Fishing

"We are all worms, but I do believe that I am a glow worm." - Winston Churchill

     I may be a worm, but I am certainly not the kind of worm that attracts fish. A few weeks ago, my dad, grandfather, and I went on a fishing trip in east Michigan. Actually, it was more of an "ing" trip, because there weren't very many fish involved. Nevertheless, we had an enjoyable time. The weather was great, as were the Oreos. 

     It's the sad reality that our annual fishing trips usually turn out to be "ing" trips, but definitely not for lack of trying. I have officially decided that, when we're out on the boat, the fish order pizza and soda, and then sit around on the lake floor laughing at us like a comedy show. "And now it's time for 'Name That Lure!'" I can imagine a five pound Largemouth drawling out in a mocking, sing-song voice as we toss out all the lures in our tackle boxes. "$4:99 from Wal Mart!" would shout a thirty inch pike as a shiny diver flies past it's nose. "Cheap one from Cabelas!" would cry a walleye, rolling it's eyes at the tastiest looking spoon on the lake.

     Nonetheless, there is something special about being out on the water even when the fish aren't biting. It's the simple lapping of the water against the boat, and the reflected line where the sky meets the treetops on the other side of the lake. It's the call of the loon and the "gzzzz" of a casting line.

     These are also the things that can make a body go crazy, and write fishing stories about shotguns and dynamite.

     As Yeshua, Jesus, our messiah said in Matthew 4:19 to his first disciples-to-be, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." Fishing for men is no different in philosophy than fishing for fish. There may be "dry" spells when the lake or community isn't as full of curious fish. We have to remember in life that, even when the "fish" aren't biting, as long as we're casting our lines and truly living a disciple's life -- one of imitation of our master, we need only be patient. Out of a hundred disinterested fish, only one may be interested in what you have to offer. But the truth of life is that every "fish" has a God sized hole in their souls. Deep down, they are always searching for the bait to fill that hole, even if their minds are telling them that they have it all together. There is an insatiable hunger for truth that can errantly get filled with sweet-coated lies like evolutionary theory and other rationalized explanations of supernatural events. 

    For the fisherman, waiting for the one fish who will bite can drive you insane. You begin to have fantasies about dynamite, firearms, or, in life, a sound smack across the head with a bible or a soapbox sermon in the middle of Times Square. But many times, it are these aggressive forms of discipleship that can turn people even farther away from the truth and safety that God provides. True entry into discipleship depends on the curiosity of the fish, not the zealousness of the fisherman. Making disciples is a process of patient waiting. Nibbles will come. 

The Little Processor That Could

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity." - Albert Einstein

Chug chug! Puff puff! Ding dong! Along worked the little Macbook dual core processor. She was sorting out many heavy operations and applications. 

In her CPU usage were all sorts of large percentages. There were Quicktime movies, iTunes music, and the trickiest 3D modeling application there ever was.

But all at once, the little processor choked at the foot of a huge Final Cut Pro render. She could hardly move at all! How would she make it?P

"Please little processor," cried all the other applications, "don't stop now!"

"Oh my," said the little dual core Intel processor. "I'm not very big. And I've never done this big of a Final Cut Pro render before! But I will try!"

So the Macbook processor taxed her 64 bit architecture and pulled and tugged. "I think I can. I think I can," she said.

Slowly, the little processor began to render. "I think I can. I think I can. I think I can." and up the CPU percentages went as she continued to handle all the other applications.

Just as the render reached 85%, the cursor pinwheeled, and the little processor stalled. "Oh no!" she cried. Final Cut Pro failed to respond and the processor had to preform an emergency force quit. The applications derailed, and Paul decided to upgrade to a Macbook Pro.

The End.

The blog post has no moral this week.

Black and White

     "I cannot pretend to be impartial about the colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones, and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns." - Winston Churchill

     For my birthday this year, my parents got me a gift card to the technology and appliance store Best Buy. Although I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to purchase a refrigerator, I had no idea what I was going to use my gift card on. In fact, that particular gift card is still tucked in my wallet waiting for the perfect use. Anyhow, our closest Best Buy is around forty-five minutes away from us in a town where my mom shops occasionally. I went with her on one of those infrequent shopping trips, and she dropped me off at Best Buy to look around while she ran a few errands. I made my inspection of the store looking at three-dimensional televisions, cellular telephones, high-definition handy cameras and other such inventions of the twenty-first century. I started to worry the store employees after I asked if they carried typewriters, but after an hour or so, I found my little corner of the store where I settled in. The isle with the digital SLR cameras. The expensive cameras. After I found out that the store model cameras that they put on display actually took pictures, I was hooked. I took pictures of the isle. I took pictures of brochures, I took pictures of light-bulbs. And I took pictures of the store employees who were now even more worried.

     I love photography. Photographs are like extensions of the mind. Like utensils are extensions of the hands, and swimming flippers are extensions of the feet, photography can extend the mind to far away places or take you back in time. 

     Black and white photography, especially, has an added dimension of visual language. Actually, it's more of a removed dimension of visual language that lets you better explore shapes and textures. I love taking pictures around our farm. The ten acres gives an endless amount of material to shoot. Black and white photos really make natural lighting dramatic and interesting. Black and white pictures of cloudless noon give a very sharp cast, while the shadows near sunset on a cloudy day are dramatic and sometimes mysterious. Black and white brings all these attributes out in a photograph. Sometimes, however, (and more often than not) it is the color of a subject that makes the photograph come alive. Black and white is not always the right filter to lay over photographs with a vibrant color.

     I'm a very black and white person. I see the world a bit to simplistically sometimes. Either something is hot or it's cold; painful or painless; good or bad. These general, "computer language" type of distinctions are the "shapes and textures" that black and white accentuates in photographs. A lot of times, it works. Polarized views about difficult and complex things can truly clarify and explicate them, but when it's the vibrant color--the middle ground--that makes the subject come alive, a black and white perspective detracts from and muddles the subject. Like photography, it can be important to analyze your perspective and see if it's the middle colors that really illuminate the issue.

     Nonetheless, it can be nearly impossible to catch yourself in black and white thinking when in the middle of a heated discussion on the science of lightsabers. Before you know it, you could have over-simplified the argument and lost the color. Simply asking yourself if you are applying an "either-or" filter where there are actually more than two options can greatly help when deciding if a black and white perspective is the best choice.
     Before I simplify this blog post too much, I'm off to take some pictures.

     

Promised Land

"And thus they found the Lord to be with them in all their ways, for which let His holy name have the praise forever, to all posterity." - William Bradford


     Several years ago, our family took a trip to Plymouth, Massachusetts. We saw the completely overrated Plymouth Pebble, and got caught in some National Geographic crowd shots aboard the Mayflower 2. But one of the most interesting highlights of the day trip, was our walk through Burial Hill. Not that I like Cemeteries or anything. Quite honestly, they freak me out. But we saw the tombs of some very famous people. Among them were Adoniram and Emily Judson's memorial stone, and John Howland's grave. But the most interesting stone that we saw was William Bradford's. It was a very simple stone; not extravagant or even the focal point of the cemetery. What really caught our attention though, was an inscription on the stone in Hebrew. The inscription was short; only three words long. As I have studied the Hebrew language for somewhere around five years, I recently translated the words on the tombstone to find out what they said. (Actually, Google Translate helped me out a bit.) Consistent from what I know of Bradford's character, the inscription simply said, "More be the Lord."
     Over the past month, I have been reading William Bradford's book, Of Plymouth Plantation. It's a wonderfully interesting book, and I particularly enjoyed the part where Bradford called Plato a communist, but there is one thing about the book that really irks me. The entire 344 page recounting of the Plymouth settlement is written in the third person. Bradford's fellow pilgrims become "they," and even Bradford himself becomes "the Governor."
     For what reason is Of Plymouth Plantation written in this way? I think the general opinion is that Bradford was just being very humble; but could there be a clue in the Hebrew writing on his tombstone?
     As were many of the Founding Fathers, William Bradford was a lover of the Hebrew scriptures and language. In fact, his own journal was littered with Hebrew verses and definitions. The following poem was written by Bradford, and is typed as best as I can interpret from his own handwriting.

Though I am growne aged, yet I have had a longing

desire, to see with my owne eyes, something of that most

ancient language, and holy tongue, in which the Law,

and oracles of God were write; and in which God,

and angels, spake to the holy patriarchs of old

time; and what names were given to things,

from the creation. And though I cannot

attaine to much herein, yet I am refresh-

ed, to have seen some glimpse hereof;

(as Moses saw the Land of ca-

nan a farr off) my aime and

desire is to see how the words,

and phrases lye in the

holy texte; and to

discerne somewhat

of the same

for my owne

content.

     The first five books of the Bible were written down by Moses, the Hebrew slave turned Egyptian prince turned savior of the Hebrew people. Though Moses experienced, first hand, four fifths of the things written in the Bible's first five books, (called the Pentateuch or the Torah) each book is written in the third person. Moses wrote down the entire Torah before he died on Mount Nebo, but nowhere can there be found a "and the Lord spoke to me," or a "then I stretched my hand out over the water."
     Is it possible that William Bradford was emulating Moses as he wrote Of Plymouth Plantation? Could Bradford have pictured himself, as the head over the New England pilgrims, leading the Children of Israel to the Promised Land? Could Bradford's study and love of the Hebrew scriptures prompted the style of his book? Could New England have flowed with milk and honey as had the land of Canaan?
     We may never know the answers to the these questions here on this earth, but Bradford does tell us that America had never seen cows until several years after the pilgrims offloaded onto ye old Plymouth Pebble. Bees, I am sure, were quite prevalent.

Brush Strokes of Melody

     "Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything." - Plato

     In other words, music is emotion. What we hear influences how we feel.

     I'm extremely picky about music. Although I haven't touched a piano in seven years, and I can't begin to explain music theory, I know what melodies and sounds I am engaged by. I don't like middle C. It irks me. It's too normal and familiar. I don't like bridges. They stink. Just stick with one theme and don't change it in the middle of the song. Opera scares me. Too much repetition gives me a headache. And I don't like music with words.

     Music can best be described and compared to paintings. Like music, paintings play with the viewer's emotions. Our external senses motivate our feelings, and, in turn, our actions to a degree.

     The popular music of today is about as emotive as a Jackson Pollock painting. Don't get me wrong. There are people who are able to project emotions on the paintings, but the paintings in and of themselves have no solid emotion besides methodic chaos. 

     For many years, there has been a steady deformation of the arts that has affected both music and fine art. What we're left with are screaming, amoral or meaningless lyrics, and hollow melodies that appeal to the culture merely because of their prevalence. In art, we're left with "fine art" paintings that are nearly as profound as the Japanese flag.

     What happened?

     Much like the move away from God's calendar, mankind has moved away from an objective truth in favor of a subjective one. There is no longer a fixed meaning in some music and art. The listener or the viewer creates or projects the emotion or the meaning onto the painting or into the music.

     Nevertheless, there are still large quantities of good music out there. Personally, I like instrumental music best. The sound of raw, beautifully emotive music, unpolluted with the human voice has a very captivating aura when preformed well.

Also, I find that epic music is extremely motivating while doing something completely not motivating like calculating the product moment correlation coefficient. Epic music generates an invigorated emotion. Sometimes that vigor is edged with darkness like Hans Zimmer's music from the film, Gladiator. Other times, the vigor of epic music is pierced with rays of cautious hope or conclusivity. (Yes. I made that word up.) I think a good example of this would be Atli Orvarsson's "Return of the Eagle."

     Ludovico Einaudi's piece, "Divenire" could be best interpreted along the lines of Thomas Cole's painting, "The Oxbow."

     Michael W. Smith's instrumental album, Freedom, is an inspiring mix of patriotism and equanimity, similar to Lee Teter's "Vietnam Reflections."

     No matter what we listen to, it can influence how we feel, and, in turn, influence either our outlook, our mood, or even our conduct. Art is not a petty or fruitless invention of mankind. God can use the arts in mighty ways, but the opposite is also true. The arts can be used to break down absolute meaning and eventually degrade entire cultures.

     Music may give a soul to the universe and wings to the mind, but sometimes, music the size of an ostrich may only give the mind wings the size of a sparrow.


     On a completely unrelated note, the formatting on this post is significantly different from that of my previous two posts. To make this post look like the other two, I would need to mess with the messy HTML that specifies fonts. I don't like HTML. It's confusing. In other words, get used to the way that this post looks because you'll be seeing it this way from now on.

     

     

Calendars

     "Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others." - Winston Churchill

     And it's true. In the summer, the days are significantly longer than days in the winter. That is, if you're in the northern hemisphere. It also means that dinner is nearly always around nine o'clock. If there's light on the farm, there's work to do on the farm, so when there's light at eight thirty, you had better still be working. 

     Obviously, this isn't quite what Churchill meant. Nonetheless, it springboards me into something that has boggled mathematicians and confounded the regular person like me for centuries. 

     Time. 

     We kill it, we waste it, we get ahead of it, we keep it, we lose it, we get behind it, we pay for it, we wait for it, and inevitably, we all want more of it in a day. It's troublesome, granted. 

     In 1852, mankind messed with time even more by trying to force it into a pad of twelve sheets of paper with grids drawn on them. 

     Pope Gregory XIII made a revolutionary revision to the previous Julian calendar by suppressing ten days of the year, and compensating for them with a strange invention called a leap year. We now call this system of keeping time the modern Gregorian calendar. 

     I personally think that this calendar may have been a by-product of the European Enlightenment. Thousands of years ago, there was once a calendar that was simple and effective. It was traditional, and driven by legacy, not reason. I would propose that this old-fashioned and customary way of measuring the nebulous of time may not have fit the standards of logic and reason that the philosophers of the day stood by. They wanted concrete, not conceptual. Numbers, not shapes. Perfection, not discretion. 

     Even the head of the Catholic church was willing to reform traditionalism for the sake of reason. By doing what he thought was right, Pope Gregory may have inadvertently changed the way that time was meant to be kept, and added unneeded complexity to an already inerrant calendar. 

     This simple, traditional calendar was lunar, not solar like the Gregorian calendar. In other words, every time that the moon was full, you would be halfway through the month. The first night when you could see a crescent moon would be the start of a new month. It was, and still is, that simple. Every cycle of twelve moons is one year. Every three years or so, a simple repeat of one month allows for tracking with the seasons. The first day of the week is what we now call Sunday, and each new day began at sundown, not at midnight. It actually makes a lot of sense. Back when there was no logical reason to stay up after the sun had set, the day ended at sundown, and a new day would begin. 

     Believe it or not, the framework of this first calendar system was set up by God Himself. 

     In approximately 1312 BCE on the night of what is now the full moon of April or March, a mass group of people filtered out of Ancient Egypt under the light of a full moon. They were leaving behind lives of slavery, and they were also leaving behind the eerie wailings of Egyptian families. It was the first Feast of Passover; the Israelite Exodus. 

     Fourteen days earlier, God had instituted His calendar. 

     "The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, 'This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of if Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household... and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight." - Exodus 12:1-3 and 6 

     Fourteen days was nearly halfway through the month. This offering of the lambs happened one day before the first Passover, and therefore landed one day before the halfway marker: the full moon. It makes perfect sense that God would give light to his children as he led them out of Egypt on that first Passover night. 

     Thousands of years later, the Passover Feast is still celebrated on this very night. Fifteen days into the first month; the month that God names "Abib." 

     "Observe the month of Abib and keep the Passover to the Lord your God, for in the month of Abib the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night." - Deuteronomy 16:1 

     In the civil Jewish calendar of today, the month of Abib is called "Nisan" and is considered as the seventh month of the year, not the first. Actually, the civil Jewish calendar is almost as messed up as today's Gregorian calendar, but we know for certain that on the fifteenth day of the first month, the month Abib, God has set up a timeless feast of remembrance and joy. Passover serves to continually remind us of our deliverance from bondage; be it the physical Egypt, or be it sin: the Egypt of our souls. Jesus, Yeshua, is the only one who can deliver us from that Egypt of sin. 

     Passover is also one of seven Biblical feasts instituted by God on his own calendar. Just like God created Holy and set-apart places on earth like the tabernacle and temple, God also created holy and set-apart places in time like Passover. 

     For our family, Passover is a wonderful time of joy and peace. No matter how crazy our modern calendars can get, we can always count on the consistency of God's calendar. Until the moon gets sucked into a wormhole, we'll always know when Passover comes around each year. 

     Needless to say, time still confuses me, and even using God's calendar, time will still be somewhere in that nebulous fourth dimension just waiting for a time machine. 

     But I do know one thing, my dear reader. I know that today is not your birthday. 

Against the Wind

     "Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it" - Winston Churchill

     Quite honestly, I do not know of any other person with quotes as simple, yet profound as Winston Churchill's. All of his quotes are positively genius, but this particular one jumped out to me. 

     You see, I've been experimenting over the last few months with this multi-colored airplane-shaped kite. I think it all started when we received a random knock on our farmhouse door, sometime in that weird transitory season between winter and summer. Most people call it spring. Here in Michigan, we call it mud.

     Anyhow, on the threshold stood a middle aged man wearing muddy snow boots, and carrying a large sheet of photo paper. He explained that his company, Scenic Concepts Inc., had flown a plane all the way from Wisconsin to take aerial photographs of Michigan towns. (I'm tellin' ya, them Wisconsinians are jealous of Michigan.) The fellow, Mr. Barber,  showed us a nice, high quality aerial picture of our ten acre farm before pulling the famous salesman trick and offering it to us for an inordinate amount of dough. We politely declined, but as soon as the door closed, I was determined to get our family some aerial photography of our farm. 

     Thankfully, I don't think it was me who suggested that I send my mother's iPod Nano soaring up into the clouds on a kite. I fear that, had I suggested it, I would have been given one of those, "you're joking right?" looks from my mom, and been told to find something less destructive to do. I think it was my dad who first suggested the idea. Frankly, he has a better reputation of ideas that actually work than I do, and my mom consented to have her yellow iPod flow a hundred-some feet up in the air. My first few tries didn't go so great. Some of it had to do with the position of the camera on the kite, while some of it had to do with my awesome kite flying skills. I had to find the happy medium between letting the kite out too fast -- letting it go with the wind, and keeping a taut line and a tight rein against the intense breezes that come off of Lake Michigan. Let's just say that I'm no Ben Franklin. For the first few times, my kite hardly ever got to the "lightning strike level."

     Then one Saturday afternoon, with a bit of camera placement adjusting and the correct tug against the east wind, the kite and camera took flight. I got ten minutes of beautiful footage, and, (thank goodness), my mom's yellow iPod survived the crash landing. Expensive aerial photography eat your heart out.

     Those windy, frustrating days of flightlessness taught me the same lesson that the double-meaning of Churchill's quote teaches its readers.

    My goal for this blog, like my goal for my kite, is to find (and help my readers find) that perfect tension against the wind; the perfect tension against the wind of worldliness. This is what Churchill was saying in his quote. When we are leaders, not followers, we can rise high. When we make that extra effort to strain against the pressure of culture, we will rise high and produce ten minutes of beautiful aerial footage. Well... maybe not just that. But you get the point.

     In the day-to-day, our struggle against the wind is often really frustrating. Sometimes the wind can seem just too strong to get the kite to fly. But when we master the wind, and not let it take the kite away, we will succeed.

     The name of this blog, "Mustard Roots," isn't quite as randomly silly as it sounds. Although I did want a kind of goofy ring to the name, it means a bit more. As many of my posts will probably take a "farm life" turn, the name incorporates the earthy visuals of roots, and the yellow feel of mustard. The name also has a reference to Jesus' (Yeshua in Hebrew) parable of the mustard tree. 

     "'The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it is has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.'" - Matthew 13:31-32 

     Finally, the name depicts the roots of the kingdom. The roots that stretch all the way down into the foundation of the Hebrew scriptures and the rich soil of the first five books of the Bible.

     The goals for myself, for my readers, and for this blog are all the same. I wish to rise high for the glory of God like the kite and like the mustard tree; keeping the tension against the wind of the world. 

     "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." - Romans 12:2

     See? Flying kites can be way more metaphysical than you might of thought!

     To end, here's a few still shots from my awesome kite flying experiment: