us and greet us by name as we walk down the street.

Right. Did I mention I’m a direct descendant of Jonathan Edwards? Oh yeah. We Fr… uh, Edwardses have a long history of excellence. (The Frenches and Dobbses, by comparison, are famous for hardheadedness and hyperbole. I have none of these traits.)

Actually, it’s a little embarrassing how close my actual long-term hopes for the future might match the above.
Read on, MacDuff!

13April2006

Roadmap

Posted by Puretext under: News; That Vision Thing.

Princess, I - - Uh, how’s it going, first of all? Good? Um, good for me too. I’m okay. I saw this flower and thought of you because it’s pretty and - - well, I don’t really like it, but I thought you might like it ’cause you’re pretty. But I like you anyway.

Since I seem to be currently unable to provide any of the kind of content that I would like to read (i.e. erudite ruminations), I thought maybe I’d say something that interests everybody else. (But I like you anyway.) So I would like to announce that (once again) I have my whole life planned out. I’m sure this is a relief to all parties.
Read on, MacDuff!

7February2006

In Search of Teh Greek

Posted by Puretext under: General; That Vision Thing; Theology.

One of the most frustrating experiences for me as I continue in my pursuit of learning has been that the more education I get, the greater the sense of being behind. I’m already some five years behind the stereotypical track of burning right through to grad school. I’m 27 with the knowledge that some people are “right on track” coming in to my learning level at 22.

But that doesn’t get me too much. On a track to pastoral ministry, you could probably use a little age and experience on you. At the same time, though, I’m learning that those learnéd men of the past, up to whom we look so much, were much younger still.
Read on, MacDuff!

25January2006

On Calling

Posted by Puretext under: General; News; That Vision Thing.

Those of you who know me have probably heard me agonize over my prospects of becoming a “professional Christian” at some time or another. With his famous “don’t muzzle the Ox” line, Paul makes it clear that it isn’t wrong to receive financial remuneration for ministry, so that isn’t it. But there’s always been something unnerving for me about treating the role of pastor the same way as a management career. Somewhere the parallels between the MBA and the MDiv just go away.

Our church right now is going through what seems to be the standard process of looking for a new pastor. The old pastor announces that he’s retiring (like ours) or leaving the church for whatever reason, and then the church begins to oil the machinery for searching out and appointing a new person to be in charge. I know this is the common procedure, but it’s jarring whenever I think about it. Especially when I think about myself as the prospective “new person in charge.” I can’t imagine sending out resumes asking to be overseer of a church I’ve never before attended. Why is it that it’s only the pastor who joins a church by application? Who else ever actually applies for membership and is politely declined in favor of another candidate? It’s odd.

And so I’m predisposed to make tents.
Read on, MacDuff!