Spain, Rocky and Turns

30 07 2010

On the 11th of July the Empire State Building was exceptionally lit up in red and yellow. Why? To pay tribute to Spain’s first victory in the World Cup (the sporting event with the largest worldwide audience). In Spain, literally millions of people were out in the streets joining the biggest party the nation has ever held (Ana, my wife, and I missed the party as our car decided to break down the day before!).

Interestingly, for the first time in World Cup history a country lost its opening match in the competition but was crowned world champions at the end. This dramatic turn made Spain’s triumph even more extraordinary. We all seem to appreciate such unexpected turns, don’t we?

To use another example related to sports, let’s consider the second movie of the series Rocky (when Sylvester Stallone was still fit!), released in 1979. Rocky Balboa once again fights Apollo Creed, the heavyweight champion. Creed dominates Balboa throughout the combat and by the last round is clearly winning on points. Suddenly, an unexpected turn takes place. Creed is knocked down by Rocky, who also falls down in exhaustion.  Both men lie worn out and badly injured on the ring. However, on the count of 9, Rocky is able to pull himself up and becomes the new champion.

Dr. Jerry Lewis, a specialist in sociology of sports, observes the same pattern in various sports movies and calls it the “Rocky message”.[1] A twist surprisingly occurs and the underdog unexpectedly becomes the winner.

I wonder if you agree with me, but I have the impression that each human being carries the desire to see the “Rocky message” become a reality in their lives. I don’t mean it in the sense of obtaining victory against other people. I refer to the deep craving to experience “turns” from loss to gain, from despair to hope, from sorrow to joy, from isolation to inclusion, from indifference to love. In the end, we all want our accomplishments to be greater than our mistakes and our conquests more numerous than our defeats.

I find it quite striking that Jesus’ biographers describe him as being a friend to the “losers” of his society and actually causing the “turn” in their lives. Peter, Mary Magdalene, Martha, Matthew, Zacchaeus and Jairus are some examples of a very long list. Jesus boldly argued that God was willing to give anyone the opportunity to play another game in life. Moreover, he actually seemed to say that with God any loser would become a winner. So I guess I have hope!

Hélder Favarin


[1] Jerry M. Lewis, Sociology of Sports, Wadsworth Sociology Module, p. 8.




On food and friends

28 07 2010

I’m an unrepentant lover of good food. There is nothing better than a pungent combination of spices and the beautiful color of fresh produce to enliven the senses and transport you away from a busy stressful day. More recently, I’ve taken this appreciation to the next level, cooking meals from scratch for guests, and I’ve found that it can be quite fun to make a full day of it. This usually starts with a morning cup of coffee, reading through cookbooks while trying to think of how best to accommodate the tastes of my guests. Then I walk up the hill to pull together as many of the ingredients as I can for the meal at a Saturday farmer’s market. In years past, we’ve enjoyed growing our own ingredients fresh in a garden, taking advantage of the opportunity to grow vegetables that are cheaper, tastier, more fun, and far more socially responsible. For larger meals my wife and I have also discovered that it can be quite fun to plan out seating arrangements, placing complementary personalities next to one another and bringing together friends that we know will enjoy one another’s company. This all culminates, of course, in the meal itself, and I can recall several that stick in my mind as a transcendent moment of bliss. Just the right combination of people, place, conversation, and flavors, can really create a permanently lasting memory.

All of this experience flows into my appreciation of the practice of hospitality, which can be as enlivening and satisfying for hosts as it is for guests. But one element of hospitality is a challenge to get used to: its gratuitous nature. I come from frugal roots, and the idea of buying the more expensive of several options (i.e. better ingredients) much less being “extravagant” runs against my nature.

Of great help for me in getting over these less hospitable reflexes was the Danish film, “Babette’s Feast,” based on the story by Isak Dinesen. In it, Babette, a French refugee (and as we come to discover later – a gourmet French chef) arrives in a small Dutch Protestant community looking to escape the revolutionary violence in France and find work as a housekeeper. Some years later she wins the lottery, and much to the surprise of her employers, rather than return home with the money, she asks if she can cook them – now her closest friends – a “real French dinner.” Concerned as Babette returns with a wide variety of exotic and expensive ingredients that an endorsement of such luxury will be unrighteous, the sisters agree with the other invited guests that they will take no pleasure in the meal.

Yet one surprise guest, a general from the Queen’s court, is unaware of their plans and cannot restrain his delight over the course of the meal. His enthusiasm for the banquet is so eloquent that by dessert the meal becomes the site of a remarkable transformation. Long-held resentments and arguments among the diners begin to dissolve and former enemies make peace as their dining experience elevates everyone. These Dutch protestants are reminded that Jesus was the ultimate lover of gratuitous hospitality over good food. A blissful meal serves as a reminder that he extends the ultimate invitation.

In fact, my favourite of Jesus’ meals happens after he is resurrected from the dead. The disciples are heartbroken upon Jesus’ death, and they go out fishing together. After a fruitless night of fishing, Jesus stands on the beach and shouts for them to try fishing on the other side of the boat. They are so overwhelmed with the net now full of  fish that Peter jumps into the sea and swims ashore, while the others gather the fish and paddle the boat back in. When they land, they find that Jesus has already prepared a place for them to have a meal together, and they have breakfast together (John 21:15).

I’m particularly fond of preparing breakfast for guests, and so I can appreciate all the attention that went into Jesus’ greeting of Peter and the other disciples. He gathered driftwood to make a fire to cook the fish (which he knew would be on the way), brought fresh bread as a side, and perhaps rolled up some logs, or laid out blankets for them all to sit on. He prepared a space, and then invited them to eat with him.

Jesus’ breakfast, though simple, is as gratuitous as Babette’s feast. He may have dazzled his guests with a net full of fish rather than with the intricacies of French cooking, yet his’ is also a free hospitality. His meal around a charcoal fire was rustic and unadorned, but it was gratuitous nonetheless. And it is here that the challenge of hospitality arrives bigger for the guests than for the hosts, because this gift is freely offered, yet must be received.

Jeremy Kidwell





Einstein’s Concert

26 07 2010

Yehudi Menuhin started on the violin at a young age. Regarded as one of the twentieth century’s greatest violin performers, he was already playing with the San Francisco Symphony at the age of seven. His performances were dense and tonally rich, and transported his listeners to another realm. He filled halls prestigious such as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra as well as unadorned rooms in World War II concentration camps. He was awarded honorary doctorates by 20 universities and became an honorary Knight of the Order of the British Empire and an Ambassador of Goodwill by UNESCO.  

Yet maybe Menuhin’s most memorable performance was an undated one, early in his career, when Albert Einstein was present. After the concert, Einstein sought him in the backstage, paid some compliments, and said, “Thank you, Mr. Menuhin; you have once again proved to me that there is a God in heaven.”[1]

Einstein certainly uses a strong word here – to prove is to establish beyond doubt – but we all have shared his sentiment before. A concert has been performed with such excellence; the song flowing through the room communicated harmony and meaning; we felt a gut connection to all around us as the music coordinated everyone’s moves to the same beat; our minds experienced a widening of the senses, stretching itself anew to take in the full breadth of reality; our hearts let go of guarded emotions and we dared lift up our souls in zestful bliss of joy; there was a vibe and a theme and a pulse and indeed a spirit in the air; the music charged every texture with grandeur. There was, if we can muster a word, a spirit, a reality, some vague thing we could not pinpoint; yet too truthful, too concrete to be dismissed.

What is it? Music has the power to articulate a mysterious, beautiful reality. Yet musical notes would not have such effect upon us if there wasn’t some underlying architecture making them meaningful. If you think about it, their harmony would not move us to such existential extremes if there was nothing to be harmonious to. Beauty would not and could not poke its face in the surfaces of life if it did not belong to the fabric from which the universe was made.

Or, if we put it positively, musical notes articulate in audible song the harmony intrinsic in reality. They sound forth the inaudible rhythm that pervades the universe. As an invisible yet palpable witness, music organizes harmoniously the sounds and noises uttered all around us, by birds, waves and supernovas. A concert is thus not merely a concert; it is like a living if ephemeral manifestation to our ears of the beauty charged into all of life.

People packed Menuhin’s concert halls throughout his career. They sat down and heard the violin open the curtain to a marvellous, beautiful universe. Some of them listened to good music, stood up, and went home. Others stopped to think about it, as Einstein did, and named this grandeur, this wordless melody behind reality, as God.

René Breuel


[1] Richard Viladesau, Theological Aesthetics: God in Imagination, Beauty, and Art (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 104.





Giving and Hospitality

23 07 2010

To receive and to return gifts is no easy matter. How often has the kindly birthday or Christmas gift from a boss or acquaintance led to panic the following year, as you try to figure out how to reciprocate at the right price-point and level of thoughtfulness: a bottle of wine (too common), flowers (too suggestive of romance/not gender appropriate), a book (do they read, would they like my taste in literature?), a gift certificate to a restaurant (price too obvious)….Such stress is common and it points to the real problem of gifts: is there any such thing as a pure, true gift, or are gifts merely a way of exchanging goods and creating social debts that tie other people to us?

Economic anthropologist Marcel Mauss wrote in the early 1900s that there really are no gifts, just economic exchange and social debt. Of course, the question of the gift has plagued discussions of faith for centuries as well. How can God’s love be a gift? If we repay God with obedience doesn’t that compromise our individual agency (or our ability to act as free and unbounded subjects), making God into a patron with high demands? Or, if we don’t repay the gift, do we still get to keep it? For many of us, these questions still remain both as existential questions of faith and very practical questions about what to get Aunt Edith for Christmas next year.

Not that I have any concrete answers better than centuries of theological debate or great gift suggestions for your boss or Aunt Edith. But I did come across the following little scene in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South that might be helpful. John Thornton is explaining to Mr. Bell about a communal meal arrangement at the mill he owns. Thornton explains that, after seeing one of his workers making a “black fizzle of a dinner―a greasy cinder of meat,” he started thinking about how his workers ate. When provision prices became high during the winter, Thornton realized that he could order food wholesale and cook in mass quantities for the workers, providing them with better food at a cheaper price than their own home-cooked fare.

But you may ask, “but isn’t this just an image of charity, another example of the master (God or the boss) drawing attention to his own kindness through a gift?” Not in the way Gaskell develops it. Thornton is very careful to keep himself entirely removed from the meals ― he just provides wholesale food and a cook ― and the men do pay for their food (with no mark-up), which actually guards their position as free, contracting agents, since they are not receiving charity from their boss.  At this point, what we have is a smart economic arrangement and little more ― with the gift being Thornton’s time and effort in organizing. However, as Thornton’s narrative continues, he reveals that the men eventually invited him to join them for a meal, which led to other meals and, as a result of eating together, master and men got to know each other. Thornton (who had previously had little time or desire to know his “hands”) becomes well-acquainted with his men and finds he even enjoys their company. And the men, who had previously been inclined to riotous strikes, discover that their boss isn’t the greedy bastard they thought he was. While Thornton initiates the meals, as he is the one with the financial power and business connections to do so, the men initiate his inclusion in the meals, acting as his hosts at the table. Once Thornton sits down with the men, neither party is in any sort of gift-debt to the other, even though Thornton ultimately initiated the meals and the workers lacked both the resources and connections necessary to undertake such a project on their own. This allows master and men to enter into mutual giving as they share what is now truly commonly offered food.

While Thornton is not meant to represent God, it seems to me that the mutuality modeled in the narrative of communal meals helps us understand God’s gifts a bit more. Why did Thornton initiate a sort of cafeteria at the mill? Because the workers needed it; because it was the right thing to do; because some were literally starving due to the high cost of food and their limited resources. What did Thornton have to gain? Nothing…initially. The workers could have enjoyed the new opportunity and never invited Thornton to sit down with them ― yet they did invite him to the table. The invitation isn’t an obsequious act attempting to somehow repay Thornton for his kindness in organizing the meals, but an act that affirms the workers’ agency, even though they are offering Thornton food that he himself has provided.

I wonder if God’s gifts and our gifts back to him work in a similar way. God is not the ultimate agent and we the ultimate recipients. Rather, his agency enables our agency, freeing us to reciprocate and act as his hosts and hosts for each other (Jesus said something quite similar to this when he taught that, by caring for the poor and the imprisoned we are caring for him). And where does mutual hosting and, by extension mutual receiving, lead? Thornton gets to really know his men and they him ― they become friends of sorts, tied not by a debt-based friendship but by a mutually giving and receiving friendship…which is perhaps the real purpose of God’s gifts as well.

Jessica Hughes





Doubts about Doubting

21 07 2010

A scene in Terry Gilliam’s 2005 film, The Brothers Grimm, depicts a general in Napoleon’s armies who gets his battalion to surround a “supposedly” enchanted forest and begin to burn it, while the local German populace looks on, horrified. Everything about this scene is carefully set out to make a statement – you can’t find a more pointed representation of Enlightenment modernist philosophy than the French Revolutionary Army. When they see the local peasants terrified, they laugh at their superstitious naivety. Gilliam’s point here is that it is not the peasants that are naïve – it’s the modernists. The peasants know – and so do we, the audience – that the forest really is enchanted. By the end of the film, so do the French army.

This scene gives shape and colour to an idea strangely attractive to the modern mind: the assumption that to believe in something is somehow inherently naïve, but to be sceptical is somehow inherently intelligent. I’m not the only one who gets frustrated by this – philosopher Dallas Willard wrote:

We live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than one who believes. You can be almost as stupid as a cabbage, as long as you doubt. The fashion of the age has identified mental sharpness with a pose, not with genuine intellectual method and character… Today it is the skeptics who are the social conformists, though because of powerful intellectual propaganda they continue to enjoy thinking of themselves as wildly individualistic and unbearably bright.

The irony is that automatic scepticism is a perversion of the noble empiricism that has been such a useful contribution from the Enlightenment: namely, that it’s usually a good idea to withhold acceptance of something until you have reasonable evidence for it – thanks John Locke, great point. The problem is that there are several reasons why we might not have reasonable evidence for something – and only one of those reasons is that the object of investigation is not real. It could also be because we haven’t found the evidence, even though it exists – “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”. And we might not have the evidence because we’re unlucky, we’re poorly equipped, we’re not smart enough to find it, or because we simply don’t want to. Often the reason we aren’t sure of something isn’t about its reality, it’s about our will to accept its reality. But if we throw a wry smile when we deny it, it’s amazing how smart we can seem.

Of course, post-modernity (or hyper-modernity) has turned scepticism into an art form. But it’s an ugly art. The frustrating thing about this is that it actually squashes the Enlightenment’s main intention – discovery. Empiricism was designed to bring the reality “to light”: John Locke said, “I attribute the little I know to my not having been ashamed to ask for information, and to my rule of conversing with all descriptions of men on those topics that form their own peculiar professions and pursuits.” But the contemporary scepticism often discourages the discovery the reality, by suggesting that apathetic ignorance is actually intelligence. When we don’t bother to do the research to find a reality that does exist, it’s not the believers that are naïve, it’s us.

Locke’s quote also points to the other contribution this scepticism stifles – discussion. That’s actually what Christians and empiricists – true empiricists – both want. I for one invite all of us to discussion with the purpose of discovery – we might not find an enchanted forest, but we might find something truer and greater.

Matthew Gray

Dallas Willard, Hearing God (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 218.





Shaped by the Future

19 07 2010

A prisoner like Viktor Frankl learned quickly the signs that someone had given up. The suffering and humiliation ministered at World War II concentration camps took hold of a person’s soul at last, stripped him of all values and identity and meaning and hopes, and he lost the will to live. He abandoned himself to the despairing circumstances. Basic acts like smoking a prohibited cigarette or refusing to get dressed in the morning were signs that someone had capitulated. He would die in a few days.

As Frankl observed his inmates giving up on life, he curiously concluded that the moment of surrender consisted not in one’s attitude to his present sufferings. Instead, someone lost his soul when he lost his vision of the future. “The prisoner who had lost faith in the future – his future – was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and spiritual decay… No entreaties, no blows, no threats had any effect. He just lay there, hardly moving.” The experienced hardships were large enough to engulf that person’s sense of present and then his vision of the future: expectations became too dim to remain a guiding candlelight. “Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost.”[1]

The future has a curious power to shape us. We are what we hope: we live in the future so we can live in the present. The future arrives before the present, at least for one’s mental sanity, because when we cease to hope, we lose our reason to live.. “It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future – sub specie aeternatatis.”[2] Only when the future is concrete enough does our present acquire its true contours. The strength of our vision of the future, therefore, is the strength by which we engage with life.

Concentration camps were like a severe laboratory to expose human nature. For the people who experienced such harsh life, only a firm future could stand in the face of extreme evil and have the resolve to carry on. We are creatures of eternity, people with a destiny to fulfill or to ignore, but with a destiny awaiting us nonetheless. Every now and then one of us succumbs to adversity or to easy comforts, and settles. We let ourselves get enclosed by time and squeezed out by minutes and seconds; we miss the vast plains of eternity, and miss ourselves. We forget to look ahead and we close our eyes. We nestle in the moment and stop asking ourselves why we exist, or what do we live for, as someone too cosy to care.

Frankl saw a way out. He held steady so he could have a story to tell. He endured blows for the sake of the people who remained peacefully outside, to share lessons only pain could teach. And his advice to prisoners in concentration camps then and urbanites in comfy couches now remains as fresh as the earliest news of liberty. “What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expect from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned.”[3]

René Breuel


[1] Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (New York: Washington Square Press, 1984), 95, 98.

[2] Ibid., 94

[3] Ibid., 98.





The Grit on the Track

17 07 2010

[Editor's note: we are very encouraged by the feedback we've received for Wondering Fair during its first week! We appreciate your comments and emails, and hope you'll stick around. Some friends have also expressed the wish for a larger share of female contributors, so WF can voice better women's perspectives and so it can witness to the ideal that God speaks through women and men alike. We wholeheartedly agree, and are looking for ways to incorporate more female voices. We also welcome guest articles; so speak up, ladies! In the meantime, here is a Luci Shaw poem as a weekend bonus.]

The ground is always there, witnessing
how you walk. You need light to travel
a dark path, and you need to travel light.
Otherwise the shadows that turn out to be
submerged boulders and roots will trip you,  
and your heavy pack will bear you down
into the hard anguish of gravel that is more
than your knees can bear. Even roadside dust
clings to your heels as if God is in
every fiber, a kind of mineral truth
present in every crystal of sand.

Gravity, and the possibility of falling,
will keep you aware. In the twilight you
come home from walking the dog in the woods
with the walk still clinging to you — twigs
and the stain of berries on your soles.
Each humus clod from the forest floor
answers back — another footfall. This is all
my handwork,
he is saying. Stay with this mud,
this granite. Every other step you take
will be a revelation.

Luci Shaw





On Writing, Writings and Reading

16 07 2010

Socrates:  For, to some degree, I fear that writing has a quality that is truly like painting.  For the offspring of the latter stand as though living but if one were to ask them something, they remain nobly silent.  Now words also do the same thing: you think that they would speak intelligently, but if you ask something, wanting to learn from the speakers [i.e. the words], they always declare the exact same thing.  And whenever you actually [lit. once] write something, every word rolls about everywhere equally to those who understand and those who don’t; and they do not know to whom they should and shouldn’t speak.  And if they are wronged or abused, they never have a father to help them.  For they are able neither to defend nor to help themselves.  (Plato, Phaedrus 275d) [1]

As might be surmised from the above quotation, I am somewhat apprehensive about contributing to this blog.  Or any blog, for that matter.  One can only imagine how Socrates would feel about the (sometimes flippant) ease with which so many people today publish their lives and thoughts for the world to see.  One regularly hears stories about people who are embarrassed, or even fired, for the things they put in writing.  There’s even an entire web site devoted to preserving these “fails” from Facebook.  Needless to say (though I will anyway), I don’t want to be that guy.

Writings are always in need of an interpreter, but they don’t always get a competent or friendly one, as Socrates notes.  Any experienced writer has stories of being misinterpreted due to the inherent (and much lauded in post-modern circles) ambiguity of language.  Writings carry no tone of voice, no facial expressions, no body language, no context.  The real irony, though, is that they are always written with those things in mind.  Thus (my love of writing notwithstanding) any post that I contribute will be released with a sigh of resignation that once out of my pen, the ink can never return, so to speak.

I wonder if God, in his personal divine council, let the same little sigh escape his lips when he decided to preserve his word in writing.  Perhaps that’s one of the reasons he sent Jesus, the “living Word of knowledge” (to take a line from Plato out of context; Phaedrus 276a), to help us interpret his words.  Ironically, the stories about Jesus are writings too.

Christians revere their scriptures, which are precisely writings.  (The word scripture is from the Latin scriptum, meaning “a piece of writing” for which the Greek equivalent is γραφή [graphé].)  They are in need of interpretation in exactly the same way as this blog post…not that I’m equating my writing with the word of God.  They “[roll] about everywhere equally to those who understand and those who don’t.”  (Of course, it’s always easy to identify those in the latter category since you, dear reader, are always in the former.) They are words written with a specific tone of voice and context in mind of which we can inevitably recover only a little. They are writings that have at times been wronged and abused, pressed into the service of something counter to their character. Thus, while Socrates’ lament for writing is a caution for writers, it can also be taken as warning to readers.  It is a call for gentleness in reading the words of others, including God (and the contributors of this blog!). It is a call for Socratic ignorance, humility, and the willingness to genuinely listen to what (the) writings have to say.

Ben Edsall

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

[1] This translation is my own, made in consultation with that of Benjamin Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato. 5 volumes, 3rd ed. (London: Oxford University Press).





View from a Room

12 07 2010

A young man opened the window of his room one autumn evening to wonder about life. After a tumultuous year, he painted his view over Saint-Rémy, depicting a picturesque village lit by a sky ablaze with the moon and stars, flowing with waves of light, a living heaven of movement and color. A bush ascending like flames unites the quiet village with the fecundity of life up above, as a connector between houses, streets and spirals and the vivid surroundings that witness its sleep. “This morning I saw the country from my window a long time before sunrise, with nothing but the morning star, which looked very big,’ he recorded later, almost like a reminder of a memory now superseded by its vivid artistic representation.[1]

Vincent Van Gogh’s post-impressionist style was experimenting a new perspective on art. Similar to the works of friends like Gauguin and Monet, he set out to portray less the fixed objects of a scene and more of his own inner, subjective experience of the sights before him. “He painted his own artistic, poetic, emotional reactions, his visions,” explains a scholar.[2] Considered by many to be Van Gogh’s magnum opus, The Starry Night convenes thus an impression, an intuition, a reaction. It is a scene from a point of view. It is the amalgam of feeling of an artist inviting us to his own experience of reality.

In other words, The Starry Night is a visual representation of subjectivity. Van Gogh and many other painters illustrate with canvas and brushstrokes that we do not approach scenes passively, with no interest or perspective, but we invest something of ourselves into everything we experience. We concede meaning and feeling to the situations before our eyes. We join them, so to speak, with our unique state of spirit and personality. We project a piece of our souls into events and people around us, and let them flow within in return. As beings who experience the world, we communicate of ourselves, by the very act of living.

And we long to be communicated back. For as we give of ourselves, as we sprinkle reality with our hearts, as we pour our inner state into nature and flood reality with our spirits, as we boil with being and emotion and overflow ourselves all around, we long to find an Other, we long to encounter and interact, to meet fellow life. We want the starry sky to really be alive, we want its colors and moves, we want to see something of our spirits in it. We want the moon to shine and the breeze to blow, and the morning star to bring forth the dawn behind it. We long for nature to dance and talk with us, because we long for Someone higher still, someone animating the surroundings, someone also pouring His soul into it all, a sign of heavenly life, someone up above witnessing our sleep.

René Breuel


[1] Vincent van Gogh, as quoted by the descriptor of the painting in the Museum of Modern Art, in New York.

[2] H. R. Rookmaaker, Modern Art & The Death of a Culture (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1970), 94.








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