Thin is Beautiful

Elegant, gorgeous, eminently useful, and a HUGE TEMPTATION! Thin women don't really move me, but this. . . oh baby!



Here's my big question: how sturdy is it? It's so dang thin that I keep picturing myself letting it slip out of my hands onto the tile floor. Will it shatter? I want to know.

Hopefully, someone will make a rubberized sleeve for it.

Watch Steve Jobs do his magic.



What I love about this particular clip is the response of the guy who's making the video when Jobs takes it out of the envelope. It's like. . . well, you know. What a hoot!

Humility & Humor

People who take themselves too seriously should not be trusted. Besides, they're not very fun to be around.

Far from being evidence of hubris, mocking one's self and whatever "movement" one might be associated with is quite healthy.

I will never forget William Kirk Kilpatrick's discussion of this in his seemingly forgotten masterpiece Psychological Seduction: The Failure of Modern Psychology (Thomas Nelson, 1983). In chapter 5 "The Burden of Self" he writes this:

I began this chapter with a discussion of characteristic mentality and suggested that a psychological society creates a climate of unrelenting seriousness. If approached from another direction, the question of characteristic mentality becomes the question of what characters are missing from the story.

I cannot prove statistically what I am about to say; you will have to check it against your own observations. However, my observation is that in the modern theater of life, not on is the set—tradition, ritual, family—discarded but the cast of characters has been narrowed down alarmingly. The present atmosphere does not allow much room for spirited eccentricity, for that larger-than-life character represented in literature by Sir John Falstaff or Samuel Pickwick and in reality by a man like Samuel Johnson—men, in short, who live their lives with outrageous exuberance.

When we think of these characters, we think fondly; they are like overgrown children. It never occurs to them that growing older means growing more serious about oneself. Johnson, even in his later years, delighted in rolling downhill. Pickwick and Falstaff, likewise, spent their days tumbling from one merry episode to the next. What all three have in common is the capacity to give pleasure by their company and conversation. The reason is their levity. Beneath the service vanities, they take themselves lightly. Giving pleasure of the kind they give depends on a basic humility, a recognition that they are but men among men, not special selves on the high road to fulfillment.

It is hard for lightheartedness to hold the stage, though, once we learn how very seriously we ought to take ourselves. And this is what psychology has taught us.

One casualty of our over-seriousness may be our sense of humor. And that is because all humor involves a loss of dignity. The man who makes a face to amuse a baby gives up his dignity; so does the man who roars with laughter. The essential condition for having fun is to forget your dignity, that is, to forget yourself.

Exit humor, exit sanity.

The Sociopath Next Door

From The Darkest Evening of the Year by Dean Koontz:

After a while, Amy looked up and saw Brian standing awkwardly forty feet away, with Nickie on a leash. Clearly, he wasn't sure that giving her time to herself was the right thing, but of course it was.

Michael Cogland [however] had been always self-assured and smooth and confident in any context. But what had seemed to be a natural grace had been in fact the sociopathic gloss of a man who had never been inhibited by so much as a scintilla of humility.

A Simple Church Year Catechism - Advent, Christmas, & Epiphany

The Church Year

Q 1. Why do we have different seasons of the year?
A. God created the seasons for man’s use and enjoyment.

Q 2. What do Fall and Winter remind us of?
A. Fall and Winter remind us of sin and death because it is dark and cold.

Q 3. What do Spring and Summer teach us?
A. Spring teaches us that God brings light and life to the world through Jesus Christ.

Q 4. What does the church calendar chiefly celebrate?
A. The church calendar celebrates the life of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Q 5. Why does the church have her own seasons?
A. The church has her own seasons to teach the world that true life is found in Jesus Christ and to resist reducing life to politics and economics.

Q 6. How are we to sanctify the seasons that God created for our benefit?
A. According to 1 Timothy 4:5, we are to set apart the seasons with the Word of God and prayer.

Q 7. How has the church set apart the seasons with the Word of God and prayer?
A. The church has chosen readings from the Old and New Testaments for each season and has ordered the prayer life of the church to match the life of Jesus.

Advent & Christmas

Q 8. What does the word “Advent” mean?
A. The word “advent” means “to come” and has to do with the coming of Jesus.

Q 9. What portion of the life of Jesus does Advent celebrate?
A. Advent celebrates the times leading up to the birth of Jesus as well as his coming again at the last day.

Q 10. How many Sundays are there in Advent?
A. There are four Sundays in Advent.

Q 11. What are the colors for Advent and what do they mean?
A. The colors for Advent are purple and royal blue. They remind us that Jesus is a glorious King.

Q 12. What do we pray for during Advent season?
A. During Advent we pray that Jesus our King would continue to come to us and serve us as he has promised.

Q 13. In our Advent prayers are we pretending that Jesus has not yet been born?
A. No. During Advent we are praying for him to come to us again and again as he has promised.

Q. 14. How did God fulfill his promises to his people in the Hebrew Scriptures?
A. God fulfilled his promises by uniting himself to our human nature in his Son, who faithfully lived a perfect life of service, died the death we deserve, and was raised to life again as the new man, and all this for our salvation.

Q 14. How has Jesus promised to come to us today?
A. In many different ways—to be with us on Sunday for worship, to help us daily when we are in trouble, and at the end of the world to establish the new heavens and earth.

Epiphany

Q 15. What does the word “Epiphany” mean?
A. The word “Epiphany” means “to reveal and make known.”

Q 16. What does Epiphany season teach us?
A. During Ephiphany season we learn about how Jesus revealed himself as Savior not only to the Jews but also to all the nations.

Q 17. What color do we use in church for Christmas and Epiphany?
A. The color for Epiphany is white.

Q. 18. Why do we use white for Christmas and Epiphany?
A. The color white reminds us of light and the shining forth of God’s glory to the nations through Jesus Christ.

Q 19. How does the Lord’s glory continue to shine in our world?
A. Jesus reveals himself to the world when his church faithfully lives according to Jesus’ example and teaches the nations his Word.

Q 20. What do we pray for during Epiphany season?
A. During Epiphany we pray that God would continue to send missionaries to the nations so the whole world would know the love of God and believe the Good News of Jesus.

Cookbook Celebrity

I'm on vacation this week. Actually, I'm working on and off on a couple of lectures on liturgical reform that I will be delivering next week. But I'm mostly just relaxing. Not much to blog this week or next.

Last night I picked up my oldest daughter from the airport. After working hard over the holidays she was able to get a week off. Her Christmas present to me was The Texas Hill Country Cookbook: A Taste of Provence . The author Scott Cohen is the executive chef at Las Canarias at Omni La Mansion del Rio where Becky is the Pastry Sous Chef for both the Omni La Mansion and the Watermark Hotel & Spa on the river walk in San Antonio. Interestingly enough, we just received the issue of Travel + Leisure that lists the 500 top hotels in the world. The Watermark is on the list, and it's the numer 2 spa in the USA.

And Becky's picture is in the book! The chapter "The Chef's Pantry" has a large picture of the staff. Here it is. Becky is the only girl in the photo so you can't miss her.

World War 3.0

This is scary.

SmugMug!

If you take a lot of digital pictures, even just snapshots, SmugMug is the choice to store and view your photos. I've tried out other services like Flickr, Photobucket, Zenfolio, PBase. But SmugMug is so much better. I love this service. It’s much better than any of the “free” services. The photos are rendered flawlessly. Many of the other photo websites don't have any color management at all. It makes a difference.

Smugmug's interface is responsive and full-featured. Uploading photos is effortless. And there’s no limit to the amount of images you can upload or to the size of your files. I can’t say enough good things about Smugmug. It’s great.

You can check out my site to see how good the images look on Smugmug. Notice that you can view images in different sizes. You can download them, too.

This is the perfect way to share your images with family and friends. So you took some picts over Christmas and want your family members in Texas to see them, send them a link to your newly-created Christmas gallery. Here's mine for this year. Whenever you upload new images, just send them the link to your gallery and they can view and download the images if they want. It's much easier to send a link and let them peruse the site than having to send photos as email attachments. Besides that, you will have all of your images safely stored on Smugmug site. If your computer or hard drive melts down, you haven't lost your photos. They're always there. That alone is worth $35 a year.

You can even create private galleries that can only be viewed by friends and family that know the password. Too cool.

And Smugmug's support is incredible. Twice now I've had questions about the service, and each time within a few hours I received a personal, detailed response from their staff that solved my problem. BTW, both times the problem was on my end.

One more thing. This is pretty important. There are no ads on the site. You pay a small price for it, but it's worth it.

Everything about this service is topnotch. I’ve tried many of the others and they don’t compare. It’s worth paying for something like this. Go to the Smugmug information site for more details.

My only request is that if you do purchase this service that you use my email address (jeffmeyers@earthlink.net) or my personal code (OmcY2E1Jhg9l2). If you do, you will save $5 off your subscription price and I’ll get a reward too.

BBQ in 5 secs

Want some blackened catfish quick tonight, honey? No problem. I'll get some liquid oxygen and be right back.

A Christmas Homily

Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church
Christmas Eve 2004

Text: 1 John 1:1-4
Title: This is the God in Whom We Trust

You've probably saw the reports a few years back—mostly on the internet—that the famous atheist Anthony Flew at age 81 (or so) now believes in God. The headlines would have you believe that Flew had some sort of conversion and is now a believer.

Remember Anthony Flew? For over 50 years he has been an icon of religious skepticism and a committed atheist.
In 1950 he wrote a short essay called "Theology and Falsification." And ironically this paper was presented to Oxford's Socratic Club, led by C.S. Lewis (until 1954). Dorothy Sayers was part of this club, too. The paper has had an enormous impact.

He began with a parable adopted from someone else: Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing both flowers and weeds. One explorer said, "Some gardener must tend this plot." The other disagreed, "There is no gardener."

So they decided to pitch their tents and set a watch. But no gardener is ever seen. The first explorer says, "But perhaps he is an invisible gardener." So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H.G. Wells's The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry.

Yet still the “believing” explorer is not convinced. "There is a gardener. But he is invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last his friend, the skeptical explorer despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?"
The original claim that there is a gardener (an invisible deity that cares for the garden) has died the death of a thousand qualifications. The claim that there is a gardener (God) is not even meaningful.

There are, of course, a number of problems—philosophical, theological, and biblical—with this parable and what it supposedly proves. But this is not the time or place—Christmas Eve—to analyze something like this for every false assumption and error in logic.

But I should note that Flew to date has not retracted his rejection of an invisible Gardner deity. When Flew says he "believes in God" that's not what he means.'

So, does Anthony Flew now believe in God? Yes and no.

There are three problems with this statement "Anthony Flew believes in God.”

First, the verb "believes.

Second, the noun "god."

And third, just one small little detail—Flew denies that he has come to any kind of religious conviction about a supreme being.

1. What does it mean that Anthony Flew now “believes”?

Anthony Flew now "believes in God" means "Anthony Flew now thinks there is a god" (small "g"). No, he doesn't believe in God. Rather, he now is of the opinion that there may be some sort of deity. That's not the same thing as believing in God. Trusting in God.

But his “believing” clearly has no impact on his life or relationships.

For us Christians "believing in God" is not merely some private philosophical opinion or a religious sentiment.
Jesus birth was very public and his public life demanded change in the real world, not just in the hearts and minds of believers.

You are either for Jesus or against him. He said “follow me,” not simply “form an opinion about divinity.”

2. Then there’s this little word "god."

Whom do you refer to when you say "god'? The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ or some generic supreme being. They are not the same.

We often say that people who think that some supreme being exists "believe in God" but that's not accurate. They think that a god exists. To “believe in God” is to trust in the living and true God, the Creator and Redeemer revealed in Jesus Christ.

Anthony Flew, however, says this: "I'm thinking of a god very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins. It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose." Would Flew ever think that God was a cosmic oriental despot if he took the time to carefully consider the significance of the incarnation of God the Son?

Modern man treats the substance of Christmas—the birth, the enfleshment of God himself—like they would a dead animal on the sidewalk—we walk carefully around it and try to avoid looking at or smelling it.

Christmas becomes a metaphor, a symbol for something happy, something sweet, something—let’s not define it too carefully or identify it too concretely—something nice to think about once a year.

Very interestingly this is admitted by the champion of religious relativism and pluralism in our generation, John Hick, the English religious philosopher. In his book, The Metaphor of God Incarnate, Hick argues exactly this way. The title of his book says it all. He is happy to believe in the incarnation as a religious "idea," a metaphor of God's nearness to man. But he will have nothing to do with it as history, as an event in the real world, as something that actually happened. He wants nothing to do with the Christmas history as it is related in the Bible—God the Son begin born a human child to a virgin mother. We cannot believe that God actually became a man in Jesus Christ, Hick argues, because if we did that, we would have to accept that the Christian Faith is alone the truth about salvation and peace with God. We would have to accept Christianity's exclusive claim. We just can't do that, we can't believe that.

So it turns out –and everybody knows it—that there’s nothing but the shell left—colors, lights, the warmth of Christmas fires and cider, the smell of evergreen and cinnamon. But underneath nothing. Nothing at all.

Ultimately, when Christmas sentiments have freed themselves from the story of Christmas, then every man and woman must imagine his idea of Christmas. These days Christmas provides an opportunity for one’s own privatized religious feelings.
So year after year we have the same old tired “meaning” trotted out for us to “celebrate.” The "meaning of Christmas is giving" Yawn. The true meaning of the holiday season is enjoying family and friends and helping those who are less fortunate than we are. Sigh.

No, these do not explain the true meaning of Christmas. Rather, they summarize how we are to respond to the miracle of Christmas eve. How we are to live in the light of the real meaning of Christmas—the incarnation of God the Son.

But the focus of Christmas should not on us—some humanistic reduction of Christmas to religious sentiments or humanitarian concerns. These horizontal, social concerns are important, but they are not central, they arise because of the vertical.

(Make the sign of the cross): God reveals himself to us in Jesus, comes to us first and then we love one another, give to one another.

You forget the one and you will never truly have the other.

I would hope that even our littlest children know that believing in God means trusting in the One who came to live among us and die for us.

Christmas is the time we remember not an invisible Gardener, not a parable, but the true story of God's becoming man for us.
And the invisible God that is made know to us in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is not a cosmic dictator or tyrant. He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a divine community of love and service turned outward toward his creatures.

Believe in God, believe also in me, Jesus said.

Keeping Up

Lot's going on, not much time to blog.

Saw I am Legend last night with my son and middle daughter. Really well done. This wasn't a kid sci-fi movie. You know, like Independence Day. The row of jr. high kids in the front of the theater were restless the entire movie. Highly recommended.

I need to update my "What I am Reading or Listening to" box on the right side of my blog. I finished Gene Wolfe's new novel Pirate Freedom. Everything Wolfe writes is worth reading. This one wasn't as dense as many others, but it was quite satisfying nonetheless. The moment I finished I began to read it again. That's the mark of a good book.

Sledge's With the Old Breed ought to be read by every post-WWII American man. It's a marine grunt's battlefield account of the battles of Peleliu and Okinawa. There's nothing like it. I can't believe I hadn't read it until now.

Currently, I'm listening to Steve Martin read his own Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life. I enjoy Steve Martin's book. The Pleasure of My Company was a gem. I'm also listening to Dean Koontz's latest novel, The Darkest Evening of the Year. So far, so good.