My Time at Sea has Nearly Come to an End
 The
many voyages of Captain Jack Aubrey and Dr. Stephen Maturin have
come to an end. What remains of this series is the "book"
named simply 21, the final three chapters which were the
last drafts of author Patrick O'Brian when he passed away January
2, 2000 at the age of 85. I have "sailed" with Captain Jack
in the Surprise and his other ships for the past 17 months.
I'll have to admit I now have two favorite authors, Robert
Heinlein and O'Brian. (And I can now also understand why Port is
drunk at the end of the meal, a sort of poor man's brandy.)
In the final pages of
Blue at the Mizzen,
the 20th book in the series, Captain Aubrey finally learns
that he has been promoted to flag rank. The series has
followed him from his time as a half-pay Lieutenant without a
ship, to finally an Admiral in charge of the South African Squadron. (A
blue flag at the
mizzen-mast was the flag of the
Rear Admiral of the Blue, the lowest flag rank in the
Royal Navy of the early 19th century.)
And as for the surgeon/naturalist/spy Dr. Maturin, his story is
especially moving. After the sudden death of his beautiful
wife Diana, who he so dearly loved and with whom he was so
hopelessly mismatched, Stephen renews his friendship with
Christine Wood, a naval widow, who shares his life's interests and
to whom his heart has been completely lost.
In time I will enjoy reading the
biography of this enigmatic author as well as The Unknown
Shore, a sort of prequel to the Aubrey-Maturin series which is
a companion book to The Golden Ocean written in the 1950s.
I have all of these books in my library.
Thoughts of Seminary???
And to what has my reading tuned
after Blue at the Mizzen? The Epistle of Paul to the
Romans, an exposition by Charles R. Erdman (1925). It
feels like returning to my duty after a long vacation. The
seminary gadfly has also returned like it did in 1982 and 1999.
Will it bite this time? But then again, I've never had the
right credential for my career. Why should I start now?
Nancy reminds me that a Ph.D. is a
perfectly good credential for a teacher. Only the career
pastors need the M.Div. Yet some credential might be
valuable.
This Month at Taproot Theatre:
The Fantasticks
 The
Sleights enjoyed another night on the town, July 16th.
Two young lovers, their scheming
mothers, a rogue and his band, and a wall ―
it is a musical morality play.
We are blinded to the future by love in the present breathless
moment. It makes me ask, what do you get when you combine a Comedy
with a Tragedy? My answer: Our History. This explains
the longevity of The Fantasticks. It is the story of
all of us who have loved and won ―
and lost.
Deep in December
it's nice to remember
although you know the snow will follow.
Deep in December it's nice to remember
without the hurt the heart is hollow.
Deep in December it's nice to remember
the fire of September that made us mellow.
Deep in December our hearts should remember and follow.
On
Romans 6 "For
a believer, it [faith] means trust in Christ, obedience to
Christ, love for Christ; and such trust and obedience and
love
inevitably result in purity and holiness and a life of unselfish
service." Here Charles Erdman (p. 77) says that not
only is "trust" an aspect of true faith, but also "obedience" and
"love." I observe: they all are elements of faith
itself. Obedience is not something that begins to grow as a
fruit of faith. It is the volitional face of faith, just as
trust would be the cognitional face of faith and love its
emotional face. The fruits or results of such trusting,
obedient, and loving faith are then seen in purity (personal) and
service (social).
Romans 6:1-14 is about what
claim sin might hold over someone who has died with Christ (and
thus is born again. with Him). Certain analogies come
flooding to mind.
- The former spouse of a widow
has no claim on her affairs or affections. (Paul will make this
point in chapter 7.)
- An employee has no
responsibility to a former employer.
- A wife is called to
trust, obey, and love her husband and not continue to be
governed by her parents.
- A soldier (who turns coat -- in
this case for just reasons) must answer to his new Commander,
not his former one.
- A former ruler (like an
ex-President) may rant, but he lacks both the power and
authority to enforce his will. We are wrong to seek anything
from him.
How like Jesus' words on "two
masters" this is. (Matt. 6:24) There He spoke of God and
money. Similarly, we can not long hold our cherished sins
and our cherished Savior in each hand. Life and death are
mutually exclusive. And where we, as wayward children, still
long to touch the hot stove of sin, though we know full well that
out loving Heavenly Parent has said "No, no dear, it's hot, don't
touch!" There is the Physician and his balm of grace.
Summer Reading
 It
may be a symptom of depression or of the summer doldrums, but I
just finished reading Arthur C. Clarke's 1986 book The Songs of
Distant Earth. Any book with the premise that Earth has
already been destroyed and that the human race managed to expunge
God from its language and history before a very few managed to
escape the solar system has got to bring one down. Its brief
chapters, often as short as three pages, was a good diversion
during Jury Duty. Clarke does not hide his hatred of
religion, yet his writing is full of Biblical allusions. C.S.
Lewis died in 1963. It's interesting that a forthcoming book
is titled, From Narnia to Space Odyssey: The War of Letters
between Arthur C. Clarke and C.S. Lewis.
 And to follow that up I'm reading
Larry Niven's Ringworld. Two aliens and two humans
depart to explore this mysterious "world" beyond "known space."
At least in this novel, Earth still has at least 20,000 years before its
impending destruction.
I've always loved Science Fiction
and have read much by Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov but have
long wanted to at least taste the other Grand Masters like
Andre Norton,
Frederik Pohl, and more by
Arthur C. Clarke.
|
Space Shuttle Returns to Space
What is wrong with this statement?
"We are praying for you," said Mayor
Nobuaki Hattori. "Mr. Noguchi, good luck!"
One of the Shuttle astronauts is from a town near Tokyo.
Luck is the antithesis of prayer. |
|
 A
Family Fourth of July
On Sunday the 3rd, I took the family to see the final
Star Wars movie, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, at the
Cinerama Theater. It was oddly anti-climactic since we
knew the ultimate plot in advance. But it filled in the gaps
leading up to Episode IV: A New Hope, where it all began ― in 1977!Susan took Annie
on a bike ride and then met Nancy and Grandma Ginger at Aunt
Ellie's for the special July 4th holiday brunch at Emerald
Heights. Later that afternoon we had a barbecue with friend
Steve White and his kids Andrew and Charlotte, and then attended
the Bellevue Downtown Park fireworks show.
Nancy also erected her new flag
pole. While we agree in our politics, she is certainly more
avidly patriotic than I am. As much as I love the USA, I identify
with Eric Liddell as portrayed in Chariots of Fire and with the
Prophet Isaiah who wrote, "Surely the nations are like a drop in a
bucket;
they are regarded as dust on the scales; he weighs the islands as
though they were fine dust." Isaiah 40:15 NIV
 The
Downtown Bellevue fireworks show this year was a
bit of a dud. It left the crowd waiting in silence for the
finale which never came -- very odd. But it afforded me a
chance to try out still more features of my Nikon D70. At
least a few shots
 worked! But
I'll have to admit -- one can't enjoy the show and fiddle with
camera settings at the same time.
Click on these to see if any of the fussing was
worth it.
Jury
Duty, July 13-14
For a third time in the
past six years I have been invited to serve on a jury. The
first time I visited the Regional Justice Center in Kent and was
not selected for any jury pool. (They had movies!) More
recently, I visited District Court here in Bellevue. This month
I was at Superior Court in Seattle. In each of the three times
I have actually been in a jury pool, the defendant has been a
young black male. This morning I was a potential juror for a
murder trial. It would have lasted two weeks. This afternoon
(Wednesday) I am in another jury pool seeking a jury to hear a
drive-by shooting case. Tomorrow morning I’ll learn if I’m on
the jury (although, fortunately, I am number 44 of 50 in the
pool now.) This was an especially not fun day.
Thursday: After another hour of questions to the
potential jury members, the jury was chosen. They got to about
Juror #34 and let the rest of us go. I had a two-hour lunch
that I spent walking north along the Seattle waterfront and then
through Pike Place Market. The afternoon was spent waiting to
see if they’d need to fill yet another jury. But in the end
they let us go. Freedom!!! I walked up the nine blocks to
Swedish Hospital to visit our friend Delmer Owen. He had been
there seven days after receiving a pacemaker.
Delmer is 86 (his birth
date is November 4, 1918). Nancy met
him while teaching at UPC Day Camp a few years ago. He taught
Sunday school for 13 years until someone decided that the little
kids needed something other than the Bible. A big mistake.
His wife died years ago and he is quite alone. He told me over and over again how
happy he was that I’d come to visit him in the hospital. Hey, I
was in the neighborhood. Remembering “widows and orphans”
includes widowers I’m sure.
But I did celebrate my
freedom all the same. After visiting Delmer, I walked back
downtown and was just able to catch the 4:30PM showing of The
Fantastic Four. A basic super-hero plot, not as good as
either of the Spiderman movies, yet still fun. Home by
7:30PM and found Nancy out with the girls. They had been on a
shopping spree.
Statistics of Faith Polling data from the
2001 ARIS study, described below, indicate that:
81% of American adults identify themselves with a specific
religion:
76.5% (159 million) of Americans identify themselves as
Christian.
This is a major slide from 86.2% in 1990. Identification with
Christianity has suffered a loss of 9.7 percentage points in 11
years -- about 0.9 percentage points per year. This decline is
identical to that observed in
Canada
between 1981 and 2001. If this trend continues, then by
about the year 2042, non-Christians will outnumber the
Christians in the U.S.
The unaffiliated vary from a low of 3% in North Dakota to
25% in Washington State. "The six states with the highest
percentage of people saying they have no religion are all
Western states, with the exception of Vermont at 22%."
Nathanael and Jeannie Star in Taproot
Theatre's Production of Twelfth Night
 Taproot
Theatre's Acting Studio performed Twelfth Night in their
Shakespeare Supercamp this year. Nathanael played Duke
Orsino and Jeannie Beth played Fabian, servant to the Countess
Olivia. Brother and sister twins each thinking the
other drowned, a love triangle, mistaken identities,
a fool, a wedding and forged notes lead eventually to happy
endings all around.
 Orsino
loves Olivia who loves Viola (playing a man, Cesario, look-alike
for her twin Sebastian) while Viola loves Orsino. In the
end Orsino gets Viola (click above) and Olivia gets her brother
Sebastian. Once again, Jeannie's dancing in the finale was
especially wonderful. Annie and Susan Return from CMDA
Global Health Outreach Mission Trip to Honduras
They might return before midnight on July 31st but Annie's
homecoming will be celebrated on my two weeks of vacation August
1 to 14. They called us from Florida last week but news of
her big trip will have to wait until next month.
|
Taproot
Theatre's Acting Studio performed Twelfth Night in their
Shakespeare Supercamp this year. 