SOAP Notes

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May 6, 2008
2 Samuel 11-12; Psalm 51; Matthew 23

S: Psalm 51:6 Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, and in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom.
Matthew 23:3 …all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things and do not do them.
Matthew 23:12 Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.

O: The core theme I see in all of these verses seems to be a concept akin to integrity. In Psalms, the idea is internal truth. In the Matthew verses, it’s about being real both to what one says, and also to what one is. So, for me, the observation is that these verses relate to being a true person who demonstrates the truth in their actions, and who demonstrates their knowledge of the truth in their humility.

A: I am a very flawed person, and verses like these draw that knowledge, which is always under the surface for me, out into my full attention.

First, I find myself denying the truth of who I am in so many ways. I deny my imperfections, or more correctly ignore them by focusing on the imperfections of others. I deny my failures by over-focusing on my few successes and blowing them up in my mind, and over-focusing on my strong traits to the exclusion of addressing my weaknesses. I deny my duty to Christ in living how I want without regard for what I should be doing, what I should be saying, and how I should be behaving. I have moments of introspection that I try to avoid, through activity or through mind-numbing or through sheer evasion, so that I don’t have to understand what it really means to be me.

Second, and alluded to in the first, is that my actions don’t portray the truth. I know how to behave, to my wife or to my daughter or to my friends or (even) to my enemies. And I can offer advice to others about how they should behave to those same classes of people. But I shudder everytime I hear the verse about the cloud of witnesses that watches, unseen. I won’t engage in such false modesty as to say that I never do right. In fact, I do it enough to demonstrate that I know what it is, and I do it enough that people know that I know better when I do wrong. That said, I act out and speak out and lash out in so many ways that are so opposed to how I’m supposed to so often that I’m clearly not a man of integrity.

Finally, I’m a man of pride. Even in moments like these where I’m able to focus on my negatives, I find myself struggling not to puff my chest out at the plusses on my ledger. God has gifted me in too many ways to number, and I’m thankful in these moments of insight for that. But too, too often I look at these blessings as the works of my hands, and I fancy myself something greater than what I really am. I know deep inside, in my heart of hearts, that I’m here for something important. And I know with absolute certainty that, as long as I look at being important as the goal, as opposed to serving an important end, I will never achieve it. Humility requires knowing that we, of ourselves, mean so little in the great scheme. I’m important to my friends and to my family, but in truth I’m a speck. I have a part to play, and that’s all, and if I look at things as being about me, as opposed to being about that part, I’m missing the point.

And so the application: I need to seek the truth of who I am. What is the mission for me, and how do I serve that end (and who do I serve to that end)? What are my flaws, and how can I work to address them? Where I’m falling short, what do I need to address to allow me to reach what is there for me? I need to develop consistency within and without. I need integrity.

P: God, help me to be wise, and to search myself for those things that lead me to distraction, to delusion, and to destruction. Let me be a man who behaves in a way that reflects a true image of a heart that’s been molded by You, and that is dedicated to serving Your purpose. Help me put aside the stumbling blocks, whether those of attitudes inside of me or behaviors I engage in, and help me to become a man of integrity, strength, and consistency. Amen.

Things But Slower

A Pretty Awesome Jackie Chan Tribute

Relatively Missing

Not much to say. That's all. And not much time to say that not much in. I don't really want to waste anyone's time (including myself) saying nothing (as I'm doing now).

So if you're wondering where I am, I'm here. I'll write when I have something to write. Which just isn't now.

You can e-mail me at rustyblog (at) gmail dot com if you have anything you care to discuss.

Why We Bracket

I have three different NCAA Brackets in four different pools. One office pool, one buddy pool (those are both comprised of my one entry at ESPN.com, and I'm winning both right now), one in John Canzano's B Pool at CBSSportsline (I didn't get in on time to be in the A Pool, though I should've been in it since I've participated twice before) where I'm tied for third with eleventy-nine other people, and one in the Utterlyboring.com pool at Yahoo (where I'm in second, which is where I finished last year).

Why am I in these pools? Canzano asked the people in his tourney pool why, and I decided to share.

The answer is a firm "I don't know." I don't follow college hoops, beyond keeping a loose awareness of who the top few teams in the country are and how the Ducks and Beavers and Zags are doing. I don't really even like college hoops. I probably should, but since they are composed now of a bunch of one-and-done exciting players coupled with a bunch of utility guys, it just doesn't interest me at all. I like teams with players I can follow for at least 3 years at a time.

So, it's not out of enthusiasm for the sport. And it isn't out of great enthusiasm for money, since the office pool is small potatoes (total pot = $70) and the others are essentially non-profit.

I guess it's just out of a desire to see if my knee-jerk, loosely-informed decision-making process will be vindicated. In my line of work, a lot of what I do relies on my ability to make quick judgments and to ride them to whereever they take me. So, like with my job, my pools are based on stuff I hear others say, my own gut feelings, and prejudice (Duke sucks, always bet against BYU in basketball, UCLA can never be number one, even if they deserve to be).

I will note that I broke my BYU rule this year. I decided to play that part of the bracket straight, and it's effed me. So that rule will be strictly enforced from now on.

How about you? Why do you bracket?

SOAP Notes

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March 4, 2008
Num 34-36; Mark 11

S: Mark 11:23-24
“Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be taken up and cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him. Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.”

O: Immediately proceeding this verse, the disciples pointed out a fig tree that Jesus had cursed, which within a day had withered from the ground up; Jesus told them to believe in God, and then gave them the above assurance.

A: Things like this are some of the most challenging things to me in the Bible, for a variety of reasons. Some are philosophical, some are practical, and some are experiential.

Philosophically: these verses do not equivocate or qualify. They speak absolutely. Any person who tells a mountain to move, who believes in his heart without a doubt that it will happen, will see it happen. All things for which I pray and ask, if I believe I’m getting it, will be granted. Of course, this can’t be right, can it? These verses, in and of themselves, don’t constrain the results as being necessarily within God’s will, or the desires by which they're sought of being godly in nature. Really, if a man asks for a mountain to move, and believes it will: will that occur if God doesn’t want it to move? If I pray for my enemy to die, and believe that he shall, will it happen if it isn’t a godly desire?

Practically: if anybody sheerly on the basis of whole-hearted belief could accomplish anything by simply asking it without a doubt of its occurrence, would we see so much suffering? Would we see so many people living without? Wouldn’t we see a lot of little girls with ponies and little boys with BB guns, because with the faith of a child they asked, believing it would be given? If simple faith was all that was necessary to achieve our dreams, wouldn’t more of us achieve them?

Experientially: I’ve seen people seek things with what appeared to be an earnest belief that they would be provided. Healing of physical issues, changes in another person’s course of action, reversals of fortune of all sorts. Sometimes there are definite changes. But, in my experience watching, most often there is nothing apparent.

Compounding this frustration is my own failure. I pray most every day. Sometimes I have a general sense of belief in the Lord’s provision. More often than not, I pray simply out of a recognition that I need to embrace the fact that I need to rely on more than myself. But praying out of a recognition of that need is not the same as exercising an act out of that need. I very rarely, if ever, have prayed for something with a whole-hearted belief in the result. So I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that “move the mountain” moment in my own life, and there’s some comfort to me in the idea that they simply don’t happen.

But Jesus apparently says that these things can occur. I have to believe that there’s a “God’s will” qualification. The mere fact that I want something enough and believe that I’ll get it can’t overcome God’s will. I can frustrate God, but I can’t overpower Him. So, my reading is that a person acting out of a belief that God’s will shall be accomplished, who speaks out in that belief and claims the fulfillment, will see the fulfillment of that will. Or maybe my reading is that if you have a can-do attitude, you will get far.

I don’t think that Jesus was just telling me that perserverance and faith in an outcome is a guarantee that, with a little elbow grease and a happy heart, I’ll achieve it. No, I think He is telling me that an abiding faith in God and a declaration of my desire to see His will done will be rewarded. So, eventually, I get to the challenge in the verse. I need that abiding faith. And, just as much, I need an understanding of His will. If I can combine these pieces, I’ll begin to realize the whole of His glory.

P: God, my faith is so often weak, and my understanding so lacking, that I often feel not so much that my prayers fall to the floor, but worse that my words have no meaning at all. Give me faith where I am lacking. Begin a work in me that will change me from within, to allow me to be a man who believes and who abides in that reliance on You. And allow me to know Your will, that my prayers will have meaning and that they’ll be effectual and that, ultimately, they will work to reinforce my belief in You. Amen.

Gavin Dawson let go from The Fan

For local sports radio junkies in the Portland area, your choices are pretty limited. You have The Fan, our only 24/7 sports station, or occasional sports updates during the news hour, the dedicated games at KEX (OSU) and KXL (Ducks, Blazers), and Canzano's show in the evening.

So, if you're like me, you've spent a lot of time listening to 1080 The Fan and learning to alternately love and hate the people there.

One I consistently liked was Gavin Dawson, who's big gigs were the Blazers post-game shows and Sports Saturday (aka La Familia). Gavin, who called himself "The People's Champion," was a non-apologetic Blazers homer who, nevertheless, looked at things in a pretty analytical way and was willing to call BS when it needed to be called. He was knowledgeable about a wide range of sports topics, though, and wasn't a one-trick pony in the booth.

My only real brush with Gavin of any sort was during the summer. He was having open auditions for a new side-kick on his Saturday show, and I nearly called in. He and I e-mailed back and forth a little, and he encouraged me to take part, but once I heard what some people were bringing to the table, I knew I had no chance. Also, he was pretty straightforward that what they were looking for was a young guy who was single, since there's a certain flexibility needed in the industry, and my only real selling point was that I have a day job and was willing to work for peanuts just to have some fun on the side (but was otherwise entirely too old and inflexible, having a wife and kid and all).

All this to say that I've learned from Dave at BlazersEdge that The Fan has let Gavin go. No real reason has been offered, and no word on what Gavin will be doing next. I'll note that, in the comment thread to Dave's post, Gavin has weighed in a couple of times, and he's classy enough (and smart enough) not to burn any bridges at Entercom, The Fan's home.

I'll join the concert of those who wish Gavin the best, and who also hope he sticks around town for his next gig. And I'll also add that, although I'm sure it doesn't help, this is clearly a step backwards for The Fan, and also eliminates any chance that I'll tune in at all on weekends.

SOAP Notes

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February 12, 2008
Lev. 18-19; Psalm 13; Acts 19

S: Leviticus 19:14-15
You shall not curse a deaf man, nor place a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall revere your God; I am the LORD. You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly.

O: These are two of a group of various laws discussing how to correctly deal with others.

A: In my first read-through, my eye keyed in on verse 14, to the point that I completely missed 15 until going back to re-read 14. The verses are not particularly related and do not particularly follow the same theme. Regardless, I cannot separate them in their significance to me tonight.

With regard to verse 14, I noticed it because it makes me think of how I mock people. There are many times that I’ve aired a foolish line knowing that someone would buy into it, and taking advantage of that for my own amusement. There are many times that I’ve pointed out the problems that a person has in spite of themselves, declaring their weaknesses and calling out their problems. This is, of course, to build myself up while making them small. And since, many of those times, they are defenseless, it is unfair and it is unkind and it is wrong.

Verse 15 also addresses a sort of fairness. Where verse 14 discusses not taking advantage of people and not exploiting weakness, verse 15 discusses the exercise of judgment between people. So while it is still a discourse on the general virtue of justice, it expounds on a different mode of that virtue.

And I’m challenged by verse 15 in a different way. We are taught today to equivocate in so many ways. We are taught to apply a skewed compass in deference to the individual. We are taught to weigh matters on a relativist scale, to steer away from absolutes and to instead respect the person in who’s shoes we aren’t standing. While verse 15 doesn’t warn against considering different viewpoints in exercising judgment, it does make clear that we are to apply a standard, the same standard, to everyone, and to provide the same definition of justice to everybody, despite their relative position.

I wonder at why these are the verses that speak to me. Is it because I’m unfair? Certainly, to some extent. But I think part of it relates to what I do for a living. I’m a person who’s supposed to bank in fairness. I work in an adversarial “justice” system which, theoretically, is designed to apply rules equitably to all parties, and the fundamental prism through which I generally view things is that of fairness. I’m trained to think of fairness and to dissect the facts and the law to find it. And, yet, I find that I consistently, frustratingly fail to achieve it in my own life.

As mentioned, I’m not fair to disadvantaged people. I take advantage of them, I exploit them, and I harm them for reasons that ultimately relate to what best pleases me in the moment. But, worse, I don’t make fair judgments between sides when called to do so. I defer to friends, I turn my back on unpleasant people without considering their side, I over-analyze relative viewpoints to the exclusion of standards. In so many ways, I fail in finding, and applying, justice.

I want to be a fair person. I want to be a person that people trust as exercising sober and wise judgment and in telling things as they are. I’m not that person yet, but in simply applying some simple standards to my own behavior, I’ll grow into that person.

P: Lord, help me to be fair. Help me to understand justice, and to be a person who is trusted to live a principled life and to act in a principled way in weighing opposing sides and in finding the truth. Amen.

SOAP Notes

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February 5, 2008
Ex 39-40; Psalm 15; Acts 12

S: Exodus 40:34-38
Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. Throughout all their journeys whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the sons of Israel would set out; but if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out until the day when it was taken up. For throughout all their journeys, the cloud of the LORD was on the tabernacle by day, and there was fire in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel.

O: After Moses completed the tabernacle according to God’s instruction, God’s presence became manifest and dwelled in a literal and obvious sense among His people.

A: How awesome would it be to experience God’s presence in a visceral, obvious, undeniable way? How reassuring would it be to be able to point at a cloud too brilliant to approach (by day) or a fire that burned but did not consume (by night) and say “there’s my proof right there.” What wonders such certainty and such clarity would do for my walk.

Of course I, like everyone, wonder why God leaves so much to faith. And, of course, I, like many others, have been taught the concept of faith as being founded on belief. If God made it clear for me, why would I need faith? How much greater it is for me to be able to develop my faith in this setting of uncertainty.

Sometimes I wonder at a God that requires such faith. I think of the ways He acted for others, making Himself so clear and so obvious and not requiring them to step forth in such mystery. I think of the disciples who walked with Jesus and saw Him do His miracles from place to place. Why, I wonder, does God obscure Himself today?

Selfishly, I think that if only God would do more, I could do less. It would be easier to live a life for Jesus if I could see Him. It would be easier to be a witness for Him if I could point to Him, say “there He is” and “watch Him do His tricks.” It would be easier to step forward faithfully if the need for faith didn’t get in my way.

But I realize that the need for faith serves a larger function. Regardless of how God has manifest Himself to others, God has a reason for requiring faith of me. Faith takes me out of my own comfort zone, forces me to step into uncertainty, requires me to rely on something beyond myself. Faith pulls growth out of me, and forges character in me, that otherwise couldn’t happen. The stretching that goes into a faith-based existence is the stretching that helps me to become everything I can, and should, be.

It doesn’t make things any easier to have these realizations. It simply removes a level of frustration and mystification that I have this cross to bear. If only I could keep my focus on these truths when I don’t have signs and wonders to look upon.

P: Lord, it’s so easy not to keep the faith. When You aren’t obviously there, when I can’t see You or feel You or otherwise sense You, it is so easy to deny you and to retreat into myself. Help me to step out in faith, to grow in faith, and to live in a steadfast faith in You. Amen.

Arlen Specter, Patriot(hater)

Arlen Specter, long-in-the-tooth Republican senator and general boob, is raising a ruckus trying to pull the commissioner of the NFL before Congress to discuss the destruction of the "Spygate" NFL tapes. Specter's reasoning appears to be that, as football enjoys some protection from federal anti-trust laws, it is important to police the game to guarantee integrity to the fans.

Whatever.

It's one thing for Congress to prod into baseball. There, the only American game to be completely shielded from anti-trust laws was (at least tacitly) encouraging the use of drugs that are (and have long been) illegal to drive interest in particular players and the game in general, and as such was promoting a product that was wrong on many, many levels.

But with the NFL, and Spygate, we have one team using lawful measures (videotaping) to gain a competitive advantage, and the league stepping in and taking pretty extraordinary measures when it was investigated.

My guess is that Congress is trying to throw MLB a bone by drawing attention away from them, even as Roger Clemens and Andy Pettite are being grilled on Capitol Hill. It reeks of cronyism to me.

But, just to make my point, here are just a few things I'd like Congress to deal with before worrying about who videotapes who in professional football:

1. The War(s) in the Mid-East
2. Funding cures for cancer, AIDS, and a plethora of other diseases
3. Adequately funding our educational institutions (and students)
4. Forgiving my student loan debt
5. Encouraging business to go green while still being profitable
6. Interstate Bridge repair
7. Expatriating OJ Simpson
8. Finally, once-and-for-all annexing Canada
9. Strengthening the dollar
10. Making a world safe for my 2 year-old daughter.

Once Congress does something on each of these fronts, I'll entertain their notion that valuable time needs to be devoted to "Spygate." But unless and until there's some sort of satisfactory demonstration of why this is worthy of such devoted attention by the lawmakers of our nation, I'll just call it what it is.

Ridiculous.

Netflix commercial

I like Netflix. Turns out they filmed a commercial using local Netflix customers recently, and it's playing now.

If you watch, you may see something interesting. Then again, you may not. Guess it all depends on who you know.

This was funny

Sarah Silverman...you can take her or leave her, more often than not. She's very funny at times, and sometimes she's just mean. And I'm pretty sure she needs her mouth washed out with soap.

Anyway, here's a bit she did for her boyfriend, Jimmy Kimmel's, TV show.