Surprised by Joy - CS Lewis

When our family was eating at Sarah's uncle's house, I saw this book on the shelf.  C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite authors, and one of my goals is to read everything he has written.   Surprised by Joy is Lewis's story of his un-conversion as an adolescent leaving the Christian faith and his eventual re-coversion as an adult.
Lewis beautifully connects his deep inner longings for joy and wonder with his innate human longing for God and Spirit.  His awe for nature, narrative, and fantasy had the same roots as his longings for God and nourished by the same Spirit.  Eventually, Lewis is able to connect the dots between his inner longing and the God who fulfills that longing.
Although the story starts slowly, it becomes quite captivating about a third of the way into the book.  The theological complexity and depth steadily increases until toward the end, nearly every paragraph deserves highlighting.
Well worth reading, and rereading.
Thanks Uncle Steve.

Barefoot on the Sun

Walking barefoot on the sun
Across our auburn deck
Life's bright shadow
Falls over me
Takes me in
Seeping from sole to soul
Holy warmth
Heals my heart
Brews me slowly
Like sun tea
Out all day

100 Things I Love About Korea # 54: Replay - Stubborn Beauty

This is a repost from April 8, 2008.

I live in a concrete jungle. Our apartment is on the 9th floor of a 15 story building. I pass through a 9 story building every day on my way to my office, which is 5 stories up. All around Cheonan, 15-20 story apartment buildings dominate the landscape, blotting out the beautiful mountains which hide behind the concrete curtains.

There are a few strips of grass here and there, usually dotted with trees. We were delighted a few years ago when the city built a beautiful little park a block from our apartment. This is the lone substantial patch of green in our neighborhood. (The green is magnified by the green colored track and the green Astroturf soccer field, which together make up almost 50% of the park.)

However, concrete makes up the bulk of the scenery, most places where I go.

This spring, like most springs, I am wonderfully surprised by the stubborn beauty of life. After a long winter, the trees bud with leaves and flowers. The green of grass slowly takes over the dull browns of winter.I passed a bush today that was full of verdant leaves, and I wondered when it started budding. I pass it every day, but I hadn't noticed a single leaf before.

What strikes me the most, though, are the flowers that emerge, unplanted and untended in the most unlikely of places. In a small strip of grass, no more than 6 feet wide between our apartment and the sidewalk, beautiful, rich violet flowers have poked out, sort of hugging the ground on their short, weed-like stems. You all most have to look twice to notice that they are really flowers and not some child's discarded toys. But there they are, with all their beautiful color, hugging the earth like a child holding her mother's leg in the elevator.

Six feet lower, where the retaining wall and the sidewalk meet, life has shown itself to be even more unrelenting in its expression of beauty. Between the smallest crack of open space, dandelions have reared their golden heads. Shining with a yellow beacon, they shout to the world that beauty can be found in the most unlikely of places.

Beauty can be suppressed, but it cannot be snuffed out. God has made our world too relentlessly life inducing, too persistently beautiful. We cover the fertile earth with our bunkers and businesses, but the earth will not let us forget it. It conquers still with a shy purple flower here and a bold golden flower there, mistakenly thought by the unlistening eye to be weeds.

100 Things I Love About Korea: #13 - Spring

Spring is my favorite season, and spring in Korea is breathtaking.  From weeds to shrubs to trees, flowers are everywhere.  Spring in Korea looks like God lined up every color of paint in the world and then closed his eyes and just started throwing it all over the place.  Whole hillsides turn flaming pink with azaleas.  Streets are lined with white cherry blossoms.  Every meadow and every sidewalk are dotted with starbursts of color.  

Although these pictures from my friends Taylor Ford and Andy Phelps are beautiful, perhaps the best tribute I can pay to Korean spring is in this poem.

http://leephelpsphoto.com/

100 Things I Love About Korea: #12 - Fall

Korea has the most spectacular fall I've ever seen.  Not is our neighborhood chock full of dazzling yellows and blood red maples, but some trees even put out unique fall berries and buds.

This photo is by my friend Taylor Ford, and it shows the view from the sidewalk where I walk with John David 3-4 mornings a week.  Amazing.  Absolutely amazing.
Korean falls are long (a full three months), and they are awash with color.  The trees are luxuriously staggered so that they don't all shed their leaves at the same time.  Instead, the eyes have a steady feast of gently changing colors.  It keeps the apartment maintenance crews busy sweeping up all the leaves, but oh is it worth it!

Retro Poem #13: Compared to You

When I see other women

Whose frames are alluring,

My manhood enjoys their luring,

But then, my dear, just then - 

I think of you and who you are

Though their suits reveal alluring limbs,

Next to you, their beauty dims

Like a candle before a star.

(written in 2000)

Burning Bush

I walk barefoot across the earth

On holy ground with every step.

I warm my hands

At the blazing furnace of azaleas.

I bask and tan my skin

Before the noonday sun of golden bells.

I shiver under the snowy glory 

Of cherry blossom flurries.

Potted pansies shine as stars

In the grey concrete skies.

Bleeding roses stir my blood

Upward as they upward climb.

Magnolias tenderly woo my heart

Unfolding beauty like young lovers.

All the world a burning bush

Whispering the fiery call to worship.

(I wrote this Sunday as Exodus 3 was read in the worship service.)

Art and Worship

Part 1: “Art-Full Worship”  (Exodus 31:1-11 and John 6:47-58)
    “In the beginning, God created...”  “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).  And what a wonderful, resplendent, beautiful world God created. 
From fish to flowers ...
From atoms to Alps ...
From galaxies to germs ...
Our God has created an infinitely complex world.  From its smallest to largest dimensions, the beauty and complexity of our world staggers our minds and enraptures our hearts.  Our God creates.  Our God creates flowers that no one will ever see and stars that no one will ever reach.  Our God creates bacteria and electrons and magnetic waves and thermonuclear reactions and sea currents and black holes and nebula and more species of animals than we have even discovered.  Our God creates.  Beauty and complexity, simplicity and profundity, majesty and glory ooze from God’s very Being.  God is Creator, and creation bears God’s glory.
   
    From the beginning of time, people have worshiped God through creation.  Adam and Eve joined the creative process by naming the animals, caring for the garden, and creating more human beings.  Noah joined the Creator’s mission by creating an ark as an instrument of salvation and then building an altar as a sign of worship.   Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all worshiped God by building altars to hold their sacrifices. 
    Creation and beauty have always been part of worship of the Creator.  Worship has always been art-full (full of art).  As people made like the Creator, we cannot help but to create when we express our worship of the Creator.  Our creation - our mutual display of beauty - draws us closer to the heart of the Creator.