We Should See Other Blogs

You became my heart
when I had no heart
and within me was a wall;
in the autum of my discontent
you beat in the stillness
like a bird’s wings
when other songs had
flown south to safety:
you were never safe.
No, but you beat in the
emptiness like an army of feet
or an engine,
and now that I am again
building a wall of
half-remembered bricks
and photographs,
your letters are leaves
buried under snow.
I am again
building a wall
against the winter of
my hybernation, till
the day you come roaring
to my wrists.

Hi, my name is Nick. Daniel and I have been friends for a long while, and one of the things we do from time to time is take pictures. Here are some of the pictures I have taken that relate to both Daniel and myself. Both he and I are in them, as well as his sisters.

I called my sister a knob back in the day (you know, Elyssa) – but I’d like to publically retract that.

In fact, let me tell you something she does at work: practically every morning, she goes out and buys me a coffee. Sometimes she even pays for it. Isn’t that sweet.

Really, when I’m not mad at her, she’s almost too good to be true.

dan (not lying… really)

So, we continue:

Q2. What rule has God given us to show us how we should glorify and enjoy him?
A. The Word of God (which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments) [3] is the only rule to direct us how we should glorify and enjoy him. [4]

Here you go, and germane in to our “what does God want me to do” discussion, it’s the scriptures that measure whether or not what we do – in spite of what we say – is actually glorifying to God. Not only that, the scriptures point out how to enjoy God, or as the psalm-writer put it (over and over and over and over in Psalm 119), God’s law is a “delight”, though of course we’re used to thinking of it as a “burden”.

In the light of this, looking for a sign becomes meaningless because even your sign is subject to the word of God. For instance, if you get a “sign from God” telling you to sleep with your secretary, your sign is not from God. But also, if you’re enjoying the Lord, what you want tends to – un-naturally, I might add – fall into the rut you’ve worn into your life. Personally, I’m still waiting for that day. I don’t know about you.

dan (wait… I may know about you more than you know…)

I’ll add comments for this later. But for now:

Here I am typing up a post on this nice wifi-enabled laptop I bought. Somehow, I need to manufacture a need so I can get one of these things too; they’re useful. By the way, these Gateway laptops are great. I haven’t had any of the problems I had with, say, our Dell. But enough of that.

I’ve done most of the work here that I need to do and I’m really having a hard time motivating myself to do anything else, like petty little jobs that might go undone for months until someone has some spare time.

The Liberals are planning on running a negative campaign. Suprise! Of course they are – they’ll paint the Tories up as the devil, and the stupid, stupid Canadian sheep will swallow it hook, line, and sinker. They’ll forget that the Liberals has squandered billions of Canadian dollars and leading the country down a path of corruption that will eventually give us the reputation of a banana republic. This is why I hate Liberals, and so should you. Not people who are liberal, but the Liberal party.

The odd thing about us Christians is how often we live our own steriotype out. Isn’t it strange how we have to look like something and act like something in order to be accepted as normal? Of course, this happens everywhere. But the world takes all types: not everyone is going to be a happy, well-adjusted, clean-looking denizen of this current world. There’s much to be said for why you pretty much can’t be happy and well adjusted without living in denial.

This is what I try to do, mostly because it would be very, very nice if it caught on, and because of this little thing I like to call the Golden Rule: I try to accept people’s eccentricities. I figure, hey, everyone’s different. Some people are firmly grounded in facts and figures. Other people like to pick up a paintbrush and be Dali. But both these types of people have their place, even if they don’t see eye to eye. No steriotype there.

Some people are happy. Others are well-adjusted – whatever that means. And yet again, other people don’t smile much. Different steeples for different peoples, if you know what I mean.

dan (ruminating)

I was doing some Wikipedian Travels, when I came across this article. Read it. I’ve met people that clearly meet all the criterion for this affliction: in fact I work with one.

I’ve been reading the Westminster Shorter Catechism lately because a church document that was passed out the other week reminded me that I really don’t know much about the Wesminster(s). Can you believe that? I don’t know much about a set of documents that has influenced the development of the more prominant branch of the Reformation (the Presbyterians). Incredible. So I found the WSC on the internet and am proceeding to go through it – on my blog. Oh, am I ever evil.

For those of you who don’t know, a catechism is a set of questions and answers – usually basic – that lay forth a groundwork, usually of a particular theological bent. Even Spurgeon had one.

So to begin:

Q1. What is the chief end of man?
A1. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, [1] and to enjoy him forever.[2]

I love this answer! Personally, it’s a whole lot better place to start a catechism than the Heidelberg. It’s more, “Why am I here?”, whereas the Heidelberg is sort of like, “I’m here, it sucks, where’s my comfort?”.

Don’t you find it interesting, also, that there’s no statement in any of the Heidelberg, Cannons, or the Confession that’s roughly analogous to “enjoy him forever”? It confronts something we tacitly believe: God takes away pleasure. And of course, Piper will hit you with a wet fish for talking or thinking like that; he takes his cues from here.

dan (interested by these ancient texts)

The dentist joked
to my mother
that she should
have had an
abortion:

I heard him
over the sound
of Mastercard
and modem.

These are
expensive teeth.