O Sushi

I'm in Seattle again on business. I was talking with Eddie on the phone, and he convinced me to try the Sushi restaurant across the street from my hotel.

The O Sushi and Grill is one of those pay-by-the-plate conveyor-belt sushi restaurants where you can watch the nigiri and sashimi go by with little regard to what is happening to your wallet!

Before the night was through, I had supped on some excellent tuna, salmon, octopus, pickled seaweed, edamame, miso soup, and--my favorite of the night--a "Las Vegas" roll which contained avocado, eel, salmon roe, tempura shrimp and a light mayonnaise sauce. (It really was quite delicious!) Eddie implored me to try something new, and that was it!

Do This, and You Will Live!

I've finally finished the Bible. Completely done. Thanks be to God!

I've finished reading all 1,852 pages of my Oxford New Revised Standard Version with Annotations and Apocrypha. As I made my journey through all these books, all these passages, what resonated most with me was the relevance and mystery of the Gospels. How Christ's amazing story, selfless sacrifice and simple acts of grace set the example for all of us, while at the same time, redeeming us all.

And yet, I struggle to reconcile the many theologically fundamental passages in the Bible which state that Jesus is the One True Way, the Only Way, that without Jesus, you are condemned to eternal hell.

I am making a careful distinction here. I am not suggesting that sin has no consequence. I am perfectly comfortable with the fact that the unrepentant sinful are condemned through their own actions. What I am questioning is the notion that the morally upright non-Christians are condemned as well. This flies against the notion of a loving and graceful God. It marginalizes the death Christ suffered and the magnificence of his resurrection.

But in many places, the Bible is absolutely clear on this notion. For instance:

"Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God." John 3:18

and

"There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved." Acts 4:12

and the most famous

"I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." John 14:6

After Jesus' resurrection and ascension into heaven, Christ appeared to Saul, converted him to Christianity, named him Paul, and sent him on his way to convert both the Jews and Gentiles. The apostle Paul really cranked up the ministry of Jesus Christ, establishing the de-facto Christian church in all of the land around the Mediterranean Sea. In doing so, he also cranked up the message of Jesus being the singular path to salvation:

"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." Romans 10:9

This message carries on today. In my own church, countless times I have heard C.S. Lewis quoted to validate and justify this scripture. Indeed, I hear it so many times, I am waiting for Narnia to become Anglican Canon. C.S. Lewis has become the Apologist in Chief of today's evangelical fundamentalists. And yet, even C.S. Lewis questioned the doctrine of "Only-ness" of Christ.

Laura Miller, in The Magician's Book--A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia, points out the following:

"There is a much-cited passage in The Last Battle, in which Emeth, a noble warrior of the Calormene people, describes meeting Aslan [Christ] after the end of the world. At first, he is terrified, since he knows this god of the Narnians is the enemy of the Calormene god, Tash, and he has worshiped Tash all his life.

Then Aslan [Christ] explains to him, 'I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves, and by Tash his deed is accepted.'"

As Ms. Miller points out, "Emeth isn't going to be sent to Limbo [of which the Roman Catholic church has now disavowed itself] because of an accident of birth or for abiding by the nominal faith of his fathers. His honorable life and honest heart have earned him a place in the Narnian version of heaven."

This is a passage of C.S. Lewis that most fundamentalists conveniently ignore.

I must therefore ask, did God so loved the world that he sent is only Son, to save only the 5% or so true believers of the world? Surely not. I accept that the unrepentant sinful will perish. But why should the moral Buddhists, Jews, Mormons, agnostics, and Hindus? I am sure there are people from all of those beliefs that live a straighter and more sinless life than I do. Should they perish just because they've never been told about the word of Christ? How arbitrary is that?

So, then I come back to Paul, the author of well over 50% of the New Testament writing. In Paul's epistles, we see a new theme beginning to take shape after the Gospels. Not only are we to believe in and love our God, love our neighbor, and believe in His Holy Name, but Paul also reapplies a strict message of personal morality, a message that does not appear in the Gospels. Paul decries all acts he deems immoral among the people he ministered, acts like homosexuality (Romans 1:27), hypocrisy (Romans 2:17), living "in the flesh" (Romans 8:1-8, Galatians 5:16), incest (1 Corinthians 5:1-5), fornication (1 Corinthians 6:13-20), and countless other sins. Paul is reasserting a Deuteronomical law that Christ often personally rejected or revised numerous times. (Matthew 15:16-20, Mark 7:19-20, Matthew 23:9, Luke 13:15-16, Matthew 23:16-17, John 8:5-7, John 9:1-41)

Further, with Paul's new messages, we also see a return of material which we would nearly universally agree is archaic and irrelevant: doctrine on how men and women should wear their hair (1 Corinthians 11:2-6) and how women should never speak in church worship (1 Corinthians 14:34-36). Clearly, these are antiquated notions which modern society rejects. Is it acceptable to ignore these Biblical passages while adhering to others? Of course it is!

Even Paul himself had no problem with revision of prior canonical law. He debunked several of the laws of his own day, deeming circumcision as irrelevant (Galatians 5:6), claiming that real circumcision is a "matter of the heart". (Romans 2:29) Paul debunked the prevalent laws of Jewish Kosher (1 Corinthians 10:23-26) and ruled that food prepared for idols was safe to eat, since the idols were spiritually meaningless. (1 Corinthians 8:1-13)

For perspective, here, it is important to remember that Paul believed he was living in the final days of the Earth. (1 Corinthians 7:26) Paul felt that if the end of times were near, it was necessary to make right your ways because there was precious little time left. His urgency is seen in quaint, almost monk-like passages like where he advises unmarried virgins to stay unmarried, that satisfying the flesh is unnecessary and distracting. But, he adds, if you cannot be strong enough, at least get married so that you are not sinful. (1 Corinthians 7:25-40)

So it seems to me that Paul's messages must be taken in the context of his mindset. If the end is near, all matters of the material world are superfluous, and focus must remain entirely on being chaste and pure.

Paul's writing strikes me as a bit extreme, and honestly, it should to most everyone of today's society. We are not all priests; we cannot eschew our jobs and our families; we cannot devote ourselves as one would entering a seminary or convent. Nor does Christ call us to do so. A church without procreation is a church destined for obsolescence. There is no sin in living your life. However, we can strive to be better tomorrow than we are today. We can work every day to remove sin from our lives. We will not be perfect in this search, and we will stumble, but that is where, with a contrite heart, we receive the Grace of God.

Back to the message of what saves, is it living a sinless life or believing in Christ Jesus? Paul contradicted himself in these matters. In Romans, he echoes exactly the sentiment posed earlier by Laura Miller:

But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? ... So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ. (Romans 10:14-17)

And further:

Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand. (Romans 14:4)

And the apostle John's perspective on the same:

Beloved, do not imitate what is evil but imitate what is good. Whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God. (3 John 1:11)

Holy Smokes! Salvation for us all!

Again, I assert that God gave us a conscience and free will, and we must use our own conscience to judge what is right and what is wrong in this world. In all of the Bible, modern society--even the most fundamentalists out there--pick and choose what to adhere to. I use my conscience, apply a healthy dose of compassion and tolerance (remember that love your neighbor bit?), listen to the Holy Spirit, and use all this as a guide in these matters.

So, now that I've finished the enormous effort of reading this Bible, front to back, I go back to the beauty and simplicity of the Gospel messages. Through all the volume of scripture that emanate from the all the various books, Old Testament and New, what resonates with me most is the simple message consistent in ALL FOUR of those Gospel books of Christ. Indeed, this message flows all the way from the Gospel, and into Romans through Jude. Luke captures it most perfectly stating:

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." ... "Do this, and you will live." (Luke 10:27)

"On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (Matthew 22:40)

Now, go and do likewise.
 
 
 
 

Fish and Bones

I'm really digging this fish that Eddie drew at school today. I'm hoping it wasn't done at the expense of his math test.

And the following is an X-ray of Luke's knee. No, it's not broken or anything. In fact, the doctor can't find out what's wrong with it. But lately, Luke has had real problems straightening it out, bending it, and it hurts him a lot when he's sleeping or idle. This has been going on for a couple of years now, and we thought at first it was just growing pains. But now Luke limps every morning when he gets up, favors the other leg considerably, and is visibly tight through the hamstring ligaments. We're pretty concerned, so we took him to the orthopedist, but the doctor couldn't find anything wrong. So, next week, we have Luke scheduled for an MRI on his knee. I'll post the pictures if I get any good ones, and let you know how he's doing. In the meantime, say a prayer for our little fellow.

Great American Whiskey

This is a neat little video...

If only I hadn't given up spirits for Lent!!! How many days left til Easter?!

Stereo Scott!!! Digitally remastered!

Oh, Jeez. Deep from the bowels of history... The year is 1986, and this is what one 15 year old kid, a stereo with dual mic inputs, and a houseful of friends can do with a little too much free time on our hands.

I had long ago lost my tape, but thanks to Tammy Butler Gammill, and the magic of Facebook, I received the tape in the mail! I ripped it to MP3, cleaned it up a bit, and here it is!

Listening to this little "Radio Drama" is physically painful, but.... May I present...

Stereo Scott's First Adventure:

and the sequel, Stereo Scott's Haunted Adventure:


For those of you who the audio players don't work, you can download the MP3's here:
  1. Stereo Scott's First Adventure - MP3 download
  2. Stereo Scott's Haunted Adventure - MP3 download

Cast included:

Tim Jordan, Leigh Ann Kilpatrick, Leda Mae Ruth Bartlett, David Morgan, Tammy Butler, Kathy Morgan, Andy Shurden, Mike Harris and myself. (Did I forget anyone?)

Eddie's Science Fair Project

Eddie is working on his science fair project. He chose to do an experiment where he adds various weights to a foam glider, and sees how it affects the distance the glider can fly. The results were quite surprising. The glider flew better with two pounds loaded than it did with one, three, four or five pounds extra weight. Of course, it flew best with no additional weight.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Happy Birthday, Dad! I hope your gift arrives by today. If not, rest assured, it is on its way!

I hope you have a great day!

Boys' Artwork

Here are some cool drawings the boys did yesterday while sitting in church. Clearly, they got quite a lot out of Fr. Tom's sermon. And if I'm being totally honest, I might have helped Luke with the helicopter gunship and the multi-rocket launcher, but I SWEAR I was listening to the sermon. Really.

Cub Scout Cacophony

Tonight's Cub Scout elective was music, and we performed in our own Cub Scout band!


The boys made several instruments: We had a huge pipe organ made from large sections of PVC pipe which we hit with ping-pong paddles for a deep sonorous "whump!" We made a tiny xylophone out of partially filled glasses of water, struck with a plastic knife. We made drums from paint buckets and trash cans, and a cymbal from the trash can lid. We had maracas made from Coke bottles with pebbles in them, and a cowbell made from a tin can! Oh, and we also made a didgeridoo from an old paper tube.

Then, we performed!

Here is "We Will Rock You" brought to you by Den 6 of Pack 39!

Eddie's Crossover Ceremony, Arrow of Light

After six long years, Eddie has earned the highest award in Cub Scouting, the Arrow of Light. This means he completed all of the objectives of Webelos, Bear, Wolf, Tiger and Bobcat. Eddie was among the first boys who kicked off Pack 39 as Tigers and now graduated with the Arrow of Light. So this was a special night not just for him, but also for those other boys (Aiden, Andrew, Connor, Liam, Alex) and the leaders who started the pack who are now retiring (Becky, Shane, Kevin, Aaron, Ed).

St. Paddy's Day Fun at the Office

One of the guys in the office did this. I don't know if I should object to being in a skirt or not. Actually, I'm kind of hot.

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Photos from Sean and Sharon's Birthday

Happy Birthday, Sharon and Sean! I'm glad you are both 40, and I'm not!

Here are some photos from last weekend's party (the one at Sean and Jess's house, not the 1am carousing at Houlihan's).

Leslie, Becky and Pam drove up for the party. This was the biggest part of the surprise.

I'll note that my wife is the only one drinking. What a lush!

Desi, Craig and Patrick

Jess, Sharon and Sean. It's so amazing how Sharon has kept her red hair this long, even though her twin is now so gray!

Fred and Frank

Here are a couple nice photos of Fred, and a couple of Eddie and Frank. Frank is wearing his new service dog coat.

Goodbye, Jade

Yesterday, among all the hub-bub of having four boys in the house all weekend, we also had to endure the death of Eddie's pet hamster.

All week, Jade had been getting weaker. She finally passed in the night on Saturday night. Eddie was pretty upset, but he immediately started lobbying for his new hamster. There was no way I was getting a new hamster, but at first, I didn't want to have that discussion with his pain being so fresh and raw. So I told him, "We'll see."

Well, he certainly wasn't satisfied with the "We'll see", because all day he kept niggling at me, "Maybe my next hamster will be called 'Ivory'." Or, "I'm going to go read the hamster book to pick out my next hamster."

Finally, I had it. I rather brusquely told him, "Eddie, we're not getting another hamster!"

This sent him off crying again, but I was fine with that. He's going to have to get over this one. I'm definitely looking to downsize the number of rodents in my life!

In typical Eddie style, he wrote me an impassioned note, laying it sweetly on my Bible saying,

"Dear Dad, Please can I get another hamster? I promise to take care of it and clean it, or whatever it is that makes you think I can't handle it. Love Eddie."

I thought, Ugh! No more hamsters! But I told him, "You talk to your mother when she gets home."

But I knew that Becky was of the same mindset as me. No more hamsters. No more rodents.

So all last night, Eddie suffered the enormous loneliness of his empty room. It must not have affected him too badly, as he went to sleep before 9:30, pretty usual for him.

So, Goodbye, Jade. You were a nice hamster.

But, no more. I'm done with hamsters.

Busy Surprise Weekend

Well, I guess the surprise is out, so I can write about this now. This weekend, Desi and Sharon's family gave Sharon and her twin brother a surprise birthday party in Philly. The biggest part of the surprise was that Becky, Leslie and Pam were all sneaking up there to be at the party. This meant that I was left back here watching the Whelan boys, Eoin and Ronan.

Eoin and Ronan are nice boys, but the four of our kids together can get a little rowdy, so I dumped them off at my church, where for $20 they could get entertained and fed from 5pm til 8pm! What a bargain!

So, putting this time to productive use, I hooked up with Jim at Main Street Wings and watched him torture himself on a half dozen insanely hot D.O.A. spicy wings. Jim will be scheduling his proctologist appointment on Monday, when his colon collapses for all the hot sauce coming out. I mean, that dude is just nuts.

The boys, meanwhile, were really good at the church event, and most gratifying was that even Ronan ate the mac n' cheese dinner they provided. This is always a question with Ronan, who usually exists solely on a diet of Cookie Crisps. (I'm not joking, he really does.) But either the grace of God, or the evil eye of Renee Geiger got some mac n' cheese down his gullet, and I'm thankful for that.

Anyhow, Becky's not due back until later this afternoon, so I'm going to drag all four boys with me to church this morning. We'll all be praying for a safe return of the moms from Philly.

I hope Sharon had a nice party.

Recipe for Living -- Just 2 Rules

Continuing in my Lenten journey, this week, I finished reading the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Most of this reading is so much easier and so much quicker for me than the Old Testament. For one, it is material I have been familiar with since I was a young boy, even if I had never read through it end-to-end before. But moreover, the narrative and the story of Christ is fascinating, especially when told from the four different perspectives.

The Gospel of Mark is the earliest of the stories, very terse and quick to move along in its telling. Most scholars believe that Mark's gospel is the first of the synoptic gospels, written maybe 30 years after Christ's death. Afterward, both Matthew and Luke were written by authors familiar with Mark's writing.

Matthew takes the basic narrative of Mark, and embroiders it with countless references back to the prophesies of the Old Testament. Truly, it is an amazing and entertaining endeavor to go back and look up all the quotations and see how they bring relevance into the story of the Messiah.

Luke's story is very similar to Matthew's, but told with a prose that is very easy to read. Luke tells the good story, and I moved through his writing almost unable to put it down.

And then, there is John. John writes the most enigmatic of the three Gospels. His writing, at times, almost takes on poetic qualities, as for instance in the introduction in John chapter 1:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

This is a beautiful retelling of the story of Genesis. I am struck by the repetitive format of the verse, and how it doubles back on itself poetically:

• Begins with the Word (A)
• Word → God (A → B)
• Word → God (A → B)
• He (Word) → God (A → B)
• Things → Him (C → A)
• Him → things (A → C)
• Thing → Him → life (C → A → D)
• Life → light (D → E)
• Ends with an emphatic note on light (E)

John clearly was written without the influence of Mark, so it provides interesting corroboration to the perspectives of the three earlier gospels, and adds some new stories not found in the earlier, like the Wedding at Cana, the resurrection of Lazarus, and Christ washing the feet of his apostles.

The story of Jesus' life, death and resurrection is the story of salvation for us all. It is a rejection of religious hierarchy over true faith, a rejection of wealth over humility, a rejection of all things material that distract us from our relationship with our Lord and our neighbors.

For all this, the story of the four Gospels is strikingly simple. The message is simply this:

1. Love God above all else
2. Love each other without exception

If we get these two right, everything else in this world will take care of itself. For how can we steal from our neighbor if we love both God and our neighbor? How could we commit murder when this breaks our Lord's heart? How can we not help the poor and homeless, when they are our brothers?

All four Gospels spend their entire time trying to drive this simple message into our thick skulls. But we are a dim-witted and stubborn people, and we often make dogma into what we want it to be for our own contrivance or convenience. But I think Christ said it best in Luke chapter 10, verses 27-28:

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." ... "Do this, and you will live."

It's really just that simple.

Automatic Panoramas with Hugin

This is my night for playing with open source photo editing and post processing software. There's a lot of really neat software out there that doesn't cost a dime!

Playing a little with Hugin, I stitched together the following two photos of Holyrood in Edinburgh. This was a perfect set of photos to experiment with, because this panoramic shot is not available without paying the £20 admission to get inside the gates of Holyrood. Being cheap, I satisfied myself with taking two shots between the slats of the outer gates before they ran me off.

Hugin has a great many options to control lens types (normal, fisheye, wide angle, etc.) which I still need to experiment with, but the program was pretty easy to use and produced a reasonably well done panorama without much effort. The final image has some strange barrel and fish eye effects, but I'm sure if I played with it (and read the Hugin help pages), I would be able to figure it out. For comparison, the following composite was done by Hugin in about two minutes.


And this one, I did by hand using Gimp, and it took well over an hour to produce. Of course it looks better, but it was a lot of work. Plus, Hugin can operate on any number of images in any arbitrary orientation.


I'm sure once I figure out how to use Hugin, it will be superior.