On Christian Doctrine by St. Augustine of Hippo

On Christian Doctrine is the first work of Augustine’s I’ve ever finished. The reading group I’m in read the first two sections as a launching point for our discussion of myth and symbol, and I decided to finish the whole thing. The book is essentially a primer on how to read the Bible and then, in the fourth section, how to present the knowledge attained therein.
 

All in all, On Christian Doctrine  is a very solid, though basic, examination of symbol, hermeneutics and eloquence. I like Augustine’s principle exegetical rule (partially, I must confess, because I’ve thought of a similar thing myself) which states that the interpretation of scripture should always be one that leads to the love of God and/or others since Jesus said “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets” (Mathew 22: 37-40).

However, I found myself occasionally annoyed and distracted when Augustine chose to voice his opinions on sexuality (it is only for procreation in his mind) and am indeed not a fan of his general asceticism. Mind you, I do believe there is a place for ascetic practices (I’m a fan of Dallas Willard after all) but I think they are always for training. It seems to me that Augustine believes in asceticism because of some platonic aversion to creation, but I could be wrong.

 I also found the last section difficult at times because it relied very heavily on Greco-Roman theory about rhetoric, and thus frequently used terms with which I am not familiar. Of course, were I wanting to do a more in depth study of that section, I could easily do some reading on that theory, and it’s certainly not a fault of the book itself. In essence though, Augustine says that eloquence is good, but wisdom is better. If you can have both, than do, but if you have to choose, choose wisdom.

All in all, this book is a good introduction to the reading of scripture and those interested in the thoughts of the church fathers should pick it up.

This Wednesday was the ordination Todd Hunter, David Loomis and Silas Tak Yin Ng to the position of bishop in the Anglican Mission in the Americas. The AMIA is a dioceses under the leadership of Rwanda, and is a missionary organization of Africa to the Americas. I attended the ordination at the invitation of my friend Paul, who is working with Todd in the launching of Holy Trinity Anglican Church, the first in a series of two hundred churches Todd hopes to start in the next five years. This is the story of that ordination, which took place in the First Church of the Nazarene in Pasadena.

We filed into the church, the worship group singing praise courses as we entered. Paul and I found a seat and began to talk with each other as we waited for the service to start. Then, from the back of the church, a resonating voice read the scripture and we all stood. The voice declared “The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him (Hab. 2:20). You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8)”. As the scripture finished, the organ began to play, and with solemnity and beauty the bishops and priests processed into the sanctuary, the cross going before them.

The procession and hymns completed, the congregation declared the confession of sins and received the absolution, and then the service turned to worship in praise choruses. It was simultaneously one of the strangest and one of the coolest things I have seen in a long time, as the dozen or more present bishops, decked in their full vestments, swayed and clapped to the modern worship music.

After the worship, we declared the Apostles’ Creed. I found this a little strange, since that creed is singular and is usually used in personal devotion, while the Nicene Creed is usually used for corporate declarations of faith. Still, the creed a wonderful summary of the Christian faith.

Following the creed were more prayers, the reading of scripture, a song of response and then the sermon came, and up to the pulpit stepped Rick Warren. He gave a message to the soon-to-be-ordained bishops on their responsibilities as leaders in the church, and the temptations they might fall into. It was a good, well spoken message, but what I really loved was what this service represented. Here you had the ordination of Americans to the bishopric in America, under the leadership of Africa, meeting in an Evangelical church and being spoken to by a non-denominational pastor. The service itself involved the worship of the protestant church, and the liturgy of the Anglican. As the pastor of the Nazarene church we met in said when he came up, “… the Nazarene church was founded by a rebellious Methodist, and the Methodist church was founded by a rebellious Anglican, so thank you for letting your rebellious grandchildren host you… for letting us truly be the Kingdom of God.”

After the sermon the candidates were examined by the Rwandan archbishop, consecrated and given new bibles, and we then gathered in for the passing of the peace, the offertory and finally the Lord’s Supper. After this, we sang the hymn of procession into the World.

I’m very excited about what Todd Hunter is doing with Holy Trinity, you can find out more about it on his website, on the Holy Trinity site, and on the site of Churches for the Sake of Others. Todd is an amazing teacher, and has a good understanding of the importance of spiritual development and the presence of the Kingdom in our lives, and I think something powerful is happening through AMIA, Holy Trinity and C4SO. If you’re looking for church and you live in the Orange County area, I highly recommend you check out Holy Trinity. The launching service of Holy Trinity is going to be on 9:00am September 27^th at Rock Harbor (more info here). And even if you’re not looking for a church, or you’re out of the area, please pray for the work that is being done.

Thank you all, and have a great weekend.

Vampires & crossesIt's a well-established fact that vampires can't abide crosses. There seems to be some confusion, however, as to why this is so.Vampire-cross I should note here, before we go on, that I believe in vampire stories. I don't mean that I believe these stories are "literally" true -- they're not that kind of story. But I believe they are true stories -- stories by which we tell ourselves true things so that we do not forget them.Vampire stories tell us, for example, than any of us can have great power if only we are willing to prey on others. Feed off the blood of others and great power will be yours. This is demonstrably true. It's how the pyramids were built. And Standard Oil.The stories also tell us that there's a downside to this predatory choice. You become a creature of the night, unable to stand in the light of day.And crosses will confound you.Some mistakenly think that this is because the cross is a holy symbol, imbued with religious power. But this is wrong. The symbol, like the thing itself, is powerless. And that's the point. That is why vampires can't tolerate it.Most vampires don't believe in the cross, but that hardly matters. It's the idea of the thing that gives them fits. The cross confronts vampires with their opposite -- with the rejection of power and its single-minded pursuit. It suggests that no one is to be treated as prey -- not even an enemy. The idea of the cross, in other words, suggests that vampires have it wrong, that they have it backwards, in fact, and that those others they regard as prey are actually, somehow, winning.This notion is incomprehensible for vampires. The one thing they're certain of, the thing that drives them and tells them who they are and how the world works and that they've got it all figured out is that the key to immortality is in choosing to be the predator rather than the prey. The idea that this might be wrong is so befuddling, so contradictory to everything they have chosen to be that it forces them to recoil. They can't get past it.It has become fashionable in modern vampire stories to portray these monsters as unaffected or somehow immune to the cross. Don't you believe it. This confusion arose due to the ridiculous, contradictorily cruciform objects being bandied about these days as "crosses." A filigreed gold or bejeweled cross refutes itself, denying its own representation of powerlessness. Likewise the oxymoronic martial crosses -- a problem since at least the time of Constantine -- that attempt to present themselves as sanctified symbols of power. Crosses like that aren't the least bit disturbing to a vampire -- they merely proclaim vampirism by other means. Vampires have been known, in fact, to have such crosses emblazoned on flags, or even to have tattoos of them etched into their undead flesh.So the apparent immunity of modern vampires to such crosses isn't what it seems. Sacrificial powerlessness still confounds them, but that idea is no longer quite so effectively signified by this particular symbol.

Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard

Abraham is the greatest, says Kierkegaard, and “the highest passion in a human being is faith”(Kierkegaard 144). This is wrong. Christ is greatest, and though faith, hope and love endure, “the greatest of these is love”(1 Corinthians 13:13). For this reason, I find Kierkegaard’s method in Fear and Trembling for building a Christian ethic utterly puzzling. Kierkegaard starts from the wrong place, taking signs that point towards Christ and love and making them the point. Fear and Trembling is an interesting book in many ways, but it certainly will not, as my friend promised, completely alter my understanding of morality.

I do not pretend that I fully understand Fear and Trembling. Much of what Kierkegaard has to say is put into Hegelian terms, and since I’ve never read Hegel this makes understanding difficult. I can gather from context the general terms of what is being said, but I ultimately feel like I’ve come away with an outline of what Kierkegaard said, and not the full depth of it. Furthermore, Kierkegaard also relies on Hegelian conclusions, and uses them as givens in his argument. Unfortunately, since I don’t know Hegel’s arguments, these premises are hardly givens to me. Like I said though, to my thinking he starts from the wrong place so thoroughly that his conclusions cannot help but miss the mark.

What I do understand of Kierkegaard I find immensely disturbing. The highest life, that of faith, is one of dread, horror and isolation. What is more, the Knight of Faith (as Kierkegaard calls him) must do whatever God asks of him without testing to see if it really is God asking, without seeking the wisdom of others, and without any reference at all to universal morality. The man of faith then, in Kierkegaard’s terms, is the monster my atheists friends think him to be.

I should say, however, that I am not completely disdainful of Fear and Trembling. Kierkegaard starts the book with several retellings of the story of Abraham and Isaac, subtly altering the story in ways that thereby change the meaning. This part of the book is enjoyable, and he does the same with various stories and myths throughout the book.

Ultimately, any student of philosophy should read this book because it is of such massive importance historically. Kierkegaard in many ways fathered the existential movement, and he certainly gave birth to Christian existentialism. This was one of the reasons that I read the book, because as much as I disagree with existentialism, I find it intriguing. Also, I have a friend who is a firm Christian existentialist, and I’d really like to understand where his ideas come from. Thankfully, I think I’m one step closer to that point now.  

Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card

When I finished Card’s excellent book Speaker for the Dead, I was looking forward to reading Children of the Mind more than Xenocide. The reason for this, is that Card introduced in Speaker a monastic order called the Children of the Mind of Christ . They intrigued me, and I assumed that Children of the Mind would be about them. It’s not. What it is about is all the weird, cheap and stupid ideas introduced at the end of the last book. These ideas are not very interesting, they allow for all kinds of dues ex machina moments and simultaneously create countless plot holes.What is more, these ideas don't really fit in the universe established in the first two books, making the reader feel cheated.

Children of the Mind is far from being the worst book ever, but it’s definitely the worst of Card’s books I’ve read. The book was, more than anything else, entirely uninspiring, and oftentimes rather boring. Most of the characters I really cared about were pushed to the side, and the plot drags on in melodramatic concern for an issue you know from the start is going to be resolved. It’s also incredibly annoying that one of the two major dilemmas of the book was already resolved in the last one, and Card simply chose to ignore that fact.

The one side plot I found interesting was one involving the search for and interaction with a new alien race. What Card did best in his first two books was making his aliens truly alien and interesting (actually, another one of the problems with Xenocide and Children of the Mind both is that they spend too much time in the minds of the aliens, to the point where they really become less alien and less interesting). Unfortunately, this search is something that he leaves hanging at the end of this book, though he’s promised another one to resolve it and I’ll probably end up reading it when it comes.

Ultimately, Children of the Mind rather crashes and burns and, combined with Xenocide, makes for a disappointing follow up to two excellent novels. Xenocide might be worth reading for the characters, but there’s really no reason to read Children of the Mind. If you take my advice, you’ll skip this book.

A brief meditation on scripture:

Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets. (Mathew 22: 37-40, emphasis added)

This then, is the measure of Christian law – when you read the commands of scriptures, ask yourself if what you think they are saying aligns with this. Does your interpretation concern loving God or your neighbor? If not, then you’re probably reading it wrong.

Xenocide is… odd. I am not, really, fully certain of what I think of the book. As anyone who’s read my reviews knows, I loved Ender’s Game and thought Speaker for the Dead was even better. Naturally, despite the fact that I’d heard it was not as good, I picked up the next book in the series and it is, frankly, rather average. This isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy the book, it had an interesting enough plot and still concerned the lives of characters that I had come to care about over the course of the first two books, but nothing about it made it stand above the crowd.

 Of course, none of this would have made Xenocide odd, it is certain events later in the story, building off some weird mix of string theory and Mormonism described earlier in the book, that lead to the incredible strangeness of the book. Orson Scott Card is himself a Mormon, and he has every right to create a universe consistent with his beliefs, I would do the same, but this nevertheless makes the story take some very weird turns. Unfortunately, I can’t really talk about these events without major spoilers, so I’ll just leave it at that.

If you’re a fan of Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead, I’d recommend picking this up just to follow the stories of the characters from those books, but be prepared for some bizarre events later in the story.

Well, I arrived home yesterday evening safely, and am now preparing to settle back into the routines of my daily life. As some may have noticed, I didn’t post up about the last two days of my journey, the reason being that very little happened. Basically, we left Portland and drove for twelve hours, had amazing pizza at Mt. Mike’s in San Jose and stayed with Tyler’s mom’s best friend, then drove home the next day. All of us switched of driving, and when it wasn’t our turn to drive we mostly read or napped. Probably the most dramatic part of our journey was seeing the massive plume of smoke from the fires out in LA. That situation is definitely something to be praying for, or even volunteering assistance if you can in any way.           

Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by N.T. Wright

Before I get into any longwinded discussion of N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope, let me just say that it’s absolutely amazing. I picked this book up and could hardly put it down, its presentation of Christian doctrine is incredible and for many it will be revolutionary (though it is really the historic understanding of things). Get this book, read it, then give it to your friends so they can read it. Don’t just take my word for it either, Dallas Willard, Rob Bell and Richard Foster all praise the book, and their recommendation should carry a bit more weight than mine I think. Now, on to why I think this book is so incredible.

 I picked up Surprised by Hope while visiting Regent College, the seminary in Canada where I hope to do my masters education. I’d been given a $25 gift card by the college, and was looking around the store for something to pick, finding myself quite overwhelmed by the sheer quality and quantity of books available. One of the concepts which I’ve been thinking a lot about recently, has been the importance of embodiment, specifically as it relates to the biblical and historic conception of the afterlife. Thus, when asked if I needed help finding anything, I asked to see if they had any books on that subject, and I was immediately taken to several (the man knew what I meant and knew where to find it without looking it up, is that cool or what?). As I said, there were several, but in the end I decided to pick up Surprised by Hope, and as you already know I was not disappointed.

 The book is subtitled Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, and it addresses the true biblical hope for our futures, the significance of the bodily resurrection of Christ and how these two things relate to the mission of the church in the world today. This is a book bursting with hope, and filled with the message that our lives as Christians have deep significance in the here and now. The book addresses many of the false ideas that have grown up in Western civilization about the biblical understanding of human nature and the afterlife, and seeks to recover the historical understanding of these things, which as Dallas Willard says “uniquely meets the challenge facing the Church by recovering the original, radical understanding of resurrection, salvation and the Good news of life now in the Kingdom of God.”

If I have one criticism of the book, it’s that I don’t think Wright is quite emphatic enough in emphasizing that building for the Kingdom must not take the form of a Theocracy. Mind you, he says this, but I just wish he’d made it more clear.

Anyway, as I said, read this book, and hopefully it will change your reading of the Bible, and also your life.

Our luggage packed, and a wonderful breakfast of pancakes eaten, Tyler and I bid farewell to our hosts. Saying goodbye to people is always tough, and I hope I can maintain a friendship with them, they are truly awesome people. Also, Daniel is still ridiculously cute, and was even more talkative this morning. After our farewells, we drove the car over to Regent and picked up Nate, who had once again been driven there by his host, and I picked up my free cup of coffee. It was a very good cup, neither too strong nor too weak, with a nice rich and nutty flavor.

With Nate’s luggage securely placed inside the Scion, we set out from Regent and deeper into Vancouver to view the famous Stanley Park. Curiously, Tyler’s parents had actually flown up to Vancouver the day before, and we thought to meet them in Stanley Park, but, alas, they had to catch a small plane over to Vancouver Island. We had also, by the way, just missed seeing some of our Southern California friends when we were in San Francisco. Seems like everyone is traveling these days. Anyway, about a half-hour after we set out we arrived in Stanley Park.

Stanley Park is, like the Pacific Spirit Park, a little too epic to rightly be called a park. It is essentially, a forest located out on a peninsula. There are walking paths, bike paths, beaches, a lake, a lagoon, restraints, a rose garden, and probably plenty of other things we missed. Our time in the park started with a stroll through the rose garden and onto a path that led us into the forest and past Beaver Lake. Really, Beaver lake hardly counts as a lake, having hardly any water anymore (a sign on its banks calls it “The Incredible Shrinking Lake”). After passing the lake, we came down to a walking path which circled the peninsula and actually walked almost the entire circumference of the park. Along the way, we stopped to eat lunch at a beachside stand. Tyler and I ate Paninis and Nate had a salmon burger. The path around the park was raised above the waterline, and for the most part the beach it passed was rocky, but there were actually two sand beaches along the way, one of which had a swimming pool behind it.

Anyway, after enjoying our trip through the park, we set out on the road and drove all the way from Vancouver to Portland, where we’ll be staying the night. Tomorrow we get up super early for the twelve-hour drive to San Jose. Wewt.

By the way, for those of you keeping track, in two days in Canada, Tyler and I never had an actual conversation with a single Canadian. Our hosts were Australian, and our guide to Regent American. Nate, however, stayed with Canadian hosts.

One of Nate’s hosts works at Regent, and had to be there at eight in the morning, so she took him with her when she drove to work. Because of this, Tyler and I rose early so we could meet Nate at Regent close to eight, though our actual appointment was not until eleven in the morning. Our hosts actually live within walking distance of the college (and are awesome and don’t own a car), so after showers and a breakfast of toast we were shown the direction to Regent by Nathan. By this point, by the way, Daniel had become quite talkative, though his vocabulary was limited to “Dada,” “Daddy,” “Mama,” “Mommy,” and “Uh oh” combined with several grunts and a generous amount of pointing and facial expressions. This was, naturally,  ridiculously cute.

Nate had decided to sequester himself in a far hidden corner of the library, so it took us some time to find him but we did eventually, after which we took a short walk around part of the University of British Columbia campus (where Regent is located) and we then returned to Regent. The college is entirely located in one building, with the library and administration in the basement, as well as several classrooms; the bookstore, coffee shop, chapel and more classrooms on the first floor; and several more classes and offices on the second floor.  We still had some time before we were supposed to be given our tour of the building, so we poked around the bookstore and bought drinks and pastries at the coffee shop. As it turned out, a lot in the bookstore was on sale and I bought a CD lecture for half-off, figuring that’d be a good way to get an idea about the quality of teaching at the school.

Finally, we went down to administration at met Matt, the man responsible for taking care of visitors like us, and he showed us around the building and then sat down to talk with us about various details of the schools, from financing to programs. Matt is an American, so he was able to give us a lot of information on what U.S. Citizens have to do to attend Regent. Regent, by the way, is a Seminary which trains people in theology who won’t necessarily go on to be pastors or theology teachers (though they certainly do train these as well) and with a focus on the goodness of God’s creation (and new creation). One thing I love about the program  is that they present a multitude of orthodox views on various subjects and allow students to come to their own conclusions about them. Anyway, Matt gave us plenty of materials to look at, as well as giving us each a coupon for a free cup of coffee from the café, a CD lecture on the essence of Anglicanism (Regent is not really an Anglican seminary, but they have an Anglican studies program that supplements the education of individuals who want to go on to Anglican ministry) and a $25 gift certificate to the book store.  We thanked Matt for his hospitality, time and the information he had given us, and then walked across the street to eat at a Sushi place recommended by Matt. Apparently, Vancouver has really good Sushi and Nate and I found what we had to be quite good, though Tyler complained about his. To each his own I guess.

We finished our lunches, and then went back to the Regent bookstore to take advantage of our gift certificates. Tyler bought Blue Like Jazz and Through Painted deserts by Donald Miller, and I bought a book called Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright (one of the foremost New Testament scholars of our age) on the hope of the resurrection. Nate didn’t find anything yet, but he’ll be able to use the gift certificate to buy books through the Regent bookstore’s website.

After our time at the bookstore, we returned to Tyler and my hosts’ house, where Tyler’s car was parked. We planned on heading over to Stanley Park, but realized there wasn’t going to be enough time to do both this and still get Nate back in time for his host to take him home. Instead, we went for a walk in the Pacific Spirit Park, which is within walking distance of Regent. It’s rather odd to call it a park really, since it’s more of a giant patch of forest with trails, or in other words, totally wicked awesome. Sadly, we didn’t actually get any pictures of this park, so you’ll just have to take my word for how awesome it is. There are thousands-upon-thousands of evergreen trees stretching high into the air, between them and the thick underbrush snake a multitude of paths. We probably walked for about forty minutes or so and covered maybe a tenth of the park.

Finally, we returned to our respective hosts. Tyler and I had delicious barbequed and spiced hamburgers, and Nate had barbequed chicken . Tyler and I also had a desert of cherries with our hosts, and an Australian sparkling beverage. After diner, Tyler and I went up stairs to read and eventually fell asleep.

Let me just say that we really appreciated the hospitality of Regent and our hosts. Talking with Nathan and Mareesa was also great fun. It was interesting to note though, that because of our common language and religion, it was easy to forget we came from different cultured. Tyler and I kept assuming they'd know things, like what Calvary Chapel is, or where Georgia is, that they didn't know. For their part, our hosts did a better job than us at recognizing things we might not know about. Oh, and I was apparently the first American to ever request black over Herbal tea in their house. Yay.

No night of restless sleep could keep us from our adventures, and so we headed back into Seattle for more time of exploration before heading to Canada. Our first stop was a little open air nautical museum  displaying a collection of wooden ships, from old tug boats to steamers. The ships were cool, free to look at, and even the parking was free (which seems to be a rarity in cities). Adjacent to the museum was a cruise yacht offering tours of the harbor and we decided to find out how much tickets would be. The captain informed us that, normally, it would be two hours for $22, but then gave us coupons to get on for $11. Not a bad deal, so we bit. Ultimately, it turned out that we were the only ones on the tour, so we got a private two hour tour of the bay for $11 – even better.
Our captain was a slightly creepy, but amiable older man who was happy to inform us where the Vancouver nude beach was when we told him we were going up there to see a seminary. Something tells me he probably didn’t know what a seminary is, or at least he didn’t hear us right. The tour was great fun, Nate and I both bought lunches on the boat, and we got to get little bits of history and information about the city. Some of my favorite sights were the floating homes within the bay. They’re a group of old, grandfathered in settlements built back in the 20s to avoid property taxes. Some of them are fancy little mansions, while others are little more than shacks, but they all look like they’d be cool places to live. Some of the neatest ones had porches crammed full of all kinds of potted plants. This city has in modern times severely limited the expansion of these communities, and almost the only way to get such a house is to buy one from a previous owner and either use it or demolish it and build your own.

In addition to the floating homes, we saw a whole series of crazy-huge waterfront mansions owned by some of the world’s richest people, including the house of Bill Gates himself (interestingly, I’d say the house was moderate in terms of Gates’ income, but that’s not saying much).These houses were mostly built right down on the beach, which was backed by a short cliff. Each of the homes had a garage on the top of the cliff with an incline elevator/gondola to get down the cliff. I think that in some ways this part of the tour was designed to arouse envy in us, and while a beach front house would be nice, the things many of these people did with their money were just absurd to the point of making them almost clownish. For example, one of the other founders of Microsoft bought a huge yacht with a helicopter pad, then he got bored with it and bought an even bigger one, and finally got a massive one with two helicopter pads.

So, we viewed the homes of the rich, as well as various bridges, famous boats and public buildings and we then returned to shore. After this, we drove back to downtown Seattle and spent about an hour meandering through the Pike Place Marketplace. The Marketplace is a cool covered market with produce, craft and food places packed tightly inside. In addition to the shops, there were several street performers playing, which if you ask me are the best part of any marketplace.

Finally, we got back on the road and headed for the Canadian border, another rather uneventful drive. We arrived at the border, which among other things meant we had to navigate the old fashioned way, because Maggie doesn’t have any Canada maps. The length of the line at the border was nothing compared to the monstrosity that is the Mexican border, but there was a bit of a line, and we ended up behind an SUV from California.

“Hello Fellow Californian.”

But alas, the Canadian border police kept up the car for a long time, probably suspicious of them because they had giant USC stickers on the back. Apparently the Canadians have good sense. (I now wink at my friends from USC). We, however, got through without any trouble. One really clever thing we discovered shortly after crossing the border was that the lanes on the freeway are reversible  for purposes of traffic control.  Before entering Canada, we had written down directions to the place where Tyler and I were staying, but we missed our turn and had a massive amount of difficulty finding our way back onto our route, but we eventually did and soon afterward found our way to our hosts’ townhouse. Our hosts were a nice Australian couple (named Nathan and Mareesa) with a single one-year-old boy (Daniel), and they were wonderfully hospitable, helping us with directions and feeding us well for both breakfast and lunch. That night, they fed us a hearty meal of spaghetti and answering my bombardment of questions about Regent College.

I really enjoyed looking at Nathan’s collection of books, which demonstrated a broad and intelligent theological base (and of course reflected the theological bent of Regent). Best of all I think, was a book on quantum mechanics and theology written by a man who is both an Anglican priest and a theoretical physicist. Though I haven’t read the book, I would imagine this background makes him suited to writing an actually quality analysis of the subject, as opposed to the steaming piles of crap found in such works as What the *Bleep* Do We Know?

Daniel was also a lot of fun, though rather quite at first. After dinner, we drove Nate to his hosts’ house further into the city, and then returned to our hosts’ for a dessert of Strawberries and Cream. After dessert, we bid our hosts goodbye and settled in for a night of good sleep on actual beds (well… a bed and a mattress, but infinitely better than sleeping in the car).

A night of sleeping in a car is hard, probably not so hard as sleeping on an airplane, but it’s definitely not bed-status, nor even as good as a floor. Nevertheless, after finishing working on the blog I posted last night I settled into a relatively comfortable position and then, with the help of rain pattering on the roof, I finally fell back to sleep and didn’t wake again until morning. Normally I can sleep soundly pretty much anywhere… if I feel tired, but my body decided that feeling sleepy in a car at night was a bad idea. The same thing happened to my friends, unfortunately,  and they had a more difficult night than I did, but they managed to get some sleep. So now it’s morning, we’re driving along on the freeway, and it’s time to finish yesterdays story.

Driving up to Seattle proved rather uneventful, Nate read more of Halo: First Strike, and I read for a while myself until car sickness started to make that impossible. Our route was nothing near as striking as the Oregon coastal route, though we got some stunning glimpses of white and blue of Mt. St. Helens through the tall green trees that lined the freeway.

The jutting retro-futuristic spire of the space needle came into view around two in the afternoon. Finding parking proved in some ways as difficult as it had been in every city, but we had a bit more experience by this point and were familiar with the pay-to-park system used for street parking, as we’d encountered it in Portland. We ended up parking some distance from the Space Needle and walking there. Naturally, the entrance fee for the famous landmark was outrageous, costing a full $15 just to ride up on an elevator at get a view of the city, but of course we bit. You can’t go to Seattle as a tourist for the first time and not go on the Space Needle. Getting the gorgeous views of the Seattle skyline, bay and mountains was quite worth it though, and perhaps more interesting to me was the information posted up on the history and construction of the building.

 At the time the Space Needle was built, Seattle had won the right to host the World Fair by pushing its commitment to science and to becoming a 21st century city… almost half a century early. As part of this World Fair, the Space Needle was built to exhibit the grandeur of Seattle’s vision for the future, just as the Eiffel Tower had been built for the World Fair in Paris. One fact about its construction that I found very interesting, was that they decided to have the center of gravity be only a few feet off the ground, this meant they had to have a massive amount of steel and concrete underground as a counterbalance for the Needle. Ultimately, they spent 24 hours pouring concrete for the foundation, which is still the longest time on record.

After our journey up the Space Needle, we went across the street to a little café to have lunch. It was a pleasant little place, with outside seating giving us a good view of the Space Needle. Nate and I had a Chinese dish that was quite good, while Tyler had a BLT. I also had a honey nut latte, which was way too sweet. Though we had a good time, the cashier at the place seemed like she really didn’t want to be there, so that put something of a damper on the experience.

Our bellies fed, we walked back to the car to get more time in our parking spot and then went to the most amazing place ever (well… the second most amazing, the most amazing place ever is Powell’s Books) – the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. We all had a blast walking through the place, looking at all the sci-fi props, signed first edition books and the plethora of information on the history of science fiction. They also had some bits of advice on writing science fiction from some of the greats, most of which was absolute crap, but hey, just because you can perform it don’t mean you can teach it. For example, Ray Bradbury mumbled some mystical mumbo-jumbo about how you had to let the inner-man, not yourself write, and Harlan Ellison said profoundly that the deep secret to writing good was to hear the music. Whatever that means. He repeated the statement several times without ever explaining what he meant by it, and he also managed to call community college writing teachers worthless hacks.

Attached to the Sci-fi museum, and entered on the same ticket, was a musical experience museum on the history of Rock n’ Roll. It was cool, and I think Tyler really liked it, but I wasn’t nearly as exciting for me. Mostly, it consisted of lots and lots of displays of different guitars, and information on the instrument and the musicians. It was real cool, but seemed a tad monotonous to me.

Having gotten our money’s worth and more out of the museums, we set out to find dinner, a task which ultimately took us two whole hours. First, Tyler decided we’d eat out of downtown, and we agreed to try and find something we hadn’t had before. So, we asked our GPS to list restaurant categories in the area, and African cuisine came up. That sounded cool, so I clicked on it and found a lot of places, mostly Ethiopian. We decided on one of these, and drove about a half of an hour to get there, only to find it closed. Nearby, Maggie said, was another restraint called Zulu East African food, so we headed out that way and found… a house. Close to an hour wasted already, I began searching for food on the web using my phone and we finally decided on a German Sausage place, which turned out to be in downtown Seattle. Luckily, it was late by now and parking after six is free, so we drove the half-hour back to downtown and parked. We never did find the German place, and most of the places along the street were far too expensive, but we finally found a neat little fish taco place where we all ordered big fish burritos and had a hearty meal. It was also nice to see that the fish they used was caught sustainably.

Finally, we set out to find a place to sleep, heading to a truck stop I found by way of my phone… only it turned out it was a park-and-ride, not a truck stop, and that it explicitly forbade overnight car sleeping. Lame. We searched around on the net for a while to find a camp site or rest stop we could go to, and I finally called Ernie’s Truck Stop to see if we could park there and sleep the night over. It was not, I gathered, something they did on an official basis, but they told us to park in the employee parking on the side and let them know we were there. After rearranging our luggage so we could all get at least semi-recumbent, we set to the difficult task of trying to sleep.

The 76 looks like most any other, wider perhaps to allow for the trucks to come in and fuel up. We've parked here, with the permission of the propriotor, in order to sleep. The windows are down a crack, but even with that they've fogged up thick from all of our body heat. Outside, the city is quite, eery. The good news, though, is cops apparently come around here often, so that makes us feel safe (bias?). Anyway, it's getting on towards two in the morning and I'm writing this now because I woke from sleep and I know I won't be able  to fall asleep again for a little while. So, I'll sit here for a while and I'll type, and when I think I can sleep again, I'll lay down my head and continue this later.

Books began our morning, books and breakfast at McDonalds. Our kind hosts wanted to feed us again, but they didn't feel like cooking, so Tyler's grandad drove us over to the McDonalds (and we saw an Albertsons!) and bought us breakfast. Most of us ordered this breakfast combo, and it wasn't nearly so bad as expected. It came with a potato patty, a muffin, pancakes and sausage. I avoided the sausage, which glissened thick with enough grease to make me sick fast, but the rest tasted pretty normal and went down easy. And of course, I deeply appreciated once again our host's hospitality.

After breakfast, we went back to the house to wait for the postman and my passport (my mom had shipped it up by overnight). For a while, we sat around and read. Tyler read Ender's Game, Nate Halo: First Strike, and myself Red Mars and Fear and Trembling. Eventually, we packed and loaded up the car, and then, with near providencial timing, the mailman came just as we finished up, and I gladly took my passport in hand. I called up my mom to let her know it'd come, and also told me about my sister watching Pan's Labyrinth. My phonecall finished, we bid our wonderful hosts goodbye (though we'll see them soon) and got back on to road and on towards Washington. I looked forward to seeing Seattle, but Portland is an amazing city and I will miss her.

Anyway, I'm starting to feel sleepy again, so I'll return later to tell of our adventures in Seattle.

Today, I called to let my mom know that my passport had arrived in the mail. I'd forgotten it, and she had shipped it up to me using overnight express. That was a huge weight off my chest, but that's not really what this post is about. This post is about a movie.

When I called, my mother told me that my sister and her husband had watched Pan's Labyrinth and, understandably hated it. As they saw it, it was a film about a bad man doing bad things, and what was to like about that? Also understandably, my mother was concerned that I would like something with that  content. So here's my apologetic for the movie. (slight spoilers ahead)

As I see it, Pan's Labyrinth is not about evil, but instead about the power of love and myth in the face of evil. The story is set in fascist Spain, and the man of power in the story is a horrible, sick and twisted man. It seems he has all the power, but a little girl defies him through her love for her mother and her fable (which may or may not be real)  and in the end he looses everything. The little weak girl topples the wicked giant, though not without terrible sacrifice.

This is not unlike life as I, a Christian, see it. The world in which we live is ugly and brutish, and evil appears to have strength, but as we become like children and cast off all power to become filled with love and gentleness, becoming the image of Christ, we begin to conquer this demonic kingdom, not by the force of greater more brutish power, but by the redemptive love and mercy of God. Indeed, this is how Christ bound up Satan, not with great armies or mighty displays of destructive power, but, first, through becoming the least of men; second, through acts of love, restoration and healing; and finally, through humility unto death, "even death on a cross".

That's is why I like Pan's Labyrinth.

The church sat on a street corner, an old white wooden building – gothic they called it, though I didn’t see it. It was called the Old Church, called that because it was indeed the oldest church in all of Portland, established in the 1800s. We had found it the same way we’d found the park, by way of the AAA travel guide, and we came as tourists. After negotiating the great difficulty to navigation and parking offered by downtown Portland, my friends and I found ourselves standing before the church, wondering whether we could enter, and which of the many doors to take.

As we sat and looked on, one of the doors creaked opened and a couple walked silently out. Through the opening, I caught a glimpse of parishioners in worship. Of course we should have thought, this being Sunday, that there might be a church service there, but I at least had assumed for some reason that because it was a tourist destination it would not still house a congregation. Besides, it was close to 11:00 by this point, and I had figured that even if there was a church that met there, it would have been out by now. Turning around, we noticed the sign set on the side of the street, advertising the Presbyterian service meeting at 10:00. Of course, we could have gone in at this point, but we felt a little self-conscious, especially since the parishioners we’d seen exit had definitely been dressed better than we were.

While navigating the maze of the downtown streets, we had seen another church of interesting architecture, a heavy stone building that looked like the chapel from some old medieval college town. This building also advertised itself as being from the 1800s and we decided to check it out while we waited for the service to end. We walked up the block to the church, which itself advertised having a Bible Church meeting within its walls at 10:00. Portlanders, apparently, do not believe in early church. We wandered back around the block and came once more to the entrance of the Old Church. Still uncertain of whether we should enter, it was decided that we should wait until 11:30, which was only ten minutes away, and then enter whether they exited or not. 11:30 rolled around, and while a few parishioners had left the building, it was obvious that the service was still on. We marched up to the door of the church, Tyler going first, and quietly entered. Inside, a beautiful chorus was raised, praising God for His amazing love for which He died for us. While not large, the building was nevertheless impressively full. We stood there in the back of the church watching, and eventually Nate and I joined in with the chorus of the verse. It was Nate who pointed out that we had walked in on the end of communion. Around this time, another man entered from off the street and stood in the back with us.

After this, the pastor gave a benediction, blessing all there that they would be filled with the hope of Christ, and then began singing the doxology (interesting to me that it would be after communion) and he then quickly walked to the back of the church to greet the members of his church as they left. He greeted us, and the other man, warmly and invited us to come again if we so wished. We, of course, responded that we were out of state, but his invitation was genuine enough that were I from Portland, I think I would have come back. The words he said were familiar to me, but it seemed his heart was genuinely into his hospitality. This is especially notable considering how underdressed and uncomfortable we were. On first impression, I liked this pastor very much. Had we thought of it, it would have been nice to have attended the whole service. Oh well.

We left the church a short time later and got into Tyler’s car. Our next destination, which had been recommended to us by our hosts, was Multnomah Falls, the second tallest waterfall in the nation, and Oregon’s tallest. Being in Oregon, the parking for the Falls was beastly, with a long line of cars circling around a tiny parking lot. Lucky for us, a car left its spot right as we were coming up to it and we got prime parking.

An old looking gray stone building sits at the bottom of the trail up to the falls, housing the bathroom, gift shop and information center, as well as a number of coffee and snack stands. After breaking to use the restroom, we ducked into the information center to grab a map and then past up the food stands to head up the trail. We once again had packed sandwiches with us, as well as bottles of water and we carried these with us. I had expected something of a hike before we reached a spot where we could view the falls, so I was struck all the more by its stunning beauty when we rounded a corner of the building and the falls came suddenly into view. Multnomah Falls is a gorgeous double cascade, the water roars down from between green trees on the cliffs far overhead, splashing into a pool and then passing under a bridge to fall again. The scale alone is incredible (and sadly is not captured at all by photographs) and the brown moss covered rocks are entirely beautiful. At the bottom of the first fall, a great gouge has been cut in the cliff side by erosion and all the rocks there gleam in the sunlight. Perhaps my favorite part of all were the little rivulets of white water that split off from the main waterfall to trickle down their own paths.

After gazing at the Fall for some time from this vantage point, we walked up the path further to the bridge that crossed the falls and Nate and Tyler took more footage with their cameras. Even here, some distance from the fall itself, we could feel the mist of water on our faces. Going on from there, we wound our way up the switchback trail that moved up the side one of the cliffs near the waterfall. Even on the steep ground between the switchbacks of the trail, trees and ferns grew thick on the ground. Shortcuts between the switchbacks were explicitly forbidden on this trail, and so we wound the way up. Crowds were thick closer to the bottom, but thinned quickly as we made our way up the trail.
Along the way, we paused to eat our sandwiches at a spot that gave us a view not of the waterfall, but of the Columbia River snaking away below. I don’t know how high we got on the trail, though I know I pushed myself further than my body really wanted to go. Really, I wanted to find the top of the trail, but Tyler decided it was time to turn back and so we headed down. Someday I’d like to return and find the top of the trail. On our way down, I decided to run the trail as much as I could, mainly because this was actually easier than trying to walk down hill, but I had to slow down as I returned to more crowded areas. Running down was fun, but I can definitely say that if I did that on a regular basis my hips would be shot, for I could feel every single impact in them.

Ultimately, we spent about an hour at Multnomah Falls and then returned back to Portland. Before going to Tyler’s grandfather’s house, we stopped at a giant Goodwill that Nate and Tyler wanted to check out. I didn’t have any particular interest in going in, but I enjoyed seeing what books they had. I almost picked up a copy of Rendezvous with Rama which is a Hugo and Nebula Award winner, but thought better of it. For now, I need to conserve my money.
 

Portland is a beautiful city, and my time here so far has been wonderful, but before I talk about our day of adventures in the city, I must first backtrack to some events of the night before that happened after the posting of my blog. After Tyler popped the mattress (the duct tape ultimately did not hold by the way) he and Nate went out to the car to double check that they both had something very important – their passports. Nate came in and fished through his bag and revealed it, and in that moment I realized with horror the fact that I had forgotten mine. My mind raced to find a solution, and for a few terrible seconds all seemed hopeless – we would not  be going to Canada. Thankfully, we thought of a solution, though it does mean us spending a bit more time in Portland. That’s not so bad though, because, as I said, Portland is a beautiful city.

Our morning started with sausage and eggs, and we shortly afterward set out on our exploration of Portland. We carried with us a bag of sandwiches that our awesome hosts made for us to take. Our first destination we knew for certain, it had been set in our minds long before our coming to Oregon; we were going to make the great pilgrimage to Powell’s City of Books – the world’s largest used and new bookstore. Getting there proved to be rather difficult, as our GPS wanted us to take the 5 North to the 405 (Oregon’s version there-of) North, which was closed. Thankfully, we stayed on the 5 and the GPS figured out another route. This route took us over a huge bridge that crossed the Columbia river. On our way over we got a spectacular view of Portland’s riverside Cityscape. I’m generally not much for cityscapes, but this view was incredible. We arrived in downtown Portland and ran into a different navigation problem – that area of the city has more one way streets than downtown Los Angeles, making it into a veritable maze. We did, finally, find our way into the parking structure for Powell’s, which was small and difficult to navigate, but we got our spot and headed into the book store… and it was worth it.

 Words… words can’t describe how fantastic Powell’s is, though the parking sucked. It was a giant building with four floors packed full of all kinds of books. Secular philosophy had a whole aisle dedicated to philosophy, plus an extra bookshelf (your average Barnes & Noble has maybe four shelves), several aisles dedicated to Christian stuff (including sections on Christian mysticism, church history and theology) and almost an entire floor dedicated to science fiction. It was a little depressing to see, however, that the Christian prophecy section only had premillennial dispensationalist works, but at least it was small. I ultimately did not buy anything, though I was sorely tempted by a signed first edition of The Speed of Dark (one of the best sci-fi books I’ve ever read) but it was $150, which is out of my price range. Tyler and Nate bought books though, Tyler getting Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Pygmy  and giant book on chess, and Nate getting Empire by Orson Scott Card and several books on various aspects of the military.

After our pilgrimage to this Mecca of literature, we turned to the AAA travel guide Nate’s dad had given us to determine where to go next. The guide mentioned several incredible sounding places, and we ended up settling on Washington Park. Now, I live in Huntington Beach, and so I’ve got a really awesome park a quick drive away from my house, but it is nothing compared to Washington Park. Within the bounds of the park are a zoo, a Japanese garden, a rose garden and a massive arboretum with hours worth of walking trails and thousands of trees. We ate lunch when we first arrived, after which we played on the playground’s seesaw (which Nate tried to kill me with… twice). After this, we walked up to the rose garden and wandered its paths, smelling the sweet fragrance of the flowers. Sadly, Tyler can’t smell the roses, and so couldn’t enjoy that part of the garden’s splendor. From the rose garden, we walked up to the Japanese gardens, which turned out to have an entrance fee. I at least considered paying, but I wanted to check out how much the zoo would cost first. The guide at the gardens told us the zoo was rather far away, and that we could take a bus there if we wanted, but we decided to walk.

The guide pointed out to us the Wildwood Path, which snaked back behind the park through the thick woods of the arboretum. The path started with a switchback climb upwards. Cutting across this path, were smaller paths, made by animals or more adventuresome people, and we took several of these shortcuts for the challenge they offered. We ultimately hiked around for several hours, without ever backtracking and the whole time we never came to the zoo. With the trees and ferns gathered thick enough to make dusk on the path we traveled, I felt like a man transported back in time to some primeval forest. By far the best part of this journey was when we emerged from the darkness of the woods onto a high green meadow. From there, we could see the arboretum trees stretched out bellow us, beyond them the city, and in the far distance the great blue-white peaks of Mt. Reiner and Mt. St. Helens.

Eventually, we found our way back to the car and returned to Tyler’s grandfather’s house. Here we’ve had our dinner, and spent the last few hours reading. Tomorrow, we’re heading out to a local waterfall, and maybe also visiting the old gothic church in Portland. So far, I really love this city, and it’s the only major city I’ve ever been able to say that of on first impression. I even think I could live here.