Now to put this in perspective, drinking French press coffee, or espresso, etc., isn't in the same league with, say, smoking. But I might start using paper filters again.
I searched on terpene and espresso to find this one from articlesbase.com; it also pointed to this from coffeedetective.com, which in turn referenced this one on msn.com. You now know everything I do about this subject, which isn't saying much.
I massaged it into a sirloin steak, about 1.7#. There's a little left over. The plan is to smoke it over a pan of water, with charcoal and hickory chips, low heat, long time. I'll let you know how it turns out.
And, "Why is this so tender? It's grass-fed, isn't it?"
The point, of course, is that the best thing to do when feeling depressed is to extend myself on someone's behalf....if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. And the Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desires in a sun-scorched land and make your bones strong. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.Isaiah 58.10-11
I did not like this advice; I was feeling depressed and didn't feel like doing anything for anyone else. I held my tongue and brooded on it. But not long afterward, I came to my senses and acted on my friend's advice. It worked! I've actually repeated this many times -- I mean serving when I feel down.
This came to mind when the lovely Carol told me about yesterday's 11:05 Café service. After the sermon (mp3 should appear here soon), the Café pastor, the one and only Dave Peterson, remarked that he had gotten angry when he heard a sermon like this some time back.
"But it was OK for me to feel angry then," he said, "and it's OK for you to feel angry now." (Quotes are approximate; you're getting them 3rd hand.)
I think that was brilliant because it acknowledges our human tendency to react defensively and resist the truth -- for a while. Dave also encouraged us to move past our fleshly tendencies. It's OK to feel angry or annoyed or vexed or misunderstood -- for a while. We do of course need to move past our sinful tendency; we need to repent, to accept the truth, to embrace the changes that the Lord is directing us to.
What a terrific model for me: to accept and acknowledge that people sometimes react badly to good advice (I resemble that remark myself) and yet urge and encourage them to move past that, to come to their senses and listen to the Holy Spirit, to repent of blaming and self-pity and selfishness and defensiveness and stubbornness.
To turn from the way of death to the way of life.
This fall's entering class at Columbia Theological Seminary (Decatur, Georgia) is the largest in many years -- 72 incoming graduate students (median age: 24) whereas San Francisco Theological's statistics aren't nearly so happy: fewer than a dozen entering this fall.
Unsurprisingly, profiles also differ by denomination: Presbyterians are supposedly the richest (per-capita) of the major denominations (including the Mormons?), but this statistic may be skewed by the Waltons (think Wal-Mart). Presbyterians have a high average educational achievement, and in this country that usually means a low fertility rate. Yes, the Presbyterians are shrinking. (Why all this focus on Presbyterians? I attend a PCUSA church, and the speaker used to work for the PCUSA. Also: most of the attendees were Presbyterians.)
The Presbyterian denomination is something like 93% white, with a median age of about 58 (vs 36 for the country).
By the way, the under-21 population in the United States is 52% non-white. You don't have to be a statistician to think that the Presbyterians may be shrinking. So are the Lutherans (97% white). At this point I'll mention that the speaker (Professor Nishioka) and I were the only non-whites in the room, which made our little group over 90% white -- yep, a Presbyterian gathering.
Can you imagine what the world looked like during the Reformation, or while the Great Schism was in progress? If Tickle is right, the church in a few decades will be as alien to us today as the Protestant/Catholic combination looked to pre-Reformation eyes back in the 16th century.
Beyond that, there's a generational cycle (at least in the US) described by Strauss and Howe: the "millennials" are coming of age. Here's a drastically oversimplified version of the concept: we generally have in the US a cycle of 4 generations:
| 80+, went through WW2 | civics | built institutions |
| older boomers | adaptives | maintain institutions |
| boomers, experienced Watergate | idealists | destroy institutions |
| Gen X, 30s-40s | reactives | ignore institutions (not even worth getting mad about) |
| Millennials (not | civics again?? | build new institutions? |
With both of these cycles coming due, so to speak (the oldest Millennials -- born 1981~2001 -- turn 30 next year), we are in for a wild ride.
Meanwhile, during these tumultuous times, we hear of congregations offering The Model of how to do church in the 21st century; in times of upheaval, we love certainty (any port in a storm?). My comment, though, is that it can be treacherous to trust in programs rather than in the Lord (Isaiah 50:10-11).
How different? We used to think infectious diseases were boring because they were all cured -- then AIDS came along, as did nasty nosocomial infections, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and so on. This was just one of many crises of faith in our institutions, and it's part of the world these Millennials were born into. They haven't done the nuclear attack drills, but they've had school lock-down drills. Millennials refer to Wikipedia more than printed sources, and they switch very rapidly between tasks.
Millennials have experienced the most severe economic recession since the Great Depression -- which is beyond the memory even of their boomer parents. Some 60% of Millennials have been in institutional day care (vs. 2% of boomers); 20% have at least one immigrant parent, and 10% have a non-citizen parent. They are the most racially diverse generation in US history -- as mentioned earlier, 52% of them are non-white.
So if Washington and Oregon have the lowest percentage of church-goers in America, what does that suggest for the future?
Similarly, with the under-30 set being more diverse, having spent more time in institutional day-care, and caring less about institutions than previous generations, what does that suggest for institutions like the Presbyterians and Lutherans, which are older (median age) than the national population and less diverse (93% and 97% white, respectively)?
That they -- that we -- will have to change. Our speaker described an incident where he was asking a lot of young people what might convince them to "come to church." He wasn't getting anywhere, so at some point he started praying, and something awful happened: he heard a voice. (This has only happened to him a few times, ever.) Anyway, here's what the voice said:
"Nishioka, why do you keep asking them to come to you?"
Good point, that one. We will have to change, because we've built it and they're not coming.
Of the first four episodes, two involve adultery. One adulterous husband gets a bullet in his head; another gets knifed by a mistress (she also killed the other mistress). One other adulterous husband was simply served divorce papers by his justifiably peeved wife.
I'm accustomed to cop shows teaching that crime doesn't pay; what (happily) surprises me is pop culture teaching us adultery brings major trouble.
There are other little lessons that I like; in one episode, Castle does something shabby to Beckett. Rather than apologizing, he tries to explain why his deed wasn't that bad. It doesn't fly.
Later, Castle's daughter complains about a boy. Why can't they just say “I’m sorry,” she asks.
Castle goes back to Beckett and apologizes, acknowledges that what he did was bad, says why it was bad, and ends with something like: "and if we never see each other again, I wanted you to know that."
A worthy example.
First, without understanding the Bible, I won't recognize truth vs. lies. If someone says something, either explicitly or implicitly (think advertising), how can I tell whether it's true or not? Yes, I have rational intuition, but I've been wrong before. Acts 17:11 is a New Testament example of this. I also think of Josiah (2 Kings 22:10-13) vs Jehoiakim (Jeremiah 36:23-27).
Second, and this is related to the first, I read about guys who completely went off the rails: David with Bathsheba, Solomon going off into idolatry, many many evil kings of Israel and Judah -- or in the present day, politicians and celebrity golfers and preachers and CEOs getting into adultery and embezzlement. To tell the truth, I'm a little afraid of going off the rails myself. Think of it -- David, the man after God's own heart, made some catastrophic decisions that cost many lives, not to mention betrayal and disgrace. If David could go off the rails, so could I! I'm going to guess that if David had been reading and studying the word, this might have helped him to steer around that temptation.
Third -- and as I think of this, I wonder if this might be the thing that works for these young mothers -- there is a lot to figure out in life, many little decisions, and sometimes I don't know how to decide them. What I need is a word from the Lord. So something as simple as reading a passage and asking:
Fourth, studying the Bible -- including its historical context etc. -- has given me a clearer idea of God's amazing love. "The Bible is God's love letter to us" -- I heard that many times, but when I understood what Genesis 1 was about, well, it still almost brings tears when I think about what wonderful news this must have been to its hearers. The good news about God begins with the first line of the first book of the Old Testament, but I never appreciated that until I heard about the Enuma Elish and its great contrast with Genesis 1.
Well, that's a half-hour's worth of thought on the subject. I read and study the Bible because this activity gives me a better idea of God's love, because I need help and guidance, to avoid going off the rails, and to be able to discern truth.
Don't know how well those will resonate, but anyway there it is.
Where did they get this idea, I mean those that hold it? From us -- from their parents. "We just want you to be happy." Advertisers help, but mainly it is we, the parents, who gave them this idea.
Trouble is, it's not just millennials. Divorce rates aren't much lower in the church than they are outside, and I'm afraid that many (not all!) of these divorces happen because "this isn't working for me" -- the therapeutic goal wasn't being met.
How do we get out of this? How do I stop this sort of "stinkin' thinkin'" in my own life, and how can I help others to avoid it?
One thing is avoiding "we just want you to be happy," in favor of Hauerwas's worthy adventure, or the intersection of your passion with the world's need (put more eloquently by Bolles in What Color Is Your Parachute). So "We want you to find a worthy adventure"?
Maybe.
Copyright © 2005-2009 Collin Park
