The Cat Piano & Random Web

I love the random web. A student referred a short film nominated in this year’s oscars, wondering how they got away with using so many logos and trademarked images in their film: logorama (which, interestingly, has a copyright symbol in their movie title!). So I went to YouTube to see the full video. It wasn’t on YouTube, just a take-down-notice. Damn. But then I found the above random video, thus proving the Internet axiom: “If it doesn’t play on YouTube, it doesn’t exist” (are you listening Murdoch?). BTW, Logorama won the oscar for animated short.

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In Bad Faith, Part 7: Entitlement

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? (Matthew 7:11 ASV)

It shouldn’t be too surprising that in an era and place of unbridled abundance and wealth (that is the US in the 1970s and following) that these verses would be seen as part of the claim that we deserve good things and God has to give us what we want. Of the many mistakes I’ve made in my walk of faith, having a sense of entitlement, that God owes me something, was no small source of confusion and probably one of the worst ways that I could have envisioned a relationship with the Divine. Funny that I seem to get mostly what I needed, but almost never what I wanted.

In Bad Faith, Part 7: Entitlement

It might be interesting to see the tel-evangelist and the religious huckster try to preach this gospel of entitlement to villagers in a developing spot in the world where their village is routinely wiped out every year by monsoons and flooding. Or in some South American desert community where there’s no electricity or indoor plumbing, how would they spin their message there? How does this gospel of entitlement translate in parts of the world where children catch the measles and die or where they don’t have enough food to feed them and have to watch them slowly starve to death. Conversely, how about hard-working folk who are laid-off or fired because the CEO needs to cut the budget so that he can still get his quarter-million dollar. The CEO got what he wanted, but the thousands and possibly millions who are dependent on that paycheck for their daily bread certainly didn’t. Does God only listen to the prayers of CEOs, or rich Americans?

I’m currently listening to Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God, and it seems pretty clear that one mistake I made was to assume a quid pro quo relationship with the Divine and second to that was an assumption that I could have a relationship with the Divine that was a kind of mystical parallel to having a relationship with a really powerful, important buddy. I thought I had VIP access to all the good that there was to offer because God and Jesus were my buddies. “No really, check again, my name is on the VIP list. My buddy, Jesus, said he put it there,” I say to the heavenly bouncer. Imagine my disappointment and embarrassment as I’m forced to leave the line while the bouncer lets all the hot chicks in first. Damn. Story of my life…

I know that it was confusing to my mom, a devout Catholic, that I had this expectation that not only did God hear my prayers, but that He had to give me what I wanted and also that He was in control of every aspect of my life, right down to the long hairs on my shaggy head. I’d had this “experience” as a 15-year-old and blam! I was ushered into the inner sanctum and I was privy to a level of understanding that the stupid ol’ theologians couldn’t begin to imagine. Well, 15-year-olds are always over-estimating their importance and understanding, and I wasn’t any different in that department. Sad thing was that as I grew up and began to understand that I did NOT know the mysteries of the universe, that I was unable to integrate this in a meaningful way when it came to understanding my relationship with God and the Bible. In a sense Dawkins was right, while I understood more and more of the complexity of life, my relationship with God was mostly undeveloped beyond the moment of recognition and wonder.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known. (1st Corinthians 13:11-12 ASV)

Well, it’s probably an overstatement to say that it went undeveloped because from that moment forward I struggled with my growing rational understanding of the world and this moment that changed my life. Like the Episcopal priest that my brother spoke to in my last entry, I couldn’t fully reconcile the two and instead just alternated between the two worlds and not always very gracefully. While Dawkins might say that my struggle was an irrational residual of my upbringing, Armstrong might say that my problem was that my definition of God was just too narrow and too primitive.

I’d seen a glimpse of it at Loyola Marymount when I read The Idea of the Holy, but never really moved too far beyond the “buddy in the sky” motif when I did my B.A. in Biblical Studies at Biola University. Then when I started an M.A. in Theology at Fuller Seminary it was an interesting blend between the rational and religious, but it all got cut short when I got divorced. It didn’t help that I was already too academic for my Calvary Chapel heritage, getting divorced completely knocked the wheels off of my vision for myself and ministry. And thus I abandoned all of it and except for occasionally listening to some Mark Heard or Sam Phillips I never opened my Bible or went back to church for fifteen years following the divorce.

During my fifteen year Agnostic phase I attempted to find a balance between these unmet expectations, my sense of my own responsibility for the way things turned out and trying to figure out who I was. I’d love to say that I figured it out, but that would be even more delusional than any of the foolish things I’d done as a Christian. Something was missing. A lot of time past. I had my work but… I don’t know. There was something more.

Then through an unexplainable series of events I found myself back at church, back to reading my bible and back to trying to figure everything out with my old buddy Jesus. Simply put, I’d fallen in love and there wasn’t a single damn thing about it that was right and when it all came crashing down on my head (over a Valentine’s Day weekend) I had a moment of transcendence and understanding. God was in control again and I didn’t care how anything turned out because I understood that nothing happened by chance. And I really did go through a number of “self-renovation” projects. The previous 15-years felt like I’d been standing still or asleep the whole time. I knew I had to be my best self. I knew I had to be my best self because… well, that was the problem. There was something, or actually someone who, I wanted in my life and it wasn’t happening. Christian friends repeated the verses like the ones above about how God knew my heart and wanted to give me… good things. Great, I was all for that. I knew what that meant to me, but things got a lot darker and unlike any other time in my life I learned what it meant to be completely vulnerable, to the point where a sunset would make me cry because I couldn’t be with the one I’d fallen in love with. This went on for years.

Friends and enemies around me were falling in love and getting married (and getting divorced) and I was still trying to figure out why it wasn’t happening for me. I kept the thought close to my heart that God knew what I wanted. And time continued to pass on by. It was beginning to feel like those bad old days when I began to believe that I must be doing something wrong or that there was something wrong with me. I didn’t really expect it all to be handed to me on a silver platter, but Jesus, after five years… Clearly, I’d misjudged more than a few things. Clearly I was still seeing things through a glass, darkly… So, for the second time, I closed the Book and walked away.

I know a lot of people who feel like they were rescued from horrible lives because they found God. For them life would be completely meaningless and cruelly random if it weren’t for God making everything right and loving them. I respect that. I miss that sense of knowing. I miss that sense of being connected. I don’t want to live what’s left of my life like I did during my 15-year of random wandering. I’ve learned so much, it’d be a shame for it all to be lost because it’s gone unshared and unremembered. There’s still something left undone.

Maybe the verses aren’t about some quid pro quo relationship with the Divine expressed with gifts of fishes or stones. Maybe the verses aren’t about a big buddy in the sky who wants to spoil you. Maybe it’s all meant to be an allegory about being loved and being connected to something greater than ones self. Maybe it was enough that I was loved and that in those moments I saw into Eternity, that I’m one of these weirdos who can take simple human contact and see something bigger, something that makes thoughts of entitlement feel like immature children complaining about fish and stones.

Sources:
image: Dollar sign, Microsoft.com/clipart

image: The stark finger of God by altemark. http://www.flickr.com/photos/altemark/46732233/ retrieved on 3/5/2010.

image: heart candle by joe bustillos. http://joebustillos.com/images/heartcandle.jpg retrieved on 3/5/2010

YouTube video: Sheryl Crow – Letter To God – Live. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2dwWHCc2Ak retrieved on 3/5/2010

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Apple iPad Announced: Oh My God, It Doesn’t Have a Rubber Baby Buggy Bumper!

I love CNET. It’s one tech news source where I can find everything from straight tech journalism to flawed editorials on the latest things happening in the tech world. Take the overhyped announcement of the iPad a little bit ago, CNET provided the following excellent straight news reporting on the event:

Then there’s this excellent example of the tech news analysis by Tom Merritt and Rafe Needleman in CNET’s “Real Deal” podcast. The two put the iPad announcement into the historical context, looking at many of the previous, mostly failed, attempts to popularize the tablet/handheld class of computer. Make sure to visit the podcast website, these guys have excellent show notes and links to all of the gadgets mentioned in the video/podcast.

Then there’s this speculative editorial that wants to pass itself off as news reporting. Molly Wood is a smart, funny journalist, but she’s definitely from the media personality school of thought where snarky strong opinions are pushed to the front, generating huge positive or negative responses. I can’t watch this video without getting pissed-off. Ack. Moving on.

Discounting the noise being made by those who flat out hate all things Apple, iPhone or Steve Jobs, I’ve noted at least two trends between the fanboys and the haters. The first trend seems to be that pretty much none of the haters have actually touched the device and are making their vitriolic pronouncements based on the videos and the device spec sheet. This leads to the second observation: all of the haters are freaking out about all of the things the device doesn’t have. Oh my god, it doesn’t have a walk-in closet! Perhaps you missed that opening slide in the keynote where Jobs placed the device between a smart phone and a laptop. The idea is that the device will have things missing in the smart phone and won’t have things found on the laptop, like a three-car garage (crap, now I’m sounding like Molly Wood). Moving on.

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“A” is for Ax Murderer

Another student take on Zander’s giving student’s an automatic “A”:

Grades in middle school are controversial, especially now that students earn credits to be promoted to the next grade level. Ask a teacher at my school to “give an ‘A’” and their response is likely to be one of confusion, disbelief, laughter, or even anger. Administrators will tell you that grades should be used to measure student success and communicate progress. Unfortunately, many teachers use grades to communicate a very bad message and focus on “principle.” “Its the principle of the matter,” exclaims a colleague. “If you give an ‘A’ to a student who does nothing in your class, what kind of message are you sending the kid who works their butt off?”

So it goes back to measure and comparison (see chapter 2). Giving an A is not about allowing students a free ride and telling hard working students that it is all for nothing. Rather, it is eliminating the “anticipation of failure” and allowing the class to focus on what is more important; learning. It’s all about placing everyone on a level playing field (pardon the competitive sports analogy) and saying, “you already have the grade, what’s next?” It’s likely that the response will involve a feeling of relief and willingness to explore.

However, I think the next step of giving an ‘A’ is just as important as giving the ‘A’ itself. Teachers who feel that giving an ‘A’ would eliminate student accountability will like this step the most. Requiring that students predict how they have earned the A before they have actually received it, helps them develop goals and builds intrinsic motivation. It also helps them see the possibility of being successful, something many have given up on.

Interested in seeing how I felt about this in October, click here. – Noel Nehrig

And my erudite response:

Grades are a bit like religion. There may have been a point at some time but it’s gotten lost in all of the noise and people are very scared to consider what to do if grades/religion had never existed. In the classroom, has the point of all the effort gotten lost to pursuing a grade? I mean, just like religion, isn’t all of this effort suppose to amount to something intrinsic, some good that goes beyond measure?

Grades are institution solution to communicating student progress and/or position in the A-to-F continuum within the classroom. There the measure, not the point. But i’ve seen instructors at all level quibble looking to seal up any possible loophole that a student might use to game the grading system. At best a grade is an approximation that may or may not be related to student progress fulfilling course requirements. In the end, it’s what we carry in our heads and hearts that matters more than this imperfect approximation. Funny how only those who excel and those who feel besmirched care so much about grades. What’s up with that?

Sources:
Wk 1 Reading- “A” is for Ax Murderer by Noel Nehrig. http://web.me.com/noelnehrig/The_Blog_Prince_for_EMDTMS_MAC/2010_MAC_OCD_Wk1/Entries/2010/2/6_Wk_1_Reading-_%E2%80%9CA%E2%80%9D_is_for_Ax_Murderer.html retrieved on 2/9/2010

Astro’s Got an Axe! by tohoscope. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tohoscope/182444838/ retrieved on 2/9/2010

Stone mason by sk8geek. http://www.flickr.com/photos/sk8geek/3917647300/ retrieved on 2/9/2010

Pretty Princess Picking Her Nose by Pink Sherbet Photography. http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/3295969599/ retrieved on 2/9/2010

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In Bad Faith, Part 5: What’s Missing?

Dawkins wrote in The God Delusion that all experiences of “Faith” are delusions, that there is no god out there “talking” to you. He wrote that anyone with an ounce of intelligence recognizes that there is no “man behind the curtain,” and that the stories in the Bible, for example, should have been given up when we gave up on our belief in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. It all seems very logical. But something is missing here.

Conversely, I love that, for the fundamental or conservative Christian, the answer to every problem faced by us is to “give it up to Jesus.” Lost your job? Give it up to Jesus! Stuck in a rotten marriage? Give it up to Jesus! Need a new car? Give it up to Jesus! It’s a powerful message, especially if you’re a teenager or a drug addict looking to leave that lifestyle. But, for all of us in between, there still seems to be something missing.

In Bad Faith, Part 5: What’s Missing?

Ironically, one of the mistakes that I made as a young Christian adult was to close off my emotions and try to be more logical because my faith told me that one can’t trust emotions. Yeah, that approach didn’t work so well for Mr. Spoke, I don’t know why I thought it’d turn out any better for moi. I tried to be logical and I wasn’t any fun to live with. Just ask my ex-wife. Now, I know that Dawkins isn’t advocating a logic-only/emotionless lifestyle, but there’s a kind of delusion to entertain the idea that human beings are going to be “logical” and “scientific” when it comes to the bigger issues in life or even in ones day to day existence. I think the fictional character, Geordi, in ST: TNG, said it best when he said that we humans go with our “gut” so much because we almost never have enough data to make the decisions that we need to make.

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Following the Logic of Feelings

Some of my thinking lately has reminded me of this article that I wrote in the late 1980s about rediscovering the power and need to be emotionally alive. This article was part of a column that I wrote called “The Editor’s Wild Hair” for a little print newsletter that I inflicted upon friends and family called, “Air, Dirt & Ink.” [Sigh], the good ol’ days.

Journal Classic: Following the Logic of Feelings

Heart, why are you pounding like a hammer?
Heart, why are you beating like a drum?
Heart, why do you make such a commotion
when I’m waiting for my baby to come?
Oh heart, don’t do it if it’s not the real thing
Heart, I get so easily deceived
Heart, there is no other I can turn to
if not you, heart, then who can I believe?”
“Heart” by Nick Lowe

I vividly remember when it first happened. It was in the seventh grade when I walked up to Mary Hinck and said, “Hi,” and she said rather unfeelingly, “Oh, it’s you.” It’s like I didn’t even really know that it was there until it came crashing to the ground in front of God and everyone. Jesus, I thought, if this is what love feels like, I don’t want any part of it.

I didn’t mean that, of course, and have spent the intervening 17 years demonstrating it to no one in particular. But something very definitely changed after that first brush with emotional death.

Back at home, though I never once for a moment doubted my parent’s love for me or my siblings; emotions, especially anger, seemed to be like Steven Spielbergian pyrotechnics. Like the much-feared nuclear holocaust, there would be a blinding flash of emotional light: my father would explode over some such reality of living with five children. My mother would then deploy her tactical arsenal. Another flash, then children running in every direction, vainly hoping to avoid becoming part of the scorched landscape. Then just as quickly as it had begun, it would be over. Father would be about his business and mother would continue hers. It all seemed to my childish mind to be quite unnecessary.

So it only seems right that at one point in my life I hung around with a religious group that held to the philosophy that “feelings” could not be trusted. “Feelings, they come and go, but objective truth, now there’s the ticket.” Of course the objective truth that was being referred to here was the Bible, the Scoffield Reference Bible in the King James Version to be more specific. And Love, well that had something to do with some Greek word and God and Jesus dying and . . . (all of which of course made no sense whatsoever to my teenage mind, but who was I to scoff at the insights of my elders?).

I don’t know why I always seem to use this column to take pot‑shots at Evangelical Christianity (no doubt an unconscious attempt to pay them back for the emotional trauma and near fatal brain damage I experienced while getting my Bachelor of Arts degree in Biblical Studies). In fact, before this starts sounding too much like “Sex and the Single Brain Cell,” I have to question the wisdom of attempting an article that would argue following the logic of emotions. I mean, either you understand it or you don’t.

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Up in the Air and Life Choices

Just saw “Up in the Air,” and don’t know if I should be depressed or not. Ryan Bingham, played by George Clooney, is the quintessential road-warrior, who spends over 300-days a year business traveling and he loves it. He’s a firing expert who works for a firm that gets called in when it’s time for lay-offs. The job isn’t “fun” but he’s found a balance that works for him and it doesn’t include any relationship commitments. His foil is 23-year-old Natalie Keener, played by Anna Kendrick, who has come in to make the job more efficient with technology. She has her whole life mapped out and it’s completely the opposite from Ryan’s.

The movie is basically about life choices and the stories that we tell ourselves to make these choices work. Ryan’s life is a set package and he’s happy. But he has to contend with those around him who are convinced that he’s made a mistake by not settling down and making a lasting relationship investment. Sans the mega-frequent-flier mileage and movie-star good-looks, I seem to resemble those contentions. Alas, it’s been my observation that most of us make these life choices long before we’re even aware that we have a choice. Those first few years after high school and those first few years out of college, set us on paths that tend to be impossible to break away from. And most choose not to, and make their lives there, for good or bad. Then there are those of us who get a wake-up call and/or have a higher expectation for ourselves.

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Street Meets… Pedestrian: Christian Side Hug

When the rapper begins screaming, “Are you ready to party?!” the crowd goes wild. Apparently there’s a lot of pent up energy here. Then for the life of me I couldn’t figure out if this was straight or parody. I think it’s both… This video is totally def with an “A”… ack.

Sources:
youtube video: “Christian Side Hug” by 1337ven0m07. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g91J37qcRfI retrieved on 12/13/2009

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Oh, That We Could All Be This Happy in Retail

Steve Jobs was once fond of quoting Picasso when Picasso said, “Bad artists copy, great artists steal.” Having attended several Apple events at various Apple Stores I can attest to the sense of Fun and Community that happens at these events. I think I would have concluded that the Apple Store employees were on drugs if they would have “spontaneously” broke into dance. Having copied everything else that one can find in an Apple Store, Microsoft Store employees demonstrate why “Cool” is NEVER used when referring to the Microsoft experience. (Well, except for the cute girl in the green T-shirt…)

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Verizon’s DROID Carpet Bombs the US

Continuing the WTF school of advertising, one of Verizon’s DROID commercials “features” incoming payloads reminiscent of the bombs flying in from the 80s movie “The Day After.” I guess they didn’t get the memo that people like little techy things with lights and smiley faces, but don’t like robots with threatening voices delivered by high-velocity aerial bombardment. (hint: in the movie referenced above, everyone dies). Oh yeah, and we appear to be bombing ourselves. WTF?

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