s|ice: My Meckel and Me - On the Next Oprah

If you hadn’t heard, a few weeks ago I was in the hospital for 3 days or so. I had stomach issues which I can only liken to what I would expect contractions or labor pains to be. At first the doctor thought it was appendicitis, luckily the surgeon looked at a CT scan and said nope and joked seriously about it being a water chestnut [which I had earlier that day for lunch]. Still not being sure they wanted to do some exploratory surgery which was postponed due to feeling fine [though the morphine drip the night before was glorious]. Another test later and the doc said it’s a blockage due to a meckel. Go figure.


Naomi and I watched Jesus Camp recently. I had mixed and conflicting feelings on both the subject matter and the “documentation” style. Spiritual voyeurism is a term that came to mind; freedom, brainwashing, world views are some others. The whole topic of Jesus and American politics is important to say the least but the way Christian’s do and don’t deal with it is annoying at best. I deny the phrases about returning America back to God as a Christian nation, though I pray for the Gospel to be breathed into this nation. America was/is based off of Judeo-Christian ethics but we would never say, unless we had bad theology, that ethics make a person a follower of Christ [and yes, followers of Christ need to be more ethical]. There was a great podcast on the Veritas Forum from Ron Sider about a more complete Gospel. Derek Webb’s new album Ringing Bell, has a few things to say about politics… and here are two quotes from a Book Review on THE AGE OF ABUNDANCE somewhat dealing with politics and such:

…contrary to those under the spell of the romantic delusion, not all limitations on choice are the enemies of freedom.

Is liberty valuable because it promotes virtuous behavior? Or is liberty merely necessary because, given that there are deep disagreements about what virtuous behavior is, we must agree to leave one another a lot of social space to do as we please, or we shall not have social peace?

Naomi and I went to see Waitress for a date night a few weeks back. It was pretty heart wrenching for me personally. There were a ton of messed up relationships in so many different ways and, for whatever reason, I had to cry over the loneliness aspect of the movie. He sets the lonely in families; sets the prisoners free to sing. Statistically in America, two in four marriages don't last and half of the marriages that do stay together are not "happy" ones... and i think recently it's been observed that atheistic marriages are "healthier" than Christian ones. As a side note, in all the social messiness through-out Waitress there was still a good underlying pro-life message.

Perelandra by C.S. Lewis has been my latest finished work, reading wise. Overall I think the previous paperback, Out of a Silent Plant, was more adventurous. I didn’t enjoy the first quarter of Peralandra but the rest of if, for the most part, was fantastic. I was emotionally attached to feelings of fear, death, and philosophical conflict. The parts on temptation are worth the read alone. I’m starting to appreciate fantasy and fiction more and more thanks to Lewis.

On a side note of that subject, Madeleine L'Engle spoke about fantasy, fact, and truth on the Veritas Forum. The basic idea is that fact isn’t always truth and fantasy isn’t always false. Some of the concepts she spoke about were too out there for me but I understood and agreed to a degree some of what she said. I remember being more connected with the fantasy scene in Narnia when Aslan is killed than with the “realistic” crucifixion scene in The Passion. Oh ,how we need Disciples of Christ with scholarly minds, poetic hearts and humble hands… I hope my path of holistic growing takes me there.