That Hideous Man posts his rather dull thoughts here. Watch this space, or indeed, go somewhere else.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Riding the Durango and Silverton Railroad
The open cars provide amazing views of mountains, rivers, precipices and forests, but they don't protect the passengers from the dirt and soot being belted out by the hard-working little engine up front.
The open-vestibules give an exaggerated sense of speed.
The old and bumpy tracks make the large cars sway wildly on their narrow base.
Taking Water: The Durango & Silverton Narrow Guage Railway
The Durango & Silverton Railroad is a preserved narrow-guage railway in the San Juan Rockies. Much of the line's early life was spent serving the mines and their communities. These days the 80year old narrow guague engines pull huge trains of tourists up the almost 3000feet of ascent, providing 45 miles of wonderfully smelly and noisy industrial pyrotechnics - set in stunning scenery. These engines are remarkably big for the little track the perch on, but they also get thirsty - these photos are of a couple of water stops for the engines on the Northwood uphill climb.
Calling any Ornithologists!
I know these aren't great pictures - but I would love to know what these are. Any ornithologist out there able to tell me? thanks THM.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Book Notes: American Gospel by Jon Meacham
Inter-generational movements, bodies or institutions inevitably face battles to define their identity, purpose and future direction. Frequently these involve the present protagonists seeking to define themselves as the rightful and true heirs of the tradition - even as they seek to lead it in their own given direction. This is a phenomenon observable from local community groups, religious bodies, companies, family firms, charities or even perhaps countries!
The debate about the role of religion in public and political life in the USA today, is framed in exactly these terms. Secularists seek to advance their cause by appealing to the First Amendment of the Constitution which forbids the government from establishing an official state religion. Known as the 'wall of separation', such a division overturned the proscriptive arrangements in one or two of the North American colonies where participation in Christian worship according to the doctrines and practices of a specific denomination was mandatory. This wall of separation is now invoked to prevent state endorsement of anything religious, hence the fierce battles over issues such as prayer in schools.
Religious people in the States, unsurprisingly, handle the history in completely different ways. For them, the Republic as founded was a deeply Christian institution, albeit one in which Anglicans wouldn't force Presbyterians to adopt Episcopal structures by legislative force, for example. They point out that even though Jefferson was not an orthodox Christian - he was hardly devising a system through which to drive religious thought, practice or people from the public square! The 'Christian right' has also therefore sited historical precedent for their re-Christianising agenda.
Aware of the contemporary potency of the issues at hand, Jon Meacham wades right into the centre of this historical debate in his book, "American Gospel". In his broad survey of the role of faith in politics, which begins with the Founding Fathers and concludes with George W. Bush, Meacham argues that a non-partisan reading of history fits neither the agenda of the 'christian right', nor of secular-humanism. Against the 'christian-right' he demonstrates that from Jefferson onwards, the American State sought to prevent any form of compulsion in matters spiritual. Likewise he shows the repeated ways in which moves to endorse specific elements of Christian faith in public life have been resisted. However, far from siding with the secular-humanist reading of history, Meacham also points out the way that religious faith has consistently formed the backdrop for public political discourse, and people of faith have (rather than being excluded from public life - or called to compromise or privatise their faith) been essential figures in defining the American experiment.
In his reading then, faith has never been institutionalised in America. However, because America has been a democracy with genuine pluralism, (initially between Christian denominations, but subsequently between all points of view), then religion has always been a part of American public life. He charts the ways in which leaders and Presidents have drawn on faith, referred to faith and been inspired by it throughout the short history of the USA. Highlights in his discussion following the framers of the Constitution include the way in which Franklin D. Roosevelt drew America lead America into war against the evils of European Nazism while presenting himself in explicitly Christian terms as what Meecham calls a 'national pastor'.
While seeking to promote the historical precedent for the comfortable middle, Meecham obviously wants to suggest to both extremes that there should be room in public life for people of all persuasions. This he does well for much of the book - but not without some problems arising as well. Specifically these involve the development of what he calls "American Public Religion" - that is the use of predominantly Christian clergy to perform public rites for the American state, bringing as much of their faith with them as is publicly permissible at that moment. This has sometimes led to the watering down of the Christian faith for political consumption; something which Meecham is quite keen to endorse in fact. For those of us who might find such a position problematic, the implications get worse however. The suggestion that the 'cross' might have been subsumed by 'the flag' in this context, is not something that bothers Meecham - as his prime concern is not the cross, but America. However, writing as a non-American Christian, I would long to see a more critical view of America from the American church.
Nevertheless despite these reservations, this is a fascinating study which puts some of the wilder claims made by both extremes into perspective. Of course, what is more fascinating is that I write from the UK, a country which has long had various forms of established religion, no wall of separation at all - yet one in which Christian participation in public life is widely seen as being systematically undermined.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Scotland: Relationship Central Conference, Perth October 1
Alpha Scotland will be holding it's 'Relationship Central' conference at Perth Baptist Church Centre on Saturday October 1st 2011. The aim of the conference is to envision and equip the churches to serve families by using the Marriage and Parenting resources they have developed.
While the Marriage Course and Marriage Preparation Course have been running very successfully all over Scotland for some years, this year sees the addition of the Parenting and Parenting Teenagers Courses, to the portfolio of opportunities that Alpha are now offering to churches.
Alongside times of prayer and worship, the day will equip churches to run these courses in their communities - through demonstration of the resources, and of how a typical session would work - alongside the chance to chat with others already running the courses. Course authors Nicky and Sila Lee from Holy Trinity Brompton will be on to share the vision they have for this work - as well as give practical advice from their many years of running such courses.
Click on the image above to see the scan of the flyer in a decent size! All detail of costs, what is provided and online booking are on there. More details are online here .
Teluride
Teluride - a charming tourist-trap of a town at the head of a box-canyon, dwarfed by the enormous mountains that rise up on three sides.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Wildflowers: Engineer Mountain
While going up Engineer Mountain (we didn't get all the way!) all I noticed was the awe-inspiring grandeur of the mountain scenery. Descending, my attention was arrested by the carpets of flowers lining our route.
The Meadows: Engineer Mountain
Just about high enough above sea level to notice the reduced oxygen available when climbing!
On the 'Million Dollar Highway'
US Route 550 winds its way precariously from Silverton to Ouray - threading its way on ledges, cuttings and through hair-pin bends through the San Juan Mountains. The road is narrow, windy, and for every stupendous view it offers up to the peaks - offers a lethal drop down thousands of feet into the abyss below. The road has no safety barriers, and in some places, hardly any clearly defined edges. The temptation for the driver to take his eyes off the road to enjoy the view or to draw breath at the sight of a soaring eagle is great - but in my case more than offset by the terrified screams of the passengers closest to the edge pointing out that our wheels were 'less than two feet from certain death'.
Driving the 'million dollar highway' (a nickname is gained because of the expense of its construction) is a great experience during the day. We were glad we were back through it before nightfall, as further down beyond Silverton we drove through the most intense lighting storm I have ever seen. The rain was so heavy that visibility was dreadful, while the road turned into a torrent of water. The road/river bed looked black and menacing - and was lit up every few seconds by the arcs of lightning slicing and dancing down from the clouds into the trees either side like incessant strobe lighting. Every mile-an-hour we had to slow down meant longer out in worsening conditions, and so the pressure to keep moving at a reasonable speed fought against the fact that sometimes the beams of our headlights revealed nothing at all! The lack of any reflective edges to the road or junctions meant that they were peering hopelessly into the darkness. What the 'million dollar highway' would have been like by that point I cannot imagine. One bookshop owner in Durango told me of the nightmares she had as child about the car going over the edge up there. Apparently her uncle knew the road like the back of his proverbial hand, and would drive it in the dark at break-neck speed - and in those days it was a rough dirt track.
We carried sleeping children from cars back into our holiday house through the still streaming rain, as lightning continued to flash and the lights flickered. Collapsing into deep sofas with huge cups of inordinately strong coffee seemed an appropriate end to the days adventures.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Book Notes: A Meal With Jesus by Tim Chester
Although Tim Chester's book weighs in at a slender 138 easy-reading pages, it delivers a massive heavyweight punch in the penetrating insights it offers into the life of Christ - and their implications for the lives of his followers.
Chester's subject is the unlikely one of food - or more precisely meals. 'Unlikely' is a provocative term to use in this context because part of Chester's point is that meal-times were critical in Christ's ministry (especially in Luke's gospel), a pattern that the early church copied - but which we have rendered 'unlikely'. Through looking at the nine meals that Jesus shared with others in that gospel, 'A Meal with Jesus' sets out to re-capture our meal-tables as a place of grace, gospel, community, fellowship, hope, encouragement, and communion. In doing so it presents us with a wonderful theology of food, which is both instructive and inspiring. Anyone familiar with Chester's previous works will know that all these insights he brings will not be presented in a moralistic/legalist framework, but in a grace-soaked gospel-responsive way. This means that the Christian reading this book might well be confronted with several of their own misunderstandings and shortcomings - but will be so in a way that will inspire a joyful closer imitation of Christ!
There is a cliche in Christian circles that, 'worship isn't what you do in a Sunday service, its what you do with the whole of your life'. It's often repeated - but rarely explored. The implications of this for mealtimes that Chester shares are truly fascinating! The default understanding for many people is that while fasting is something we do for God, eating is for us. This book demolishes such thinking as well as the rather dubious Gnostic foundations upon which it rests. "The Son of Man came eating and drinking" the gospel insists and much of the life Jesus lived in perfect communion with The Father, was spent around the meal-table! The meal-table is a place of worship. Chester points out that the Biblical creation-fall-redemption narrative applies to food as much as to anything else. Eden=provision, Fall=alienation which leads to various problems of (i) ingratitude (ii) greed (iii) illness. But then he asks us, what will redemption look like as we apply it to this area and sit down and eat together? Our answer is found in the meals that Jesus shared.
In summary then, here are some notes and quotes through the book:
Meals enact grace. Sinners (that's us folks!) are invited. To eat with a person in Biblical times was to accept them and share fellowship with them. The Pharisees sought to exclude the prostitutes and others 'sinners' from the table-fellowship -but Jesus welcomes sinners. As we are welcomed, so we must welcome!
Meals as enacted community. The church was never intended to be an institution - but a community of faith, in which grace is the determinative attitude. Hospitality (messy, awkward, time-consuming hospitality) is therefore an essential element in sharing life together. This doesn't mean the 'institutionalised' hospitality of the pot-luck in the church hall but the sharing of normal meals. Being 'given to hospitality' was a requirement in the New Testament for the precise reason that the premises were a home and the church meeting primarily a feast!
Meals as enacted hope. The church community, as well as being a group of people who will seek to subdue their 'flesh' through fasting, will also be a people who celebrate the provision of God through feasting! God's physical provision, show his goodness. God's provision of a messiah, is the most wonderful moment in the history of the world. Just as the Old Testament people brought a thankful tithe to Jerusalem, and recognised the provision of God - and then feasted together; how much more should the messianic-community be one in which there are thankful, hopeful feasts!
Meals as enacted mission! (p89) "Jesus didn't run projects, establish ministries, create programs, or put on events. He ate meals. If you routinely share meals, and have a passion for Jesus, then you'll be doing mission. It's not that meals save people. People are saved through the gospel message. But meals will create natural opportunities to share that message in a context that resonates so powerfully with what you are saying". If meals are integral to Christian living in a secular world, Chester also points out that the meal-table of the early church was the place where the lonely came for conversation and the hungry for bread.
Meals as enacted salvation. Just as the fall is pictured as a rebellious act of eating - so salvation through Jesus Christ is embodied in a meal - The Lord's Supper, (Eucharist or Communion). The bread and wine of communion call us to participate in the death and resurrection of Christ and anticipate his return. But Chester argues we have robbed communion of much of its significance by separating it from the meal-table. (p118-9) "The Lord's Supper should be a meal we "earnestly desire" to eat. We should approach it with anticipation. With longing. With excitement. With joy. The Lord's Supper should be a joyous occasion. A vibrant meal with friends. A feast. Our earnest desire must surely affect how we celebrate The Lord's Supper. Today it has commonly become ritualised. We're the group in town whose central meal involves a fragment of bread and a small sip of wine. How is this a foretaste of the messianic banquet? .... Communion should be the feast of friends shared with laughter, tears, prayers and stories. We celebrate the community life that God gives us through the cross and in the Spirit. we can't celebrate it with heads bowed and eyes closed, alone in our private thoughts and strangely solitary even as we're surrounded other people. When we recapture the Lord's Supper as a feast of friends celebrated as a meal in the presence of the Spirit, then it will become something we earnestly desire. It will become the high point in our life together as the people of God." I am so grateful to Chester for making this point so powerfully and eloquently. I am convinced he is right.
Meals as enacted promise. Chester concludes his book with the 'trick' question: 'what are meals for?'. The question is a trick he reveals because in the Bible - everything else is there for the meal! The whole point of everything is that we share in restored fellowship and communion with God and each other through Christ, and in Biblical terms this is usually pictured and celebrated as a meal. (Rev3:20) Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me. Placing the gospel and the church it births in relational, rather than institutional, terms places the meal table back at the centre of church life.
That summary is but a brief glimpse into the many, many things this book contains. A Meal with Jesus is one of the most stimulating Christian books I have read in a long time. It is wise, stirring, grace-filled, heart-warming and action requiring. It is utterly soaked in the gospel of Christ - but yet profoundly challenges many of the patterns into which our families and church fellowships have lapsed, summoning them back to an altogether more authentic, and joyful existence.
One word of warning however. If you are a reader in the UK, make sure when you get this book you get the version published in the UK by IVP, not the Crossway/reLit version. I bought mine in the States and it has been hugely Americanised, both in content and language to the point that it will distract the UK-English speaker significantly. The UK edition is apparently due out soon.
For those of us who endorse that old cliche about worship, ('it's not what you do on a Sunday morning in church, but the whole of life') but want to break worship out from within the confines of worship services so that all of life becomes worship; I cannot think of a better place to start than this book! This is my Christian book recommendation of the year.
Mineral Creek, Colorado
Mineral Creek: dirt roads, hill-trails, fine mountains, campsites - and bear warning signs!
The San Juan Mountains
(click on photo to enlarge)
The road from Durango to Silverton is one of those drives on which the scenery is so stunning that it is not possible to keep driving. We felt repeatedly compelled to pull over and gape open-mouthed at the mountains. If only pictures could do the experience justice!
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Get More Out of Life with Coffee! Sign: Pagosa Springs
The riverside cafe in Pagosa Springs seems to have a fine grasp of priorities - and they serve fine coffee too! "Get More Out of Life - with Coffee, Play Better Golf, Fast Relief from Fatigue!" Love it!
WAPPED!
Blogger recently launched a new toy to enable it to compete with the likes of Wordpress -a WAP facility for the blogs they host. This means that when you are viewing the blog on a small device like a phone it presents (posts-only, no side-bar) it in a smaller, more suitable format. Anyone want to try my blog on a phone and tell me how it looks?
Monday, August 15, 2011
Book Notes: Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz
Tony Horwitz' book about the ongoing significance of America's Civil War manages to be fast-paced, educational, incisive, and thought-provoking whilst being a hugely entertaining romp through American landscapes, history, and culture. The title of the book is in itself worth commenting on. The 'attic' refers not merely to the sense that the Confederacy is present but hidden within America (like 'reds under the bed'!), but also more literally to the attic bedroom adorned with Civil War memorabilia that Horwitz occupied as a youngster, prior to coming to public attention as an award-winning international journalist. The sub-title of the book, "Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War" may come as a surprise to anyone who assumes that the South lost its cause when Lee surrendered to Grant or with the final fall of Richmond, VA. Horwitz' travels demonstrate that the iconic battles of 1861-5, remain psychologically and politically potent forces in the lives of many Americans today.
While in Europe, the victors of wars over the last century have developed a potent folklore and iconography of the conflict, the losers have sought to forge a new identity for themselves (don't mention the war, I did once, but I think I got away with it - Basil Fawlty). In Horwitz' estimation, the opposite has happened with the American Civil War. In the North, the 'American Civil War' has assumed a normal place in the history of the nation. However, for many of the Southerners he meets, 'The War of Northern Aggression', or the 'War Between States' - The Lost Cause still has remarkable cultural potency. Names such as Gen. Robert E. Lee, the patrician warrior, Stonewall Jackson the consummate soldier and 'martyr', and even the fearless, dangerous and psychopathic Nathan Bedford Forrest inspire awe. They also inspire legions of re-enactors, (like the chap on the book's cover, Robert Lee Hodge), some of whom take their re-enacting so seriously that they imitate the precise clothing, hardship, cold and malnutrition of Lee's outgunned, out-manned, outnumbered and under-supplied army. Huddled together for warmth on the precise place where the regiments camped, and fought, at precisely the right hour of the right day of the year, Horwitz travels with the hard-core re-enactors as they seek to relive something of the horrors of 1860s army life, and the terrors of battle at Gettysburg, Antietam, Shiloh, Wilderness, and Vicksburg.
In his travels through the battlefield of the South Horwitz meets the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy, who at the soft end of the movement seek to honour fallen great-grandparents - but at the more sinister end espouse openly racist ideas. He meets the last surviving Confederate Widow (!), investigates the myths surrounding Gone With the Wind, and tells the appalling story of Andersonville the Confederate concentration camp in which 13,000 Union troops perished in the 'care' of war criminal Henry Wirz. He recoils at the way that the museum seeks to water-down or justify the genocide, and watches in disbelief at the Wirz memorial service. He also encounters African Americans who don't believe the war achieved anything, and espouse separation of races, as well as the family of a young man shot for displaying a Confederate flag.
While he does describe much of the history of the Civil War, Horwitz is as concerned with what it means now. He finds many intriguing and worry things as he goes. The young white man shot by Blacks 'for' displaying the Confederate flag both may have been provoking them in other ways and personally had little or no understanding of the meaning of the flag he displayed. The fact that racist groups have given money to the family and sought to make him the last Confederate martyr - demonstrates more about the ongoing potency of the Civil War imagery in contemporary interracial strife than it does about the actual incident.
Horwitz also explores whether it is possible to celebrate the Confederacy today without endorsing a white, right-wing, semi-fascist agenda. Confederate apologists like to re-cast the conflict in terms of a struggle for States rights in which they the underdog, the victim were overwhelmed by the overbearing power of the advancing Federal government (Tea-party, anyone?!). Northern attempts to portray Lincoln's war as an act of self-sacrifice from the North on behalf of its oppressed Southern Black citizens are equally spin-doctored. Horwitz describes himself as a Northern Liberal Jew - but yet as a child he had huge admiration for the dashing Confederate troops who fought so bravely, in such dreadful conditions in an unwinable war of attrition against a superior enemy. Despite the Southern romantic legend of Stonewall Jackson - and standing where he lost his arm in his final fatal injury, Horwitz can't face wearing the Southern Uniform with the re-enactors. The war may have been about 'States Rights', but the 'right' in question they wished to exercise was that of oppressing millions of people into the savagery of indentured servitude. He continues his trip with the hard core re-enactors, but in the dark-blue of the North.
He finds other people too who struggle handle the legacy of the Civil War. In Richmond, Virginia, from where Jeff Davis ruled the doomed Confederacy, Horwitz finds statues of him and the great Generals of the slave-state, like Lee, Jackson and JEB Stuart, all built while whites were reclaiming the South after Reconstruction. To some Virginianians these are great symbols of Southern Pride - and a statement of defiance against Northern Federal dominance. To others they represent the memories of fallen ancestors. To others they represent the twisted aspiration to reverse the progress of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s & 60s and restore a Jim Crow system. When Horwitz was there a debate was raging about these statues. Should they be pulled down in honour of Black-equality and political power in the contemporary city - or left as historical markers. More potent than that - the suggestion had been made to cast a statue of local Black hero, tennis legend Arthur Ashe and place it in Monument Avenue. Arthur's statue was to be much smaller than Jackson, Davis or Lee - but would his presence there be a sign of progress or would it demean his legacy by placing him in the shadow of those who would have oppressed his grand-parents? More significantly - would placing Ashe there play-down the crimes of the Confederacy's racist war? Today Ashe stands proudly in Richmond. The past may not be reconciled, but its complexity is represented.
This is a really, really good read. Horwitz is an astute observer, and a very good writer. His storytelling from history is as good as his interactions with the present. He is as solid in his rejection of bigotry as he is in his good-natured appreciation for people with all their eccentricities, and history. The book is actually more amusing because he resists the obvious writer's temptation to mock or ridicule people who want to lie in wet-trenches dressed in 1860s battle fatigues (etc); but lies with them, smiles with them and seeks to enter their world and experience. The nod to the 'real world' of friends and family who thinks such weekend pastimes are ludicrous, is then not condemnatory, but shared with his friends lying with him in the Gettysburg field
I recently blogged about how much I had enjoyed reading Stuart Maconie's book about Britain, in which he mixes travel-writing, autobiography, history, culture and politics by travelling around key British historical sites and examining how their legacy interacts with the present. I hadn't come across anyone else writing in that strange intersection of genres - but when I got to the States and stumbled across Horwitz, I was delighted. This is great stuff.
'Norris' loses his hippie-hair!
While in Scotland, young Norris had spent at least a term cultivating and sporting an increasingly splendid mound of hippy hair. Wearing 'nature's-scarf' in this way is probably quite sensible in Perth where summer can last anything up to twenty minutes, and scale the dizzy heights of 12'C. Sadly, Arizona was just too hot for all that loft insulation and it had to be removed. The result was a straightforward trade in which he lost his flowing locks and style and gained physical comfort. The photo is the bag of hair we collected at the end of the procedure...
Desert Architecture
The scale of these dunes and towers is only apparent when
you notice the 'huge' pylon (bottom left).
Utah, USA.
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