:: inamirrordimly :: A theology and culture blog with the Bible in one tab and a news feed in the other.

<%image(20060630-Red Mountain June06.jpg|442|119|red mountain)%>
We’re going away for a few days to Lake George, so it will be quiet around here until Wednesday the 5th. Before going, I had a few important things to pass along.

I can’t believe that I actually missed the anniversary of our move to Vermont. It’s a hard date to pinpoint because our stupid, lousy, should-have-failed-the-inspection (gratuitous hyphen usage for all of you fans of THE MESSAGE), U-Haul broke down in North Jersey on a hot, humid day. Talk about purgatory. In any case, I think the official date that we pulled in to our Vermont home was June 26th, 2005. One day late, hot, and brimming with a fury greater than hell at U-Haul for abandoning us the day before.

Now the house has been repainted inside and out, a new floor is down in the kitchen and bathroom, and we have rabbits slowly undoing all of our progress. Life is pretty sweet. The picture at the top of this post is from this past Wednesday after we were slammed with a downpour all day. Driving home was something quite magical with the clouds hovering around the mountains, a clear blue backdrop, and the fresh smell of rain in the air. I promptly ran upstairs and snapped a few pictures of Red Mountain. I’ll post the rest of them to my Flickr account soon.

This blogging thing has also been a fun little project. I have enjoyed developing relationships through the internet and writing on a regular basis. Over the past two-three months my visitors have doubled, so I have a lot of people to thank for sending folk my way. Of course I need to thank those on my blog log. I also need to thank those who have slipped my mind presently, but have graciously posted links to inamirrordimly. Lastly, there are some people who have recently sent a lot of traffic to this site. I wanted to thank them in kind:

http://emergingwomen.blogspot.com
http://www.paracletepress.com/nstore/store.php
http://purgatorio1.com
http://7d.blogs.com/802online
http://emergingchurchblogs.info
http://www.kbcafe.com
http://www.thechurchgeek.com

Lastly, if you click on the link below, you can see a picture of Bailey, one of our bunnies. You won’t regret it.
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Yesterday’s Divine Hours had a “killer” Psalm reading. It’s one of those Psalms that is filled with terror and joy. It’s both disturbing and comforting. On one hand the writer describes all of the people and things that will fail us. He tears down our walls and lays us bare before God. We could stop reading here, become entangled in debates about how controlling God truly is, what his true nature is, what his intentions are, etc. It could be the end of our faith.

But then the Psalmist lightens up. In verse 18 he offers hope. The place of mercy and grace belongs to those who fear God and who hope in his steadfast love. There is no better place to be. May our hope rest in the steadfast love of the Lord today.

Psalm 33:13-22 ESV
13 The LORD looks down from heaven;
he sees all the children of man;
14 from where he sits enthroned he looks out
on all the inhabitants of the earth,
15 he who fashions the hearts of them all
and observes all their deeds.
16 The king is not saved by his great army;
a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.
17 The war horse is a false hope for salvation,
and by its great might it cannot rescue.

18 Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him,
on those who hope in his steadfast love,
19 that he may deliver their soul from death
and keep them alive in famine.

20 Our soul waits for the LORD;
he is our help and our shield.
21 For our heart is glad in him,
because we trust in his holy name.
22 Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us,
even as we hope in you.

<%image(20060629-daysie.gif|200|78|daysie)%>If you’re a Vermont blogger such as myself, you may be interested to know that Kathy over at 802 Online and at Seven Days wants YOU to vote for the best Vermont blog: HERE. The voting is open to anyone, anywhere. Here are the rules from Kathy:

* Anyone, anywhere can vote.
* Everybody gets one vote. No ballot-box stuffing!
* The blogs you vote for must be on her blogroll. If you want to vote for a Vermont blog that’s not listed, let her know about it, and she’ll add it.
* Make sure you give them the URL, not the blog’s title.
* The polls close at 5pm on July 3.

Though 802 Online and Candleblog are some crowd favorites, I think that Politics Vermont is worth noticing.

At 8:00 pm last night I strolled out of my house with a few golf clubs slung over my shoulder and a pocket full of golf balls. A short walk accross the park next to our home brought me to the nine hole golf course in Arlington, VT. I’m not much of a golfer . . . by a long stretch. I have cheap clubs, a random assortment of balls I’ve found lying around, and know as much about form and technique as most Americans know about Arabic.

Even so, the point wasn’t so much about golfing, it was about getting out. When it rains 9 out of 10 days, you have to enjoy the clear days whenever they come. The walk is nice and it’s fun to have something to swing at occasionally.

The course is a nice flat field that is usually kept in good shape. I only pay $2 instead of the suggested four because I only play four to five holes. Experience, i.e. my first two attempts at the course, has revealed that my patience runs dry after the fourth hole . . . if I get lucky. Wacking away at my dirty little “Top Flight Elite 4,” I probably bumped off a few works with my lousy shots, put a few divits in the turf with miscalculated swings, and occasionally put the ball right where I wanted it. I even came one heart-breaking put away from par. Of course I managed to finish that hole two strokes OVER par.

The temptation in all of this is becoming absorbed in the game of golf, which may be fun for some, but not really for me. The trick for me is to play the game, but to enjoy my surroundings. The Battenkill runs next to holes 2 and 3. The Taconic range runs north to south to the west of the course, with Red Mountain towering directly over the tiny town of Arlington and Mount Equinox looming off in the distance like an older, wiser brother. The sunset over the mountains is startling, when it can be seen that is. And last night was no exception.

I could have spent my time hunched over my ball that refuses to fly straight with my threatening clubs that always seem to inhibit my true golfing potential and not noticed the comforting strength and stability of the mountains all around. In the midst of my game I could have missed the purples, yellows, and oranges of the sunset. But last night was different. Something compelled me to look at and savor the mountains the sky. The shades of green on the hills and mountains punctuated the desolate tracts that were picked clean by those horrid caterpillars. The swift rush of the river filled my ears instead of the distinct swish and clink of my clumsy clubs. Four holes was all I needed to get out and enjoy the blooming world around me.

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Prior to an event I was among a crowd talking about their favorite book at the moment. Inevitably a certain book comes up and one if not two or three people laud it as a masterpiece. They were clearly impressed by the style and the claims of the book. I on the other hand knew they were wrong. Well, saying that I “knew” is perhaps going a bit far, but I had plenty of evidence to support my side of the issue.

Now, after I stop coughing and gagging from hearing the said book praised beyond its merit, I am faced with a dilemna.

1. Do I proceed to unveil my evidence that refutes the books tenuous status as “masterpiece”? The direct approach.
2. Do I take a subtle shot at it while praising the parts of it that are worthy of mention? Vaguely diplomatic
3. Do I keep my mouth shut? Non-confrontational

As an English major and lover of language and literature, it’s a real struggle. I want to praise the best works of literature and make sure that others are familiar with them. It galls me to see a popular page-turner inhabit a place that should be reserved for other works. The page-turner has its place and should be praised for its excellent qualities as a page-turner, but literature? I think not.

And while I am talking about a real situation with a book here, my little quandry over a book is also a parable of sorts for Christianity, doctrine, and discussion. Christian A thinks that the resurrectionof Jesus is optional. Christian B thinks that it is essential for Christians to believe in the resurrection. What is the best path to take?

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It was a low key weekend for us with some swimming in a frigid quarry, minor work around the house, and some fruitless discipline of our rabbits who have decided it’s fun to dig out the contents of their litter box all over the cage. On Saturday we attended the wedding of Julie’s friend, and we played our new board game, Carcassonne, in our spare moments at home.

Carcassonne: Our Latest Obsession
<%image(20060626-Carcassonne-game.jpg|100|146|carcassonne)%>Not to be confused with the actual town of Carcassonne in France, we have quickly become quite entranced by the board game, Carcassonne. We have the basic game, though a host of expansions do exist, as Wikipedia attests. It is very possible that we have found the game that may supplant Settlers of Cataan as our family favorite. The real test will come during the family vacation up at Lake George. Carcassonne may be nice to play with other family members because it’s a bit simpler than Cataan.

<%image(20060626-meeple.jpg|200|150|meeple)%>The basic idea is to place your Meeples (little followers who have become popular in and of themselves, see here) on roads, farm land, castles, or cloisters in order to obtain the greatest number of points. Starting with a pile of land pieces with small pieces of cities, roads, or fields, each player pieces together a world and then populates it with their meeples. No one is knocked out of the game, the flow of the game is very fast, and it’s fairly entertaining. Carcassonne has been a staple for us over the past few days. Once again the Germans have captivated us with their board game prowess.

The Wedding
It’s always refreshing to attend a wedding and to be reminded of your own vows and commitment. This wedding was particularly nice because the ceremony was on a hill in upstate NY overlooking the mountains right over the Vermont border. We could see our own Red Mountain (the mountain in our back yard that is), Equinox, and a number of other mountains all around us. Down below us was a small lake that grew steadily still as the evening arrived, while the sunset was absolutely brilliant.

Comedy Central is not the place to find the best news reports and its certainly not the authority on religion, but this past week The Colbert Report had two segments on religion worth noting:

Bart Ehrman, author of the book Misquoting Jesus, appeared on the show and subjected himself to Stephen Colbert’s routine as outlandish “double devil’s advocate.” Colbert essentially takes the stance of conservative evangelicals, but does it in a tongue-in-cheeck manner, so that no side is favored over another. He simply takes shots at Ehrman, but also subtly plays with conservatives. It’s a very fun interview to watch, especially the part where he actually forces Ehrman to concede his error at one point.

As far as the book is concerned, Ehrman writes as a former conservative if not fundamentalist Christian who is disallusioned and now agnostic. After holding to a completely inerrant Bible, studying the history of textual transmission, and finding many errors in the process, he essentially concluded that the Bible is not reliable. This is a prime example of how an extreme doctrine of inerrancy can shipwreck our faith. The Bible is certainly reliable, true, and trustworthy, but the language of inerrancy can sometimes put too much emphasis on the Bible for our faith and not on God himself and the Christian community who have given us the Bible. Inerrancy taken to extremes can lay a trap for our faith that may be hard to escape.

I think that Ehrman is a scholar struggling to fit his research into his faith. Unfortunately his faith was too narrow to hold what he found.

Stephen Makes It Simple
Colbert jumps into the realm of religion and politics by tossing in this handgrenade of a statement,
“Little government mentions Jesus in a speech. Big government does what Jesus said.” Controversial, eh?

Today I’m wrapping up my little series, the only kind of series that I can handle, on blogging and the sexes. My intention has been to address the following question today:

“3. Why aren’t more women bloggers noticed in general? And then the follow up: Why aren’t women bloggers as prominent as men in the emerging church?”

Over the past week a number of possible reasons have surfaced from various commenters, here’s a run-down:
1. Men more numerous in the computer field and have an edge on blogging.
2. In the church, more men are in ministry and can combine blogging with their ministry.
3. Fewer women blog and consequently are not noticed as often by men who link to one another and command the majority of the blog traffic.
4. In some cases women blog in a different style than men and are unfortunately and unjustly marginalized.
5. Subtle discrimination that still lurks in our culture.
6. Lack of initiative to bring women into the blog conversation.

The last one is the most important for me at this point. Instead of lamenting that men do not notice women, I’d like to provide some possible ways to include women in blogging conversations. There have already been some excellent posts about ways to include women in the emerging church, and blogs are part of that, but I want to address ways men can help bring women into the blogging conversation. Here are some things that I’ve been up and would recommend doing:

- Take a look at the list of blogs that you read regularly and try to get a sense of what your preferences are in the blogs you read. Do these preferences unnecessarily exclude women? (for example, you may only want to read blogs on football or hockey, and you probably will not find many blogs by women on these topics. But if you’re interested in the church or in politics, you can certainly find women who are doing an excellent job of blogging).

- Look for female bloggers in the blogrolls of your favorite blogs. Go to their sites and then visit the sites of all the women on their blog rolls. If you have Firefox as your web browser (as most certainly should be the case), you can open all of these pages in tabs all at once and check them out.

- Try to find a site that aggregates blogs in your area of interest and scan them for women. For example, emerging church blogs or emerging women are both good places to start for the emerging church.

- If you’re like me and you don’t have a ton of time to read through all of these blogs, do yourself a favor and set up a bloglines account. This will make it very easy to check on the blogs when they have new content without having to visit every day. You can even set up your blogline page to only have the first few lines of the post. This will give you a chance to find out which blogs are a good fit for your blog roll.

Any other ideas?

The NY Times reports: US Church eases gay bishop stance

“The US Episcopal Church has agreed to ‘exercise restraint’ in appointing gay bishops in an effort to prevent its expulsion from the Anglican communion.”

I previously posted my thoughts on the differences between men and women bloggers. I know there is no formula to follow and that exceptions will always come up. In fact, there may be a lot of exceptions. But if we can hit on some of the differences between men and women in the world of blogs, perhaps we will find some of the reasons why men do not pay enough attention to female bloggers.

Do women and men blog differently? Here is what some women had to say in the comment section last week:

Kim wrote . . .
I think men tend to report on what they think they’ve figured out and women tend to write about what & how they are experiencing something.

Makeesha wrote . . .
I don’t think I write all that differently from many male bloggers I read that write about similar things so I’m not sure I can support that theory…not personally anway

Tammy wrote . . .
In my experience, women tend to blog like they talk -longer stories, more details, lots of emotions, and the whole story instead of the conclusion. Another thing i notice is that men tend to have a blog that is about a defined topic. Women tend to have a blog that has attention deficit disorder. That is yet another generalization, so don’t try to engage me in a debate about gender roles!

Well that’s enough said for now. I don’t want to go on and on with how I fell about all of this . . . I need to just get to the facts and stick to the topic . . .

In all seriousness, I agree with the above statements. They are all on to something. I think men and women do blog differently, but there are always exceptions. Tommorrow I hope to address how men can pay more attention to female bloggers and what a more equal online discussion looks like.

If you haven’t had enough, I asked my friend Josh (the co-author and creator of this blog) to ask his wife Jamie to chime in on this issue. She has three small children at an age where most women are thinking about having their first. I think she is wise beyond her years and has always been a very passionate disciple. Don’t get lost in her generalizations or comments on feminism though. Those thoughts are merely footnotes to her thoughts on humility and sensitivity to God’s Holy Spirit. I was hoping to include her voice in the discussion and am glad she stopped by.

OK, it’s time to go, the rabbits are assaulting our Poang chair.

Last week I posted my Confessions of a Sexist Blog Reader after discovering that I am far too likely to read blogs by guys just like myself (though probably taller). The comment section quickly filled up with some helpful thoughts, some frustration, and some questions. It didn’t seem right to take little shots at answering the comments when I didn’t have time. I think this issue is important enough to warrant another full post or two. I hope to give this issue the attention that it deserves.

Here are some of the core issues/questions that came up:

1. Where do bloggers, men especially, find the time?
2. Do women and men blog differently?
3. Why aren’t more women bloggers noticed in general? And then the follow up: Why aren’t women bloggers as prominent as men in the emerging church?

I’ll take a crack at the first question today . . .

I have to admit that I am mystified sometimes by the amount of time that some bloggers pour into their design, posts, images, etc. This blog here is pretty plain and it has become even more plain because I’ve decided that it’s not worth spending time on editing pictures to have some eye candy on the site. Other people can do it, but I’d rather spend more time on content. But back to our question: where does the time come from?

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ESPN has an incredible article about coach Tony Dungy, his faith, and his role as father to his family and his team. Here is one quote that stood out to me, it’s part of a letter he sent to a parent who also lost a child:

“”I [wrote], ‘I don’t know exactly what you’re feeling but I know that the Lord can get you through it.’ That’s the encouraging thing, that I can say to people now, that you’ll make it,” Dungy says.”

Read the article here. You don’t have to be a football fan to enjoy this article.

I grew up singing the over-used song “As the Deer” with the image of a happy little deer in the forest trotting along toward a stream, panting a little (whatever that looks like with a deer by the way), and then bending over for a slurp out of the rushing waters. But my pastoral picture of tranquility falls far short of the picture painted in Psalm 42.

Verse 1 starts out with our friendly little deer who is quite thirsty:
“As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.”

But then of course this is not about deer, it’s about a person who is thirsty for God. And the problem confronted in the verse is that he/she cannot find God at the present moment. No water for the deer, no God for the spiritually thirsty.

And things quickly get worse with faint glimmers of hope:
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I don’t typically take time to blog much on sports or movies, but today I have two recommendations that I think qualify as must-sees. And then I have a few other things to scribble about. First, to sports:

Hurricanes vs. Oilers (Series: Canes 3, Oilers 2)
If you didn’t catch last night’s game, like me, it’s worth takes a few minutes to watch the highlights at ESPN. The goals were fantastic, the products of impossible tip-ins, sly passes, and gritty work. The game-winner for the Oilers was a truly gutsy play by one of their defensemen.

Of course don’t bother reading much of the article next to the video. Most post-game interviews are a collection of stock phrases that can be assembled in any article like a linguistic Mr. Potato Head.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
I have 3 favorite movies, and the Royal Tennenbaums is one of the them. My wife is a big fan of it too. She says it’s one of the only movies she can enjoy after watching it over and over. So it’s not surprising that Tennenbaum director Wes Anderson’s next film, the Life Aquatic starring Bill Murray and a tremendous supporting cast was a big hit in our home last night.

It’s quirky, off beat, and filled with dead-pan humor. For someone who wearies of the typical movie fare, these kinds of movies are a real breath of fresh air. I won’t guarantee that everyone will love it, but I will say that it’s one of the best movies I’ve seen since viewing the Royal Tennenbaums. What I think makes Anderson’s movies so fascinating is the importance of the characters. His characters are so well-developed and interact so unexpectedly that you almost forget about the plot. Though the plot still moves the story along toward a conclusion, you find yourself enjoying the different characters so much that it doesn’t really matter where you end up.

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I have a rule. The rule is that I only put up links to blogs that I read in my Bloglines reader. It’s not a perfect one to one correspondence, but I see no need to clutter our blog with links just for the heck of it.

And then I noticed a problem. Shoot, I only read blogs by men. Many of them are in my age group even. A few women have made the list of course, my favorites being Maggie Dawn, 802 Online’s Cathy Resmer, and Natasha Tynes. But when it comes to reading Christian or emerging church blogs, the list still has a large number of men on it. On one hand, this does make sense since most blogs in this category seem to be by men. I doubt that women are being intentionally suppressed or anything of that sort. The bigger problem is getting the men to notice the women who are blogging.

And concerning Christian/Emerging Church Blogs Especially . . .
The next question is, “Who defines the standards of a ‘good blog’?” I confess I’m stepping into a black hole of sorts, but I can’t help thinking that women seem to blog . . . differently from men. Perhaps men are more detached, while women are more present emotionally. I don’t mean this as a critique, but there have been times when I have read a woman’s blog and thought, “Whoa, that is too much personal information!” It’s not a matter of right or wrong, it’s a matter of what people begin to accept as a norm. And if women blog differently, that may mean that men, who seem to do the majority of the blogging, are less likely to notice them. Why? Because they have different standards for a good blog and unfortunately their standards may have taken over.

It’s a theory, but there has to be something to it. There are countless other reasons for these trends, but that’s my two cents.

In order to branch out and read some noteworthy women’s blogs, I did a bit of searching last night and I think I have found a few blogs that are different from what I would usually pick, but quite good:

Hard Soap Girls: This is a group of four women from all over the world who blog together on life and Christianity. The title comes from a great C. S. Lewis quote about not peddling soft soap Christianity. They do some good reflection on scripture and talk very frankly about their lives. The glam shots on the “about” page were a little over the top in my book, but I guess they work.

Lynne Taylor: Not to be known only as “the wife of Steve Taylor,” Lynne has a great blog where she records her thoughts on church planting, spirituality, and life. She’s been blogging since February 2004.

If anyone else has some thoughts on why the blogs of women are tough to find in the emerging church conversation, I’m open to suggestions. For now, enjoy these fine blogs and check out my blog log for a few more women bloggers of note. There are a few other I’m keeping on the back burner for now, but may add in the future.