The Golden Compass

And so it begins again. The furor that we saw some Christians making over the Harry Potter books and movies has resurfaced with Philip Pullman's "The Golden Compass" and the other books of the "His Dark Materials" trilogy.

The books have won some of the highest honors out there in the publishing industry (the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread award among others). They are also part of his deep seated disdain of Christianity. I've read them and thought they were well written. But they also offer a challenge to my deeply held belief system. To be honest I have to admit that my enjoyment of the books declined with each volume, as his attacks on God and belief became more violent. As a youth minister novels and movies like this are fertile ground for questions and study. I do not believe we best serve our young people by either ignoring or attempting to ban these stories. Much better we confront them (the stories,not the youth!) and discuss what we see as wrong rather than screaming "Heretic" and "Blasphemy" from the steeples.

The best answer to this comes from Jeffrey Overstreet who served "Christianity Today" as their film critic for a long time. As with any critic I don't always agree with Jeff but I respect his knowledge of film and the depth of his faith. He offers a great response to most of the common questions in his column:
"Questions I've been asked, Answers I've given"

In the best of all possible worlds there would not be books that attack and demean ideas and institutions about which we care deeply. You may have noticed that we do not live in the best of all possible worlds. My great concern is how often we as people of faith do far MORE damage to our beloved institutions and beliefs when we lash out wildly. I have no respect or time for people who will condemn a book or a movie while proudly announcing that they've never read/seen it. We are all allowed to decline to view something because we don't believe we'll like it. There's a difference between an opinion and an intelligent opinion.

Peace

An interface problem

Had an interesting challenge pop up the other day. Some background:

I've been appointed (strictly by default mind you) as the audio/visual "expert" at my home parish. So I help out with decisions on sound systems and video equipment. We video tape the 10 AM service and then have it broadcast on the local cable access channel. We're hoping that it works for our shut-ins or folks who can't get to church, and as a form of new age evangelism. It's become a big part of my ministry within the congregation over the last five years or so. Recently we decided to go a step farther and download the sermons as podcasts. (Interested? Check them out HERE plus check out our TV ad, with yours truly doing the voice over). To do this we called on the skills of a friend, the Rev. Merrill Woolnough. Merrill is a Lutheran pastor currently between gigs who is rather technologically savvy. She's serving now as our "volunteer Associate for Internet Ministries". I enjoy working with Merrill she's intelligent, gentle and I feel the Spirit working within her. And I like Elwood too.

Elwood is her service dog. Merrill is blind. And that's where the interface problem arose.

To record the sermons digitally we use a small recording device called an "iriver". It's not terribly complicated and has recorded some classes we've presented quite nicely. But the sermon project was just crashing and burning. Between the two of us we couldn't figure out why. Last Sunday I began fiddling with the dingus out of frustration and figured it out.

Imagine Merrill and me at that first meeting with the dingus. She's used it before and is explaining the functions to me. I'm looking at a screen that is literally an inch by a half inch. I get to the right screen and scroll down looking for "Line In Record". I find it, we discuss the two controls. Merrill is a little hazy on what the other one does so we ignore it and move on.

Scan ahead to Sunday. This time I keep scrolling down. Wait, what's happening here? The screen in fact doesn't scroll, it pages. That means I don't see the "Line In Record" feature scroll up on the screen, I see an entirely new page of options. And an entirely new "Line In Record" option. The one we'd been using was the record "mode" (don't ask), the second one was record "volume". That's what we'd been trying to adjust all along and failing. When I told Merrill we both instantly saw where we'd goofed and had a good laugh.

Merrill was relying on words to communicate with a sighted person. The sighted person (yours truly) was relying on what he saw. We were both sure that we'd bridged the gap between us. And we'd been wrong.

How often does that happen? We come into a relationship with our own blinders, physical, mental or spiritual. We think that everyone understands what we're saying, what we believe, how we think. And we get frustrated when others don't see it that way. Too often these days people seem to be content to get frustrated and walk away without making the effort to see beyond what they "see". It strikes me that we're perhaps too desperate to hold on to our particular world view at all costs rather than risk discovering something by trying to look beyond it.

My world view and Merrill's haven't changed. But I've come away with a deeper understanding of having to stretch myself a little further to insure that she and I truly communicate. There's a lesson there for all of us.

Meanwhile it's back to square one with the podcasts. Hope to have that fixed finally.

Peace

On respect for our young people

Came across this article in the Times of London online (yes I read all kinds of things) and it brings to mind a long standing peeve of mine.

Stupid children's names.

The first instance I remember of thinking "Well his/her parents were obviously idiots" was back in the '70's when I saw, I swear, a man name Santa Claus interviewed on TV. It was a name given him at birth by parents with a twisted sense of humor or no concept of what they were about to do to this guy. As I remember he was very calm about it, and didn't see it as a big deal. My thoughts ran somewhat differently:

His parents should be flogged in a public place.

The Time article brought this to mind since they show that such dopiness has crossed the big puddle. Children named Reebok, Gandalf and Arsenal (which is a huge football (soccer) team over there. Kind of like naming your kid Dallas Cowboy). It's one thing to hear a name, decide you like it and want your child to have a beautiful name. It's another thing to name them after a sneaker.

Naming them after pop stars with unusual names is dumb. I mean these people do know that his name's not really Tiger right? Naming them after fictional characters is equally idiotic. Come on can you see this poor kid all through elementary and junior high school - "Is Superman Melman here? Superman...Melman?" He better be the strongest kid in class otherwise it's a recess punch fest everyday for years.

What really bothers me is the mind set for the parents who do this. This smacks of child-as-toy which is an utterly disrespectful attitude towards our young people. If you have that little respect for the kid at birth, how is it going to get any better as they grow up? When did child raising become a game for some folks?

I'm a firm believer that part of the role of parent is allowing kids to skin their knees, bloody their noses, and get their feelings hurt at times. We often tend to try and wrap kids in bubble wrap believing we're doing them a favor. Protecting them to this degree doesn't help in the long run. Our kids need to know, to KNOW, deep down in their bones that they can do what they set out to do. They know it to that deep level when they've tried and overcome obstacles. I've written before about how the opportunity to fail is every bit as important as the chance to succeed.

But sabotaging the kid before they even start is just cruel and thoughtless. It's strikes me as be what makes me happy now, rather than what affect it will have on the kid later.

Not everyone needs to be named Tom, Dick or Harry. But no one needs to be given the name Pixie Frou-frou at birth. When you grow up you can call yourself anything you like, even like the guy mentioned at the end of the Times article (looney!).

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Do you know why you were named what you're named?

My name was my father's nickname, which he got playing a role in a school play. That I grew up (not really knowing the full story) and taking a degree in Acting struck me as strangely appropriate. When I was an adult my father formally relinquished his claim to the name (a source of ongoing confusion growing up. I was little, then young, then my name with my middle initial for years) It also had the advantage of being short, which my folks hoped would prevent it from being turned into some nasty nickname. They did the same with my two brothers. They pretty much failed all three times but they tried to make our lives EASIER rather than harder on the days we were born.

Peace