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Quotes of Renown

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

THE QUOTES THAT INSPIRE JACK TO WRITE THE TRUTH

I think good preachers should be like bad kids. They ought to be naughty enough to tiptoe up on dozing congregations, steal their bottles of religion pills, and morality pills, and flush them all down the drain. The church, by and large, has drugged itself into thinking that proper human behavior is the key to its relationship to God. What preachers need to do is force it to go cold turkey with nothing but the word of the cross—and then be brave enough to stick around while it goes through the inevitable withdrawal symptoms.

… Robert Farrar Capon (1925-2013), The Foolishness of Preaching, 

Genuine controversy, fair cut and thrust before a common audience, has become in our special epoch very rare. For the sincere controversialist is above all things a good listener. The really burning enthusiast never interrupts; he listens to the enemy’s arguments as eagerly as a spy would listen to the enemy’s arrangements. If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will find that no medium is admitted between violence and evasion. You will have no answer except slanging or silence. 

…G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936), 

Was there a moment known only to God, when all the stars held their breath, when the galaxies paused in their dance for a fraction of a second, and the Word, who had called it all into being, went with all his love into the womb of a young girl, and the universe started to breathe again, and the ancient harmonies resumed their song, and the angels clapped for joy?

…Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007), Bright Evening Star, Wheaton, IL: H. Shaw 1997

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

IT’S PRETTY GOOD! JACK GATOR

Thanksgiving

/ Norman Eric Peterson / 2 Comments

A gift given to us, a surprise gift, is usually a surprise that awakens a feeling of thankfulness. We don’t call the store where it was bought to thank them for the gift, we thank the giver who thought enough of us to give.

A quote from a very well known evangelist is apropos as this time in this brief column. It is a quote from a well known evangelist from the 19th century. Her name was Hannah Smith.

Hannah Smith was known as the “angel of the churches” both for her eloquence and for her appearance in her evangelistic addresses to huge gatherings throughout Britain. In 1875 she published The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life, a guide to sanctification and total surrender to divine will that was translated into several languages and sold some two million copies around the world.      

A quote from Hannah’s book:

“Thanksgiving or complaining – these words express two contrasting attitudes of the souls of God’s children about His dealings with them; and they are more powerful than we are inclined to believe in furthering or frustrating His purposes of comfort and peace toward us. The soul that gives thanks can find comfort in everything; the soul that complains can find comfort in nothing.”                 

  Gator certainly has been a whiner and complainer for a great amount of his life. His excuses were many, most of them based on his choices that he thought were someone else’s to blame. Then Gator wondered why he had so few friends and felt ‘off ‘ most of the time. The good things were just referred to as ‘good luck’. The coal in his stocking was someone’s mistake or merely ‘bad luck’ Gator was/is pretty dense and finally the repeated rescue of his life by the ‘good luck’ became clear there was someone looking out for him that was mysterious and unexplained. It took years for Gator to discover who that was. It was akin to finding he had suddenly died and the doctor that saved his life was standing at his bedside. Smiling and pleased the foolish Gator finally had opened up and realized what was reality.

Car accidents, angry people with guns and missiles, heroin addiction and many others. These are the ones Gator knows about. Thankfulness was bubbling up from a long forgotten and ignored artesian well within. The creator of everything that is and was and will be was that smiling doctor. The healer of Gator’s stone cold heart (which still continues as there is a vein of very hard rock deep down) The doctor, the first and last, Wellspring of our souls, Beautiful one. Many names is He known by and the names continue to be put forth in Gator’s speech and song. You know who it is.

There has never been a man more alive than Jesus and He deserves thanksgiving from us. It’s pretty good.

Jack Gator

ANYONE ON THE STREETCAR FEELING DESPAIR?

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

It was right there all along. It’s been right there since the beginning of time. An undeniable feeling that there is nothing to life and that to reveal that extreme angst would be disastrous. What if you are the only person feeling this way? Would you be up for some sort of peer review and judged as a hopeless person. Depressing to be around. Destructive to ‘normal’ social interaction.

Lately there has been an overdose in print of that despair in the NY Times, the ‘leader’ of the news in our country? Gator has been keeping track of the transitive and intransitive verbs and so far has 20 of the most common ones used by their columnists. Gator will list them for you now. Be prepared to the obvious despair generated. Why this ‘news’ is prepared for us is somewhat of a mystery. But then, most of the columnists do not speak of it directly and never mention the only place to look for truth and the freedom involved in finding confidence.

Here’s the list: Chilling, Raging, Surging, Terrifying, Disturbing, Severe, Bizarre, Suffering, Hardship, Worst, Exhausted, Pain, Difficulty, Perilous, Intensely, Most Difficult, Terribly Painful, Staggering, Nervous and Spectacular.

This is the newspaper hawked by newsboys on the streetcars everywhere…Ok, Gator’s memory is a bit out of date but you get the idea of the far ranging effect of this sort of oppressive journalism. Can you envision the rustle and snap of newsprint being read on a bus and all that wonderful encouragement settling in to our frontal minds? Given a chance, Gator finds solace in Opus or Zippy the Pinhead.

Of course, there is the utter distraction of the sports page and Gator actually uses that information to initially bond with others. Gator was fascinated with baseball and the athletic ability of a second baseman to grab a fast grounder, touch second base and get off a snap throw to first for a forced out and then dance back and forth to get the runner who was on first tagged out. Training and physical achievement hidden in a man with a glove, resting his hands on his thighs. Waiting for what would need to be done instantly. Of course, now Gator cannot afford to attend a game but would like to in Kansas City as an excuse to visit some good friends down there in Grandview. Besides, the BBQ in KC is by itself a standout. So, sports can be used to entice conversation into deeper waters.

First the trust has to be engendered. Bait and switch to the clear cool waters, miles deep within. It works often. The verbal newsletters of old London in the pubs or coffee shops comes to mind. There were no newspapers then and small societies formed of writers and poets to share and, of course, critique each other’s drivel. The topics then were a bit deeper than the Kansas City Royals. Raison d’ etre (look it up) was a favorite. Why are we here? Who are you and who am I to see you? What is my destination and why do I feel despair? What is my soul? Things like that. Things we all think about

unless we are so dull that only sensations and pleasure float in front of our vision. Look farther, look inside and ask someone else what is going on. It’s pretty good. Jack Gator