December 29, 2012

Over the past several years I’ve gotten in the December habit of compiling lists of my favorite music releases.  While I was in seminary taking preaching classes, I sought out an exercise that would help me enjoy, evaluate, and communicate texts in a creative way to an audience.  Since, at the time, all I was doing was reading and reading and writing and writing about biblical and theological content, I used music reviews as a way to hone my skills.  For about two years I wrote reviews for a small indie music blog out of Macon, GA called the Blue Indian (here is 2010 and 2011).  It was in this time that I realized if you could charitably and critically evaluate content that you sometimes did care deeply for, and some that you just didn’t “get,” and still make a compelling presentation to an audience, you had done most of the logistical tasks of preaching (which is what I wanted to work on).

So I present to you my list of twelve (a cheap way to continue to expand my list and delay decisiveness once more each year) favorite records that came out in 2012.  A brief disclaimer: these are my favorite records of this year, not necessarily the “best.”[1]  They might not be your favorites and for that I don’t apologize.  I may be skewed or inconsistent.  For instance, I’m well aware that half of these selections are from the South (including VA).  I’m also aware that I’m a sucker for M. Ward and the Avetts and unlike the Mumford boys (who came up big last year), they’re near locks on any favorite list I’ll likely write.  Again, I don’t apologize for this, everyone needs these kinds of go-tos.

I don’t have a fixed criteria for this evaluation.  Some of these albums and artists operate within a decisively Christian confession and view of the world, others quite the opposite, and many wrestle somewhere in the middle.  Some tilt towards the traditional, some towards the experimental, most hold both in some sort of tension.  Some are household names, while others share the fate of prophets in their respective hometowns.  I’ve included a Spotify playlist of this list in its entirety as well as a playlist featuring a single song from more than 40 (just wait until the year 2040!) notable releases.  I’d also love to hear, in the comments, some that I may have missed.  Cheers on a great year of music to have enjoyed and blessings on what I hope shapes up to be another.  -CEB

12: Mirage Rock (Columbia)

Band of Horses

These bearded bards have smoothed out some of their previous rolickers into a milder but really interesting album.  They’ve dusted off the legendary Glynn Johns (father of Ethan) for his first production gig in nearly three decades and it really pays off.  You can really hear the Carolina hills amidst the Wilsonian harmonies.

11: The Clearing (Dead Oceans)

Bowerbirds 

The earthy duo from Upper Air has expanded in number and so has their sound.  This record, grouped with the most recent offerings from Bon Iver, the Rosebuds, and Megafaun, would make for a really oddly cohesive April Base box set: ranging from ambitious and bombastic to charming and homespun.  Between the recurrent wildlife vagabonding and Phil Moore’s strangely entrancing songwriting meter, you are bound to get sucked in by the bare beauty and precious vulnerability of this music.

10: Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices (Asthmatic Kitty)

The Welcome Wagon

This time around Pastor Vito Aiuto and wife Monique cobble together a less-overtly Sufjan Stevens-infused collection of hymns and spiritual songs.  Again, the covers are outstanding, ranging from Crowder to the Cure.  The hymns are imaginative appropriations of some lesser-known texts, and Vito has continued to prove himself a worthy auteur and purveyor of surprisingly sacred music in the vein of a Brooklyn-hipster-Reverend Gary Davis.

9: The Carpenter (Universal Republic)

Avett Brothers 

The Avetts were in a pickle on this one.  After working with Rick Rubin on I and Love and You and simultaneously getting flack from longtime fans longing for the mountain-punk of their beginnings and getting lauded by a much much larger audience, this album, their seventh full-length studio record (and 14^th total release!) bore many of the pressures of a sophomore album.  Somehow they managed to do it.  In the midst of immense scrutiny and personal and familial trial, they produced a record with genuine warmth of sound and lyrical depth.  In my mind, The Carpenter resists conflation with the Mumford phenomenon (though similarities abound and some might disagree), due in part to the band’s willingness to explore (and fall flat in some cases) while frequently tipping their caps to unabashed influences like Townes Van Zandt and Doc Watson.  These influences lie very near the surface but don’t seem as forced or forceful as the literary and biblical allusioneering of their comrades.

8: Life Is People (Dead Oceans)

Bill Fay

This record came out of nowhere for me.  I had heard both Jeff Tweedy (of Wilco) and Damien Jurado cover “Be Not So Fearful.”  But Bill Fay was as obscure to me as he actually is.  Tweedy, himself, makes an appearance on Fay’s first album of new material in 41 years. Fay returns the favor with a cover (almost in latter year Johnny Cash fashion) of Tweedy’s “Jesus, Etc” in one of the finer moments of the record.  “The Healing Day”  offers a cathartic, eschatological anthem for fans of Cash, Billy Prince Billy, Wilco, and Nick Cave.

7: A Wasteland Companion (Merge)

M. Ward

For being a spliced-together collection of songs from the road, Companion sure doesn’t sound like it.  While decidedly less lo-fi than his earlier records, and conspicuously featuring indie sweetheart, Zooey Deschanel (the “She” from his other notable project), “Clean Slate” and “Pure Joy” could fit in on an anthology of his best and most characteristic.

6: Voyageur (Zoe Records)

Kathleen Edwards

This past fall, I’ve countlessly heard, from both sides of the aisle, the bemoaned, “if so-and-so wins the election, I’m moving to Canada.”  Canadian Kathleen Edwards diffuses this by threatening the inverse on the lead track of Voyageur and then shows her hand on this “empty threat.”  Voyageur succeeds through heartbreaking lyrics and vocals, and daring and skilled arrangements.  Even in some of her less poignant moments, she manages to pull off sounding sincere singing about sidecars and pink champagne in a way rivals Kim Kierkergaardashian‘s ability to combine crass and contemplative.

5: Fear Fun (Sub Pop)

Father John Misty

Best described as a trip, Fear Fun, is part Josh Tillman travelogue and part apocalyptic fantasy.  Woven strands of reality and fiction are incarnated in hazy Laurel Canyon fare.  The result is remarkably more interesting than either the lush harmonies of Tillman’s former gig as drumming Fleet Fox or his intense but often monotonous singing-ax solo fare.  With the album, he chopped off his hair, and was seemingly and suddenly imbued with newfound frontman swagger.  I’ve wondered on more than one occasion if this could this be a neo-Robert Johnston scenario?  While confusing at times, hilarious at others, and shrouded in darkness even in its sunnier moments, FF has to be considered one of the oddest and most enjoyable albums of 2012.

4: Fake Blood  (Removador/Harvest)

Floating Action

Black Mountain experimenteur Seth Kauffman teamed with Jim James of My Morning Jacket and toned down some of the sitar from last year’s wonderful but difficult Desert Etiquette to arrive at his most complete work since his solo album Research.  This “conservatism” suits him well, as a little restraint helps the supreme nuance come out in fewer and less labored listens.  The title of the record stems from his observation and frustration at the pervasive ability of “fake blood” (art that doesn’t hurt to make, but safely appears so) to sell records and make fans.  This epitomizes Seth’s ability to surprisingly craft and juxtapose.  After all, when asked about surprising interests and influences, he once listed Saabs, Paula Abdul and Karl Barth in the same sentence.

3: Boys & Girls (ATO)

Alabama Shakes 

“I feel so homesick.  Where’s my home?  Where I belong or where I was born?” questions Brittany Howard on “Rise to the Sun.”  Her ability to repeatedly package such existential wonderings in, to borrow a buddy’s descriptor, such “gronky” (here think something akin to Led Zep, Janis Joplin, Chuck Berry, Ike Turner… a funky sonic patina) containers shines.  Throughout this sparkling debut, the Shakes prove that while there is nothing new under the sun, its revolution around the earth and its faithful reemergence can endlessly illumine what we already know in surprising and quite enjoyable ways.

2: Big Inner   (Hometapes/Spacebomb)

Matthew E. White

Not since Illinois has it been so cool and engrossing to listen to an album that sounds, at times, like a glorified high school marching band jam session.  Like Sufjan’s masterpiece, Matthew E. White (who’s arranged for the Mountain Goats, the Sounds of the South tour and whose backing band has richly ornamented the huge sounding and hugely successful eponymous Bon Iver record) has proven that once you dive in you find the brass and fanfare is actually secondary.  Listen and you’ll be rewarded with a rich lyrical tapestry.  The sacred and the profane touch at times, their threads crawling over each other, combined though not indistinguishable.  At times you wonder if White is miming Randy Newman or Qoheleth as he muses about the sun’s hiding place on “Steady Pace.”  Or when he takes up the slave-song meme of crossing the “Brazos” and explodes into a more than 5 minute long, album-ending chorus of “Jesus Christ, he is our Lord!  Jesus Christ, he is your friend!”

1: Maraqopa (Secretly Canadian)

Damien Jurado 

After warming up with a handful of cover songs and Jurado’s previous release, Saint Bartlett, the Jurado/Richard Swift production tandem has hit full-stride with Maraqopa.  Sometimes enigmatic and others jangly and humorous, the amount of texture, attention, and the nuance kept me listening to this record throughout the whole year.  While his sound has evolved, his writing has remained constant.  He pens “I heard you call my name.  You were outside the door.  How did I not hear you before?” on “This Time Next Year” a parousia anthem whose opening doo-wop chimes are broken up by surf-guitar distortion.  Lines like these are sneaky.  In some ways they underwhelm, but Jurado has developed a penchant for writing such startlingly simple lyrics that lack any semblance dullness or pretension, but manage to strike the hearer as stark and unalloyed.

December 13, 2012

Inspired by my fellow contributors’ Advent posts, I’d love to share a few items from my community’s Advent observation.

1) Each of the last several years, I’ve had some part in writing and/or curating a church devotional.  Even though these reflections usually take place while there are still leaves on the trees and it’s not yet sweater weather, this rhythm of pre-Advent preparation has been a pastoral boon for me.  Unlike some things, even some sermons, I’ve found this exercise to be preparatory rather than exhausting.  By the time we’re lighting candles on Sunday morning (in an elementary school gym), I’m more prepared and excited rather than bored or tired.  Here is this year’s devotional (available for free download).  Clicking here will get you to some of the previous material, also freely given.

2) It has been really special as a pastor immersed in a community (both church and wider) chock-full of creative types to attempt to foster that creativity.  To pastor people who consider (and some who don’t) themselves artists has been one of the most joyful, challenging, and favorite parts of my duties and the Lord’s provision.  This season, I especially enjoyed the give-and-take that went along with commissioning this piece for our church’s Advent.  I got the opportunity to work conceptually with the artist, Nathan Hood, on a work that would adorn our bulletins and the advent devotional.

Here are some of Nate’s words on his process:

When putting things together for this Advent imagery there were a few themes in my mind upfront, including the power of God in the helplessness of a human baby and the mystery of God made known in Christ. Reflecting on it now, two things come to mind most readily.

First is the awesomeness, the wonder, the amazing happening of the Uncreated becoming a created being, becoming human. The question always arising from that thought for me is, “If God himself were to walk among us, what would God do, what would God be like if we could see, touch, hear, taste, and smell him?”  ”What would he be up to?”

Secondly, comes the thought that Christ is at once God and man, our King and our Servant, the Lion and the Lamb. There are many realities alive in Him at the same moment. There are many alive in us, and so many if we have received the love and the sonship he holds out to us.

What do you see? What are your thoughts during this time?

Ultimately in our expression of these truths words fail us, as does imagery. Forgive me for attempting both, and thank you for letting me be a part of this. May our capacity to receive the love of our Father grow, increase, abound. Peace to you church.

3) Finally, our music ministry at church decided to give some of our Advent music away.  In 2010, this short record came together as a companion to our Advent devotion.  At the time, we were (and still are) trying to figure out what it means to observe this season of waiting and how Advent tempers our unabated early embrace of Christmas (or at least the sentimental christmas-iness around us).  The result is a “night-themed” collection of alternately chilly and warm devotionally-sprung, but missionally-minded tunes.

I’d love to invite you to take advantage of this here:

Hope, peace, joy, and love during this season.  May God enable you through his Spirit to be an attentive and expectant wait-er.  May we anticipate our Lord’s second coming with the “thrill of hope” that we experience and celebrate his first.

-Chris Breslin

December 12, 2012

Advent is about waiting for Someone to come. Christmas shows us that He can appear  in unexpected ways and in unsuspected places. The Resurrection teaches us something similar—you never know where the Risen Christ will appear. Or when. Luke, Matthew and John all portray the disciples as stuck after the tragedy of the Crucifixion. We find them crammed in locked rooms or trudging sorrowfully toward Emmaus. It is as if they are waiting for something. But for what, they do not know.

Below is a brief reflection on a verse from a Resurrection scene in John’s Gospel, excerpted from a sermon I preached over the weekend. In all our waiting, you never know when or where he will turn up….

 

On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”(Jn 20:19)

A locked room is no good when there is an empty tomb.

If a tomb’s sealed stone has been knocked to the side, then your room’s locked doors don’t mean anything.  Shut entryways are no match for a Man whose tomb just lost its stone doorway. A Man who will not stay dead, cannot be kept out.

At the end of John 19 there is a sealed tomb. Near the end of John 20 there is a locked room. The 1^st cannot kept Jesus in.  The 2^nd cannot keep Jesus out.

When we come across a Resurrection scene, we need to recognize that something cosmic, something epic, something irreversible, something terrifyingly wonderful has happened… something that changes everything. When a dead Man walks out of his tomb, then a wrench has been tossed into the machinery of Evil. A holy virus has infiltrated the superstructure of the Dark Powers. That emptied grave has sent into reeling Death, Disease, Darkness and the Devil….

And while all this cosmic madness is underway in unseen realms, the disciples of the Risen Lord are huddled up in a locked up room… afraid.

To be clear, the Disciples have not locked the doors to keep out Jesus. They are trying to keep safe from the Jewish leaders who have crucified their Friend. They are dreading that awful sound: the sound of footsteps at the door, that awful sound of a hard knocking.

But Jesus came and stood among them. 

Maybe you are reading this and you feel trapped and stuck, locked up and afraid. Or maybe you are trying to lock yourself up, hoping to keep Jesus himself at bay. It is the footsteps and knocking of Jesus you don’t want to hear at the door. Maybe you are hoping he will observe the “No Trespassing” you’ve tacked up. Or maybe you feel imprisoned and it is your enemies who have thrown away the key. And now it’s just waiting, waiting, waiting… straining the ears sensitive to every sound, hoping Someone might show up for a jailbreak.

If Jesus made a tomb-break, he can pull of a jailbreak.

Both Advent and this particular Resurrection scene affirm this: There is no distance too excessive for the Coming Christ… even if it takes Incarnation. And they do not make doors thick enough or locks strong enough to keep the Resurrected Christ out. No stone is dense enough, no bars wide enough, no dungeon secure enough, to keep you trapped when the Resurrected Christ has broken out of his tomb, descended into hell, and come back to talk about it.

Jesus came and stood among them… “Peace to you.”

Jesus claims in Revelation 3 that he is the One “who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens” (v.7). He is coming for you, clasping the key of a King in His hand.

A locked room is no good when there is an empty tomb.

December 7, 2012

(A basic little something I wrote for practical purposes at my church. The season of Advent is quite the season for hopeful realism, by the way.)

On Advent

Time, how it’s used and its soul-shaping quality, is really important in Christian spirituality. The daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly rhythms of our lives are not a neutral aspect of the life of faith.

This is always been recognized in the tradition.

Early Christians, using the Jewish rhythms — feasts, holy days, etc. — as a point of departure, began to think of the yearly Christian experience in seasons. This is where we get the idea of the church calendar.

Advent is one such season.

Advent is not Christmas. It’s the season before Christmas, intended to guide us into the desperate longing and somewhat frustrated waiting that has always been associated with the people of God. Longing and waiting for God to come to rescue, fulfill, deliver, restore, make things new and fresh.

Think of profound things you’ve had to wait for. Think of that weird frustration/swirling angst/sometimes faint hope/painful longing you felt. That feeling comes close to the heart of the Advent season.

At Advent, we enter into the desperate longing and somewhat frustrated waiting of the people of Israel, as they hoped and anticipated the arrival of God’s anointed, king-like figure, foretold in the shadowy, mythic oracles of the prophets. This anointed-one would somehow play a role in the re-establishment of Lord’s rule and reign in the world. We feel their desperation, and taste the seemingly delusional hope that their God just might be the kind of God who would break-in and make things right and new.

At Advent, we also enter into desperate longing and somewhat frustrated waiting of Christians everywhere, as we hope and anticipate the re-arrival of Christ. He snuck into our world in a unnervingly ordinary way the first time.

And the great Christian hope is that he will appear to finish the job he started. To re-assert his rule and reign in a final, complete way. Again, we long, hope and wait. All the while remembering that our God just might be the kind of God who would bring such total and complete restoration.

The Christian journey is lived in the tension of these two Advents, arrivals, comings. God’s kingdom’s re-establishment has been launched in Jesus’ arrival. This kingdom is here, but not quite fully here yet. It will be here fully (eventually) but for now we wait.

By the way, if this living-between-comings doesn’t explain a lot about our lives and our world, I don’t know what does.

Advent is the season when we enter into this story. When, in a uniquely focused manner, we read, think, pray, long, wait and hope along these lines.

If you are in need of Christ in a fresh way in the very mundane ordinary realities of you life, if there are things that only he can give that you are longing, hoping and waiting for, then the Advent season is for you.

November 27, 2012

On January 2 I begin working as the Chaplain at St Mary’s College here in Durham. It is a real pleasure to be able to make that announcement. Everyone I have interacted with at the College have been so helpful and enjoyable.

For over a year now I have had the distinct delight of being a “layperson.” For the previous 11 years or so before moving to England, I had been serving as a minister in some official capacity. Since my vocational path has thus far tried to resist forking into Academics or Pastoral Ministry, the role of chaplain at a university college seems quite fitting.

My post will be part-time, with the bulk of my day-job energies still going to the PhD work. But I will now get to ply the crafts of academic biblical studies and pastoral ministry simultaneously. I have been in these waters before (Duke Div School/Mt Hermon Baptist Church), so the territory is not unfamiliar. What will be rather excitingly unfamiliar is that I will get to help lead Anglican-styled worship services every fortnight. This Baptist-ordained theology student has much to learn; but I am keen to soak up the wisdom of the students and staff I will get to work with.

Your prayers will be appreciated!

 

November 25, 2012

More and more I am recognizing that my book on cynicism (see the icon in to the right)  is ultimately a pastoral exercise in applying Christian eschatology to our daily reality.

Cynicism arises from disillusionment.  When the rug gets jerked form beneath our feet and we find ourselves breathless staring up at the ceiling, wondering what hit us, only to remember, oh yeah, it was REALITY that hit.  Idealism cannot thrive in an ex-Eden world. But cynicism is just as untenable in a world into which Christ has come, from which He has ascended, and to which He will return.

Eschatology is why cynicism is not valid… at least not for Christians.

If there is an open hole in the ground of this earth—the empty tomb of Jesus—then something cataclysmic has taken place.  The resurrection of the dead, implied in a few places in the OT (Isa 25, Dan 12, Ezek 37) and discussed more openly in the literature of Early Judaism, has been jump-started into our present sphere by the “first fruits” (1 Cor 15) of Christ’s own resurrection.  The New Age to Come (this is language found in Early Judaism and throughout the NT) has lurched backward from the future into our current time, overlapping with the Present Evil Age.

In Faith Without Illusions, I cite George Eldon Ladd near the end. Here is a wonderful quote I just reread this afternoon:

Christ’s resurrection is not an isolated event; it is in fact an eschatological occurrence which has been transplanted into the midst of history. We are living already on the heavenward side of the first stage of the resurrection. This puts a whole new light on the whole human predicament. [1]

You can click on the About the Blog section for more on “hopeful realism,” the perspective alternative to cynicism and idealism I am calling for in the book. Ultimately, hopeful realism is both eschatological (“hopeful”—appreciating the work of God in the overlap of the Ages and anticipating Christ’s return) and cosmological (“realism”—recognizing the full brunt of fallenness that has plagued our world and our own hearts so disastrously).

The Kingdom is in our midst… and still yet to come.

 

George Eldon Ladd, The Gospel of the Kingdom: Scriptural Studies in the Kingdom of God (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1959) 44.

November 21, 2012

[drawing above: From the Dragon's Hoard by Shaylynn Rackers]

 

It was story-time.

My wife and oldest daughter were away for gymnastics practice, and I had just tucked my smallest daughter in her bed. The house was oddly quiet for a home with two strapping little boys at-large.  I found them both on the sofa, each of the them reading a book (the 7-yr old was reading; the 4-yr old was staring down at an open text…  he sure looked the part).

I wanted to tell them a Bible story, but we suddenly got into a conversation involving squires, knights and dragons.  Toy swords (which are always near at hand in our home) were grasped and the 4-yr old narrated a tale about a dragon’s cave with huge bats and a brave squire. When it was my turn for story-time, I held them both in my arms and recounted a tale pieced together from majestic lore of old….

There was once a great King.  The greatest of all kings ever to have reigned in those lands.  He fought with the courage of a wild beast, looking his enemies in the eyes and never wavering.  He was blessed and special, unlike any other ruler.  A vow was made that the throne would ever go to one of his sons or grandsons down through the long ages.

—”What was his name?! What was his name?!” asked the 7-yr old, eyes wide open

“Shhh.  Just wait…”.  I resumed—

Then the people of this kingdom forgot who they were.  The great line of kings forgot their ancient father, the fierce and good King of old.

—”Was it Arthur?  It was King Arthur wasn’t it?!”

“Shhh.  Just wait…”

The people and the kings began to fade away.  Other kings, stronger and braver, fought against the people.  Captured them.  The years passed.  The family of the kings all but disappeared.  The people lacked hope.

But then—in the Shadows… in the Dark… in the Night—a baby boy came.  He was from the family of the great King.  But this baby would be the King of all.  And one day he would grasp a sword sharper than any other, a sword stronger than any other, and all evil would fly away from his face.  And one day he will fight every last dragon, and take their ruler, the great Dragon-Beast, the strongest monster of all, and throw him into the Lake of Fire forever and ever.

—”With all the bad guys?” (my 4-yr old is ever concerned about the “bad guys” getting their due).

“If the bad guys do not serve the the great King but follow the Dragon, then I am afraid they will be in trouble, too.”

Then I asked, “Do you want to know the name of this Greatest King?

Nods.

“Jesus. And the first king was David.”

Ahhhh, of course! flashed through the still widened eyes of the 7-yr old.  “But Dad, there are no dragons in the real world.”

“Are you sure?” (I had been reading an essay by J.R.R. Tolkien earlier in the day).

He was thinking. Wondering. And I explained to him that there be dragons, indeed.  But also mighty forces of light and beauty.  And we want to serve those good forces, fighting not with fists or swords but with truth and kindness.

The 4-yr old: “I like it when bad guys cry.” He was still delighting in the just end of badness.

“But sometimes,” I offered,” maybe we are the bad guys and don’t know it.”  The lines can get blurry at times, can’t they?

And on that note: “Bedtime, guys.”

November 11, 2012

I had ground the coffee beans the night before in anticipation of an early Saturday morning reading a fine new book, Arthur Boer’s Living into Focus (my 7-year old is entertained that “the author is an Arthur.”)

In the pre-dawn Saturday darkness, I heard a tiny voice (that can get quite loud) calling “Daddy” from her crib.

I warmed up her milk while I brewed my coffee.  We are both very particular about our morning hot drinks.  I heat her milk in the microwave for 47 seconds.  My French Press (cafetiere) is timed for 4 minutes.  When the rituals were complete, we sat down happily under a blanket with clay mug of a bourbon espresso blend and a plastic thermos filled with perfectly warmed milk.  I also grabbed my book.

Boers is writing about “focal practices,” a phrase associated with University of Montana philosopher Albert Borgmann.

Eugene Peterson wrote the book’s foreword.  Boers, Borgmann and Peterson alike share a suspicious disposition toward the technological ethos of our age—an important perspective for me to understand as I research for my media-theology book.  To a large degree, it is a perspective I instinctively share… though I have to say I am trying to listen carefully to other voices, a practice that is causing me to rethink a few things.

With my youngest daughter sipping milk and me sipping coffee, I was reading Boers’ evaluations of a home-life shaped around the TV.  In his view, important focal practices—ritual activities that healthily shape us and bind us to God and each other—can include hiking, meal preparation, woodworking, sharing fellowship around the supper/lunch/breakfast.  These varied exercises engage us in more healthy formative ways than video games or movie-going.  But practicing them is undermined by the perpetual question arising from our technological culture: “what are we going to watch…?” [1]

“Dad, can I watch TV.”

My oldest daughter had just appeared from her bed.

“No, hon, not now.”

I kept reading, now with both daughters snuggled up on the sofa under the blanket.  Boers was writing about his family’s experience of preparing and eating meals at this well-crafted wooden table, a furnishing in his home that almost took on a sacramental quality.

“Dad, I’m hungry.”

That was from my 4-yr old.  If he does not eat within ten minutes of rising bleary-eyed from a night’s sleep, there is a danger that the galaxy might implode.  At least that’s what his demeanor conveys.

I go to the kitchen to make breakfast: chocolate chip pancakes is the Saturday morning standard.  My mood is good.  I am excited about the culture I want to instill in my young family. As I work on the meal, I take glimpses out the window to take in the fresh sunlight hitting the Autumn leaves and the still-green grass.  Boers had installed a window in his kitchen so he could do the same.

“Dad, can we watch something now?”

I give my permission—the tiny toddler, full of warm milk, wanted to watch an episode of Elmo’s World.  It lasts 12 minutes or so… innocent enough, right?

Then I call them for breakfast.  My wife joins us from her activities upstairs, and we all sit around this old wooden table that, as our landlords inform us, used to belong to a well-known Bishop of Leeds.  Butter is smeared, syrup is poured, and conversation begins.

Actually, chaos begins.

Boers is calling for focal practices that cut into our technological/entertainment habits.  Part of the argument is that our lives are stressed, distracted, disjointed, fractured.  We hardly have any time to concentrate and enjoy each others’ company.  We can hardly sit and have a decent dialogue over a table these days with all the buzzing and beeping of our gadgets at the table.

Forget the buzzing and beeping.  I’ve got yipping and yapping.

When we all 6 take our place at that old, wooden table, the sort of conversation and fellowship I envision does not happen.  It is stressed, distracted, disjointed, fractured.  Someone drops a syrup-soaked hunk of pancake on the floor.  The sausage is too hot, someone complains.  The toddler shouts that she is all done, yet she does so while sneaking more bites as if she cannot get enough—she is mad if she gets taken down from her high chair, mad if she does not.  An argument breaks out between the two oldest across the table. A milk cup almost spills. All this happens in one rising swell—not instantaneously.  It just grows and grows until my wife and I are on edge, anxious, frustrated, and so busy attending to the madness that our own pancakes (lovingly riddled with blueberries) get cold.

And you know what?  If I had served the meal in front of the TV, it would have been quiet, relaxed, and argument-free.

Now, our table is not always cacophonous and chaotic.  And my wife and I understand that our children must be meticulously taught to sit quietly and respectfully while “at table.”  That will take years.  Also, Boers is not saying that these focal practices are easy.  In fact, difficulty is an essential ingredient in developing a focal practice: without the challenge, there would be no counteraction against the immediate-access culture of consumerism and technological gadgetry.

But Elmo’s World would have kept our table much quieter, much less stressful.

I am not necessarily disagreeing with Boers.  I like his vision.  I will help promote his vision.  But I do like to bring out the nuances and impracticalities, especially for those of us with small children (which Boers would readily acknowledge, and does so from time to time in his book).

Brewing coffee and warming milk with a bleary-eyed toddler in my arms is a focal practice of sorts.  My arm hurts, and reading with her squirming in my lap can be a real challenge.  I will never trade in those moments, though.

But I thank God for supper in front of the TV on Family Movie Night.

 

[1] From an interview David Woods had with Borgmann.  See Arthur Boers, Living into Focus: Choosing What Matters in an Age of Distractions (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2012), 21, n. 13.