by Lon on October 29, 2009
i am not a television watcher, but i just watched all four seasons of battlestar galactica over a span of two months earlier this year, and I’ve got to say the series rocked. There’s so much in there, I wish I blogged about it throughout each season.
I don’t want to give away too much if you haven’t watched it, but it’s a sci-fi oriented post-apocalyptic drama – a bit like the explorations of noah’s ark in space. It sounds kooky but the characters and the questions it provokes are phenomenal.
What I loved about the show:
How humans have an incredible capacity to survive the toughest conditions
Questions of why we of all species deserve to survive?
How humans were either atheists or polytheists, while the ‘evil’ robots were monotheists
What it’s like to become that which you hate
pressing the limits of what it means to love and value – regardless of beliefs and even origins
How they managed to mix themes of technology and progress with mythical stuff like angels
The cyclon robots seemed to have a type of militant evangelicalism.
Themes of Islamic jihad and even Buddhist reincarnation were explored (ie. the downloading to new bodies)
Questions of who your creator is, why he made us, and what good is he?
I didn’t like Baltar’s christ-like evolution, but I loved the subtle bits of him despising his farm boy childhood and re-embracing it.
Whether we truly value the soul, or the shell it’s encased in?
I could go on and on. Anyone else love Battlestar? See incredible themes that tie in issues of faith and humanity?
by Lon on October 13, 2009
This must be one of the top five most overplayed U2 songs ever. But it’s still worth mentioning.
I have climbed the highest mountains
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you
I have run I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
Only to be with you
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for
I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in her fingertips
It burned like fire
This burning desire
I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for
I believe in the Kingdom Come
Then all the colours will bleed into one
But yes I’m still running
You broke the bounds
You loosed the chains
You carried the cross
And my shame
And my shame
You know I believe it
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for
This song still resonates today because it connects with the struggle of the human spirit.
No matter how much you’ve steeped yourself in routine and the mundane, there’s something inside of us all that remains unsettled, longing for more.
We try everything we can to satisfy that craving. Relationships, children, love, significance, unique experiences, and yet something still gnaws at our souls.
Some of us even discover God. The last section of the lyrics speak of Christ, and not what we can accomplish, but what God has already done. Taking the chains and our shame away. Replacing it with freedom.
Yet we’re still running, searching. At least I am.
Because with all that freedom and grace, I still find myself rejecting it. If it’s true what the Scriptures say, that belief must lead to actions, then the truth is, I spend my days not really believing.
And so, I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. Though I sure hope to someday.
* btw, that lyric “I believe in the Kingdom Come, Then all the colours will bleed into one” I’ve got to say is sheer brilliance. But how much blood must first be shed? Or has it already been shed, but then why aren’t we ‘one’?
by Lon on October 5, 2009
Continuing the series of posts on U2 songs, “City of Blinding Lights” is also a favorite. It’s musically reminiscent of “Where the streets have no name” with a brilliant intro.
I think I heard Barack Obama use it as his entrance music a number of times during the campaign.
As with many u2 songs there are a number of conflicting images in the song.
A couple of simple repeated lines throughout the song, make me go hrm…
Oh you look so beautiful tonight
In the city of blinding lights
Can you see the beauty inside of me?
What happened to the beauty I had inside of me?
For some reason it makes me think of an old story I heard originally by H.G. Wells called Country of the Blind. (Doing some research on it, I realize there’s several renditions of it, below is a summary strictly from my own twisted memory).
There once was a remote city struck with a disease that caused complete blindness of all it’s inhabitants and it’s descendants.
The people eventually adapted to life being blind. It became so normal that the very concept of sight was all but forgotten after several generations had passed.
A man with perfect vision stumbles into the city. His heart breaks because he realizes an entire people group have no idea of the colors and beauty that surround them as they feel their way through the dark.
He commits himself to sharing this wonderful gift of vision he has with the people of the city.
He befriends the people and begins describing to them textures, and tints, and things in the distance. He points out beautiful features on their faces, the blues across the skies, and the yellowness of the sun.
But the people of the city think he’s gone mad as they are unable to comprehend what the man is passionately illustrating.
Having compassion, the people of the city take hold of the man, to help cure him of his illness.
And they gouge out his eyes.
I wonder if this man would be singing “Can you see the beauty inside of me? What happened to the beauty I had inside of me? ”
Ever been there? Had a spark of hope that no one understood? Saw something that was so overwhelmingly beautiful that you couldn’t put words to it, but you tried to share it anyways? Only to then have them crush it and rip it from your soul?
I don’t know how many times I’ve been in this conversation. I’m in a gathering of largely ‘white’ folk, and the conversation veers over to Jesus being for all nations and multiculturalism…
Someone usually mentions how they believe that every culture has something unique to offer to the body of Christ…
Since I’m avoiding eye contact at this moment, though it’s probably not true, I feel like every eyeball starts honing in on me.
There’s a lot of conversation that needs to happen about multiculturalism and the church and how to go about it all, but before that I’ve had a sense of having to get my own cultural story straight.
I hear lots about the roots of the reformation in Europe, liberation theology out of latin america, the oppression shaped narrative from African American brothers and sisters… but what about them Asians?
What do Asians uniquely bring to the table?
How does being Asian shape your understanding of Christ?
If God is the redemptive creator of all cultures, why’d he make you, what you are? (and yes, I know you’re so much more than your ethnic/cultural heritage)
From people I’ve asked so far… 2 people said “they work hard”, one person said “Good or bad, they have a high regard for authority”… and the Chinese house church movement gets mentioned a lot when people are looking for good news about Christianity…
But there’s got to be more than that…
by Lon on January 21, 2009
Right now I’m leading a church plant, developing two other church plants/communities, throwing a giant party, launching a web startup, on the board of my condo, helping fuel the faith, arts, justice movement in Toronto, all while cultivating my amazing family and the great relationships God’s blessed me with.
I think I’m grazing past the overcommitted line.
There’s several other projects in the pipe I’m love to get on, and I do still have some buffer space… but if I go for them, something’s going to need to be pushed back or completely dropped.
Here’s to not doing anything else these next six months.
