Worship Wars, Cadbury and You.

A few months ago, I had my first experience with Cadbury Chocolate Bars.  I'd had their eggs before, and having found them to be offensive both to taste and to health, had rejected them entirely (also I'd never trusted that egg-laying bunny.)  I'd never understood why anyone liked the company so much, especially when they were so critical of Hershey, which produced a far better product as far as I was concerned. I visited the factory and received free samples as a boy, ensuring my unwavering support for some time. But I had read an article, detailing the reasons the British were so very worried by an American company buying their beloved choclatier, explaining that the content of American chocolates were just not the same on a chemical level.  So I gave a Cadbury bar a shot.

Experience is directed by understanding.  I had not received the chocolate as any more than a thin coating around a sickeningly sweet filling.  I did not understand what I was missing, so convenience, loyalty,(the principle I'm driving at certainly allows for novelty instead) and sensation were more important than they should have been.  How often is this the case in our worship?  Our theology?

My first real memorable experience with traditional, liturgical, sacramental worship didn't come til my first year of college.  And I had the doctrinal knowledge to be excited about it.  I remember thinking, "This is like pure doctrine set to music! Should someone tell them?  Do other people know about this? Why didn't I?"  It seems to me that the errors in contemporary worship are born more of ignorance of the good things the hymnody has than anything else.  Perhaps if we taught the full beauty of our liturgy the worship wars would not be so much about proper theology because we would not be in dispute on these things.  Wouldn't it be nice if we really were in disagreement over adiaphora?  If the worship wars really were just about what instrument accompanied the divine service?  But instead we talk about the beauty of our worship amongst each other, and to those outside of our view, scream, as my middle school choir director once did, "No! No! No! You're doing it wrong!"

I don't need 5 words to know you shouldn't eat the yellow snow.

I find myself growing weary of the church espousing that there are three forms of love, because there are three words we translate "love" present in scripture.  The modern Christian does not have the linguistic framework for that threefold distinction, and a weakness in translation should not be the basis for a teaching.  Sure.  The Inuit have five words for snow. The Inuit at some point felt they needed five words.  I certainly don't, and if I ever do, it will be the need for extra words that will drive me to learn new ones, not the simple presence of the words in another language.

So if we want to talk about our duty to love one another as the body of Christ, there's one word we have for that.  Love.  It's worth noting that the major verses that talk about love that we go back to again and again (Matt 22:34-40, John 13:33-35, 1 Cor 13, 1 John 4:7-21) use one word for Love.  This is the love we're supposed to have.  This is the love that shapes our Church.  We don't need whole books to tell us that this is different from sexual desire.

And as for John 21,  which uses one word for Jesus' love and another for Peter's love for Jesus,  John shows elsewhere that he is comfortable using the words interchangeably, both in describing how the Father loves the son, and describing how John was beloved by Jesus.  At any rate if there is a signficant difference between those two words, it is one debated by scholars and generally irrelevant to the layman and as it holds no relevance for the layman and arguable relevance for the scholar, can we please let it go?

Christ's command is simple, and we complicate it, because as a church we are allergic to simplicity. Does "Love one another" really need a book to explain it?

In my great-grandfather's kitchen,
though only his for breakfast time
The butter crackles on the stove
batter spreads into a perfect circle
like wine spilled onto a white tablecloth

In my memory I sit patiently
awaiting the pancakes I love best
I sit in a chair made for someone larger
my bare feet swing wildly as I get my prize

through the glassy prison of memory
I watch as a younger me eats crudely
shoveling mouthfuls of opa wallie's pancakes
into a mouth already a bit like an overfull trash can

I hate this tiny, blond, happy, me
For taking such interest in pancakes
instead of the man who made them.
a man for whom he would have so many questions.

I curse that stupid naive child,
for his joy that day, for his lack of questions
for not knowing better the best man he ever would.

DVDs in Review

In the Category of movie snobbery, my top five movies released on DVD in 2009.  I'm going with DVDs because I've seen all of those I care to and a fair few I wish I hadn't.

Honorable mentions: Taken and State of Play, - Really both of these are terrific films and you owe it to yourself to see them.  I just didn't have much to say about them beyond that so I didn't put them on the list.

5. How To Lose Friends and Alienate People - Simon Pegg's best acting job I've seen, though certainly not his funniest.  I'd say the same for Megan Fox, and I hope to see more of her in scripts that actually allow her to act. This movie is one I didn't really like at first, but it grows on me every time I think back on it and it's really a great showbiz commentary, not that I'd know.  It also has a single line which sums up how I feel about most of the punks who try to pass themselves off as cinemaphiles these days. "He thinks Cinema begins with Tarantino and it doesn't."  The movie could have been better, it could have been a lot better, but it's one of those movies that wormed its way into my heart and for that, it gets number 5.

4. Star Trek - Probably the best reboot of a franchise since 2005's Batman Begins. If you never watched it because you weren't a fan of the original series or it's spin-offs, you're a fool.  Not for skipping those, they were pretty heavily geared toward the sci-fi nerd, but this, this is one of those films I don't really see anyone hating, and have yet to see anyone even complain about.  Well, except Shatner.  But he's creepy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fu656gGkhI

Seriously though.  He told Kimmel it was wonderful.

3. Doubt - Stand up and clap performances from Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep, and brilliant support from Amy Adams and Viola Davis, whose scene as a mother between a rock and a hard place was heart wrenching. The film is a well-adapted play set in 1964 about a nun(Streep) who becomes convinced that a priest (Hoffman) at her parish has had innappropriate relations with a young african american boy.  Without a shred of hard evidence she endeavors to gain both a confession and resignation from him.

2. Gran Torino - This and Unforgiven (1992) are the contenders for Eastwood's best film ever in my opinion, and considering that this is a man who, in 65 years as a leading man has yet to make a bad movie, is quite a feat. Eastwood plays an angry old Korean War Vet who gradually and begrudgingly befriends the Hmong family next door, and teaches their son to become a man.

1. (500) Days of Summer - This movie made me fall in love with Zooey Deschanel and made me want to see a lot more of Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  A killer, if a little too hipster, soundtrack backs the film up brilliantly and first time feature director Marc Webb shines here.  Some critics drew comparisons to Annie Hall as a generational relationship movie, but there's certainly a stronger comparison to be made with High Fidelity. I hesitate to call it a romantic comedy, because it feels a bit too true to life for that title, but if one were to force it into a genre I suppose it'd be a romantic dramedy with a healthy injection of (sur)realism.  It jumps backward and forward through the relationship and breakup of a couple.  It's brilliantly executed and the humor is regular enough that the movie is light enough to watch more than once.

Edit:  I forgot District 9.  It should have come in at 3 or four, but I forgot it at the time of making this list.

Top Five Tuesday: Top Five Christmas Songs

This Tuesday I find myself lacking the energy to comment on my top five.  Also, seeing as I erected a Christmas tree, we're going festive.  Bands listed are versions I'm particularly fond of, but the songs are mostly chosen for lyrics.

5. You Gotta Get Up - Five Iron Frenzy
4. I Hate Christmas Parties - Matthew Thiessen and the Earthquakes
3. White Christmas - Bing Crosby
2. Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas - Frank Sinatra
1. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - Viva Voce

Top Five Tuesday, Wednesday Edition: Top Five Ways To Kill a Squirrel

By popular demand (and by popular I mean one guy who apparently has a beef with squirrels), today's Top Five Tuesday (I know it's Wednesday, but I'm a sucker for alliteration) is the top five ways to kill a squirrel.  There's really only one reason you'd be going on a squirrel killing rampage.  To eat their tiny hearts and gain their powers.  As such this list will be constructed in order of ease.  Remember, he's cute, but it's him or you.

5. Traps- You don't want to engage a squirrel in direct combat right out of the gate, that's suicide.  Fortunately squirrels are pretty fixated on the whole eating stuff thing, so if you take their food, and put it in a place where retreiving it will kill them, they'll fall for it every time.  If you need plans for a starter trap, here's a british guy telling you how to kill red squirrels.  I know it seems harsh, but that little guy wants to steal your girlfriend.

4. Guns - It is possible that you might be able to skip directly to this step providing you're absolutely certain the squirrel you've targeted is unarmed. However in any early attempts at squirrelicide it is imperative that you remain concealed until the moment you strike, and that you make each shot count.Otherwise you're pretty much hosed. I recommend something about this size.

3. Hadouken - To perform this ancient technique simply visualize your chi rolling in a quarter circle from your feet forward to your belly, and being released when you throw a punch.  You're not going to throw a punch though, just imagine it.  Your actual physical motion is going to look like this.  Note that this technique is going to be a lot harder if you imagine your chi as controlled by a directional pad rather than an analog joystick.

2. Badgers - Badgers are the natural predator of all living things, they know neither good, nor evil.  Only of honor, and the hunger that drives them.  For this reason this is possibly the most dangerous technique on this list, enlisting the aid of a badger always comes at a cost.  But if you feel you have no other options, it is a choice, though not one that should be entered into lightly.

1.Become This

Top Five Tuesday: 5 Muppets That Should Terrify You

1. Sweetums - Sweetums is a giant hairy Ogre thing.  He's usually a  bad guy on some level, and he carries a large club, with which in his first appearance he broke a giant stone pillar.  He's only got the two teeth, but I'm pretty sure they both mean business. 

2. Oscar The Grouch - I sort of believe Oscar is the Clint Eastwood of Sesame Street.  There's really no indication of what he might be keeping in that trashcan, so I'm forced to assume it's firearms.  Or possibly just a lighter.  Go ahead.  Bang on his can.  Find out.  Punk.

3. Grover - Grover always sort of seems like the crackhead of the muppets, and that means he's alright with stabbing you for a fix, but more importantly,  Grover is insane.  In 1971 there was a book published called "the monster at the end of this book"  Grover's goal throughout the book, was to convince the reader not to finish the book, lest they face the monster at the end.  (spoiler alert)  It's Grover.  And if you finish the book he jumps out of the page and kills you (I just saved your life, and if anyone tells you the end is different, he's lying, had he finished it, Grover would have killed him).  He's got multiple personalities, and I believe most of them are murderous.

4. Miss Piggy - When I was a kid, I always just figured miss piggy was a spoiled brat, and that if someone started not giving her what she wanted, she'd learn to be a more independent figure.  As it is, Miss Piggy has a violent temper and is particularly demanding of her unwilling lover, Kermit. Miss Piggy is also a Pig.  A funny thing happens when you stop spoiling pigs.  They get feral.  Feral pigs kill.  Tell her no.  Go for it.  Just expect a change.

5. Animal - When I was little we had a crazy (fictional) uncle named Ivan.  His (fictional) son, Sven challenged him to consume an entire drumset.  Uncle Ivan died that day.  Animal is the craziest puppet in the world.  And he eats drumsets constantly.  If he can eat a drumset, he can eat you.  And he's always hungry.  Always.