Butter and Faith... And Christmas!

Merry Merry Christmas from Norway to all!


This year, I didn't get around to doing a Christmas letter, so my procrastination has taken me to just blog about my Christmas so far.

In Norway, Christmas has just started! You’ve heard of the 12 days of Christmas right? Well, the 12 days start on Christmas day here. So, I’m good as long as I get this blog down on the first half of Christmas!

To add to my excuse, let me tell you that apparently I come from a long line of procrastinators! My grandpa and grandma JUST put up their Christmas tree today (26th). This happens to be the very day they take all the Christmas trees down in Japan.

Today at breakfast, I was trying to decide what to put on my last little piece of bread when my grandpa asked me “but where is the butter on your bread?” I looked down and realized that yo could hardly see any butter on there. I clearly remember spreading it on thee, but it had melted when I threw some scrambled egg on it earlier. I answered my grandpa “It’s there, you just can’t see it.” He answers just as any butter lover like my grandpa should, by saying “If you cant see it, its not enough!!” I can never get enough of my grandpa’s sweetness of his voice, and cheerfulness of his spirit.

So the breakfast continues as I find some lovely brown cheese to put on my bread. Just before I savor its taste, grandpa adds to his last thought... “If you can’t see it, well, you must have faith in it.”

Unbelievable. I'm sure coffee has not made it to my grandpa’s vein yet, and his first thoughts in the morning are as profound as heaven itself. Its so true, AND so simple. It was so easy for me to believe that there was butter on my bread, and yet, I had to have faith in it. It isn’t blind faith, its experiential faith. I’ve experienced the smothering of the butter. I know its there. You just can’t see it.

As I devoured the last bite of that bread and cheese as I let this truth make its way into my hungry stomach. Faith can be so real and satisfying as a piece of bread. Our faith is supposed to be like that; lived out. It only took my grandpa’s presence at that table for God to let me know.

Actually, its pretty fun. You should try this faith thing some time. Its not all the wackyness that people think it is. The little bit of faith it takes to eat a piece of bread really counts.  Every step you can take in faith is a celebration to be had, because it marks a ever deepening level of relationship with Jesus.
You know, I wouldn’t mind living out a life of faith if this is how it feels.
Meanwhile, the bread tastes fuller, and the room brighter, and coffee stronger. I’m really liking this.

So, all that to say, I hope you are enjoying this late Christmas season!

Paul

(or.. in Norway, Pål Martin)

HIGHJACK!! Pots pots pots!

I'm gonna take this opportunity to Highjack my own blog. Its NOT about writing cute little stories. Today, its all about POTS!  (save your addictive substance jokes for yourselves ;)

I have a mountain of boxes in my room at the moment of Pots waiting to be dealt out.  The story behind this, is that I was gonna have a flea market sale this past September, but these pots did not make it on time.  So it took its time coming through the pipe, and NOW, it is ready.  Please visit the web album and look over if you're interested at all in handmade pottery. These were made by the one and only ME, and fired in an electric kiln by my co-conspire-r potter friend Amy.

These are probably gonna go for real good price, because its gonna be auctioned off!  After some indeterminate time, I will take the highest bidder with a bid thats left on comments section of the pictures.

Oh, and perhaps  most importantly, ALL proceeds from this sale will be given to i2 so pay lots for them, please... 
If you have no idea what i2 is, don't worry about it, its a good cause :)

T.P. stands for Toilet Paper. *don't read with a full stomach

I was going about my day offending people and sinning...etc you know, the normal Christian life.  At the end of the day, I found myself ranting about my philosophical/theological thoughts about TP to my good, not-so-bachelor-anymore friend Jess. He told me that most people don't think this much about TP. Maybe he was trying to infer that I am being psychotic about this. Nevertheless at the risk or sounding a bit abrasive, I took his suggestion and decided to put it on the blog. 

Ok, Toilet Paper.   Have you ever wondered why TP is white?  Some time ago I've heard of some survey questioning what percent of people "look" at the wiped paper before putting it in the bowl. If I remember right, more than half of regular Toilet attendees require visual verification of their wiping skillz. So here's my theory about the white paper: we need a perfectly high quality canvas to start with so that our "art work" will be well contrasted.  Kind of like how artists always start with white washing their canvases so that their brush strokes show up with vigor and crispness in their appearance.  Personally I'd have to admit that when... no, no need to invoke your visuals here...  If you have no idea what I'm talking about, don't bother, and go to the next paragraph.  Its a lot more important.

In all seriousness though, the regular consumer's choices say a lot about how we entirely take Toilet Paper way too seriously (though arguably, I'm the one taking it way too seriously by writing a blog post about it). If you buy the obvious choices of TP's from your Kroger, what you will pay for is one of those brand toilet papers featuring a big cuddly bear butt on the front of the packaging. As the packaging suggests (or is supposed to suggest), these TP's are ultra soft, thick and cushy. If you are short on cash or are in a pinch (let the reader understand), you will travel half way down the aisle and buy the store brand TP's, which are more of the "gotta get'r done" type. Both types of TP's, believe it or not comes from Virgin Pulp. Let me explain: They cut trees down in both managed AND un-managed forests, process it into pulp,  Bleach it, and Turn it into TP. Now, in Paul world, toilet paper might as well be old news paper, needless to say, I was shocked!  Shocked to hear that quality matters so much to the average consumer when it comes to TP!

Let me try to put this in context a little.  I try to maintain a higharchy of towels and rags that I use for different purposes in my pad. As the rags age, it goes down the ladder to do less respectable jobs. On the top of that ladder is dish drying towels.  When I have dishes to dry, I take a fresh one out of the drawer and wipe the dishes.  When I'm done, I will hang it on the stove handle so that it can be used as a hand towel until another used dish towel replaces it.  Then I have a sink towel, which is used to wash dishes when its new.  Then it stays around the sink to wipe up counter top spills. Occasionally something will spill on the floor and I will take a old sink towel and throw it on the floor for it to do its job on the floor before it goes to the washing machine.  THEN there are the ragged towels that doesn't ever get washed. Rather it lives in my tool box, or get thrown away after wiping up engine oil and brake fluid from my garage floor. Wow, this is turning into a involved analogy.  To me, using Virgin Pulp as TP is equivalent to using a drying towel to wipe up my garage floor. Its a waste!  The same way the garage floor does not deserve to be treated as dishes, my dirty butt does not deserve to be pampered with such finely processed, religiously bleached, state-of-the-art invention!  Ok, maybe that's a overstatement.  I understand that a "wirebrush and water" solution is not going to be popular :) Anyway, my point is that this deed is not worth any destruction of creation.  From what I hear from the rather humorous news report below (I saw it some years ago...), we are literally wiping off some virgin forest in order to make TP.  I'm glad Gods not easily offended.  Me, as a Potter, if somebody used one of my pitchers as a chamber pot, oh man. I would be lethal.



And we all know Fox news always have their facts straight! :)  okkay....  moving on...

Now, Let me ask you this one question.  Does the quality of "art work" we do in the bath room really make a tangible improvement in the quality of life? I can say for sure that I have no TP racism going on in me. By bottom are fully compatible with TP's of any color or hue it comes in (though...  it really comes only in white that I know of...). Red and Yellow, Black and White, they are all precious in MY sight. You've probably never even given one thought on this subject before reading this post, so I'm assuming I'm talking to a reasonable, easily convinsable audience. Now that you have been educated with my surely unbiased opinion, you cannot say "I've never thought of it before, really." So, I will take a risk in sounding political (AKA. Cheesy). Will you stand with me and actually start to care just a little bit when it comes to Toilet Paper? Next time in the paper products aisle, just go a couple steps to the right or left to find the not-so-advertised recycled paper. Join the fight, wipe with recycled.

P.S. I use Marcal's 100% recycled TP.  Same price as the bear butt brand, and a whole lot more peace of mind.

P.P.S.  I know I've made it my resolution for the year 2010 to write something every month and post it here..... As you can see, I've miserably failed :)  I might blog about my failiure some time else, but for now, I think I will lower my bar and permit myself NOT to be thorough. I've found out that writing is like Magic.  I have very little to write before I start writing.  Then I start writing, and 3 paragraphs later, I realized that I still haven't made my point!  ... but then, maybe I'm just long long-winded and boring.

Leonard's Question

Leonard, my dear friend from Sierra Leone came up to me and asked me a question in my dream.  The conversation progressed like below:

L: "Paul, what do you think it means to be a citizen of a country?  Like Japan, or Korea, or Sierra Leone, or Target?
P: What do you mean by "Citizen of Target!?"
L: Well like the store...  I guess I want to know what it means to be  a part of a organization...

Please forgive me for the absolutely absurd progression here with Target and all.*  Remember it was a dream.  I've once heard a friend of mine describing a dream where a bus on the street morphed into a elongated bomb with a lit fuse (the kind you see in Pac-man) complete with tires to roll down the street.  The bomb was blaring threats about the whole city blowing up (no kidding...). 
Anyway, the point is, my dream is a little more coherent than the crazy bomb scenario.  Considering that it is a dream, it made me think of stuff, which is cool.  Ok, lets go on...

Then came his actual, deeper question.

L: What do you think it means for somebody to be apart of the church?

Then I pondered in bed why I was getting asked such a question. In that half awake state, I found myself imagining how his question could be answered.

Then my thought was interrupted by another thought that arrogantly cut in line. Apparently it couldn't sit quietly sit in cue like the other well behaved ones. It exclaimed; "washing machine!" Clearly another absurd incoherent thought....   or is it?

Well, you know, being part of church really is just like being in a washing machine. The more I think about it, the more it comes into focus!  A great big washing machine with millions of pieces of clothes in it.  Not like a Japanese washing machine which can only handle a few pieces at a time. This great washing machine labeled "the church" is an ever expanding washing machine! As filthy articles of clothing get added, it magically makes room for more. This washing machine however, seems to be stuck on a never ending cycle. It is continually going through cycles of wash and rinse day after day. Do you remember those old-school washing machines that didn't require the lid to be closed in order for it to run the washing cycle? For safety reasons and for ease of use, it would only progress into the spin cycle when the lid was closed.  Its kind of like that.  After the countless hours of washes, God will peek into the washing machine and find all the murky gunk is gone. Then he'll close the lid allowing the washing machine to complete its full cycle into the final rinse and spin. He'll later clip us on the clothes line to dry (because He's a tree huggar, and I dont like the tumble dry analogy). Then we will see the prophesies of the old unfold before our eyes.

Am I taking this too far?  well, read this from the Bible: After this I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white robes and held palm branches in their hands." -Rev. 7:13
-or-
All who are victorious will be clothed in white. I will never erase their names from the Book of Life, but I will announce before my Father and his angels that they are mine. -Rev. 3:5

Lets get back to the wash and rinse cycle.  Have you ever washed one very badly soiled piece of clothing with other relatively clean ones?  I have.  You know, I'm a potter, and potters get oh, so very dirty after a full day of hard production work.  The red clay is especially known for permanently leaving red spots on your clothes no matter how many times you wash it. Throw one of those pieces of clothes into the wash mix, and you have a recepie for a washing machine's nightmare. All the whitie-tities now define a new sort of pink as their white.  I believe its the same in the church.  We all 'rub off' on each other. By rub off, I mean, we get into each other's business. All our stinky, moldy socks as well as our finest christmas sweaters that need their moth ball smell removed all thrown into one wash.  Some of us bring in filthy addictions like porn and alcoholism, and others bring in stale, religious, I am better than thou-ism.  All washed in the same tub of swirling purifying water.

Am I saying that by entering into that washing machine, you will take on the mess of other people? Not necessarily. Consider this: I cleaned my bathroom the other day.  There was dust everywhere, the mirror was all apecked with toothpaste and spit, the wash basin was no longer the original color... it really needed some attention to say the least. An hour later, when everything was clean, I didn't look at all the dirty rags and say "Man, these are dirty!" and walk away. Instead, I walked back into what used to be a wretched, nasty bathroom, and enjoyed its cleanliness while it lasted. See, its not about how dirty we may get in the process. Its about how clean its gonna be. What's even better about our washing machine analogy, is that the clothes don't have the ability to do much.  It sits there and enjoys the ride, creating friction.  Must I say it again?  It seems to be the same in the church. We enter into the family forgiven, but the nasty stuff is usually pretty persistent. The smell of nicotine doesn't just pick up and leave. It needs some water and friction...

Speaking of friction, did you know that it is crucial for the washing machine to have more than just a few pieces of clothing in it? There is such a thing as a optimal water to clothes ratio. If the machine is full of water but it does not contain enough clothing, the cloths don't get as clean as they could get. This is because the clothes rely on each other. Water and soap will clean, but the friction that increases as more pieces of clothing is added to the water is crucial to the cleansing effect of this marvelous invention. I personally take this idea usually to the other extreme. I will practically move my whole room into the washer. The poor washer groans hard as it tries its best to create that friction with no avail. Don't tell my room mates, but once I smelled a burning motor... Yeah, my washer is not magical like the church. It never makes room for more.

For some of you who are reading this, what I'm suggesting may sound like a disaster! God's ways can seem like that at times. Every good boy or girl should know that you are supposed to separate the whites and colors.  We all know that a red Christmas sweater shouldn't be washed together with a table cloth.  In God's washing machine though, I get the impression that it works like when I wash clothes. Not that we should overload the washer (if you remember, we can't overload it, since it magically makes room for more) but that we put everything into the same wash (Sorry mom.  I've quit separating my wash long ago, and never had a problem.). The precise reason why this works is because our goal for staying in this washer is not to retain our own dirt, nor to retain our own preferences, but to be made clean, and to be changed into what He wants us to be. Like it or not, at the end of the day when God peeks in and decides it's ready for the spin and dry cycle, there will be but one color left in that magical washer: White as Snow.

Y'all are sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. That is, we are all in a common washing machine of Jesus Christ. If you're in The Washer, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.  -Mostly from Galatians 3

P.S. Thanks Leonard for approaching me in my dream and asking such a great question.  You inspired me :)

*Writer has no affiliation with Target® nor does he really ever go shopping there.  This blog was not written as an advertisement to get holy people to go there. If anything, it proves that a person can still be sane, and dream about Target. Some side effects associated with shopping at Target may include but not limited to: Death caused by traffic accidents involving speeding red shopping carts, nausea caused by licking the bar code scanner, and a tendency to jump towards red objects thinking its gonna have to be a good deal.  Target takes no responsibility for the apparent hypnotic shopping-craze effect of the Concentric Circle Logo®.

Divine Hot Chocolate

This is how I think A Mug of Hot Chocolate is similar to our Relationship with God.

First, I need you to make your imagination mold-able. Please, go and soak your head in a warm tub of water for a few weeks so that it will get soft, and then read on.

You, are in perfect snowy winter wonderland.  I'm thinking like upstate New York, or Montana.
Imagine a perfect beautiful sunny winter day after a snow storm the week before. And you are a kid, and its Christmas vacation!  What do you do?  Well, if you are like me, you will go outside and play in the bountiful snow all day long!

You know, how kids have a way at being constructive and creative.  Letting the time fly past.... until it hits 3 or 4 in the afternoon.  By this time, your younger brothers and sisters have "packed up" and gone home.  Maybe you have a older brother that you are still climbing up the sled jump hill with.  But really, its gettin' seriously cold.  The temperature is the same, but man, after a whole afternoon of digging and packing snow to form a sled jump, you probably have lost your feeling in your hand about an hour ago.

Then you hear the sweetest sound from the house of your mother, "Paul~~  Kevin~~ (i don't know who that is...  I guess its my imaginary brother)" and you both make a 90 degree sharp head turn toward the house, realizing that this can't be but one thing.... It suddenly dawns on you that you have been smelling the sweet aroma of chocolate for the last few minutes.

Just thinking about the implications of the scent and the mother's call gives you a sugar high. Mother has prepared a mug of steaming hot chocolate with cookies to lavish you with her love.  Baking/cooking really is such a tangible sign of a mother's love towards her kids... 

After the running and brushing and the pulling off of a pile of wet (and probably stinky) snow wear, you finally make it to the kitchen table and take a perch on a stool wearing nothing but your long-johns.
 
You see, there is a big difference between outside and inside. Outside, you are unprotected and cold.  It's harsh.  Taking a mere step or two in the waist high snow is no easy work.  Inside, you are sheltered, warm, and comfortable. There is no need to wear anything more than the wet long-johns for "decency." Although, lets face it. Wet long-johns? Well... lets just say that the sweaty crack is showing right though.

This magical space is what we call home. Its a place where frostbite is forbidden to enter. The warmth that seems to envelope this delicious mug of hot chocolate is infused with the hint of cinnamon, and another magical ingredient: Love. What do you do!?  I can just hear somebody in the back of the room shouting "Common, get on with it and drink!".   EXACTLY.  That's what I would think too.   Why don't we just ignore the "take in the moment" thing and enjoy that mug of delicious sweetness? 

I don't know about you, but I usually get my fingers around that mug and transfer some of that warmth to my bloodless fingers.  I might even put the mug to my red cold cheek. Am I enjoying the hot chocolate so far?  What if, after sufficiently warming my fingers and my cheeks, I left my perch and went to the living room without tasting it? That mug left on the Kitchen table, now slightly less warm. Would you agree with me that it's impossible to enjoy the hot chocolate until you take a sip and let the thick, milky, sweet, warmth enter your body? As it passes through your tongue, it will exclaim its loveliness to your brain.  And your cold body will feel a burning sensation down its core as it gains back its warmth.  Hot Chocolate does this like no other drink can.

Its the same with God.  He has prepared a safe, warm house where we can be secure. There are no obligations and no dress codes. And at the most perfect of timings, He meets us at the kitchen table in a delicious steaming cup of life giving, energy-full, nourishment.  It waits on the table for us to pick it up and enjoy.

Now, is it even possible to enjoy a cup of hot chocolate without settling down? There is a reason why hot chocolate is never served at the road-side re-hydration stations on a 10k marathon. They serve things like water that can be drunk quickly. Hot chocolate is not the same kind of drink as water. It demands a certain amount of time and patience for it to be enjoyed fully.  First, you warm your fingers and cheeks (we did that already).  Then you carefully take a sip, carefully monitoring the amount that goes into your mouth, so that it wont burn your mouth. You continue to warm yourself up to it until you are able to take larger and larger sips as the temperature becomes more tolerable for ingestion.

Its the same with our personal time with God.  If we try to take it in too quickly, it will not be enjoyable. You might not even get around to drinking the hot chocolate if you aren't patient! It could even appear to you as a inconvenience that you can't take this cup with you on your marathon.  In the same way you can't easily fit this wonderful experience in between everyday business. Hot chocolate by its nature demands us to cancel all other appointments, and care about nothing else. Then, we finally have enough space in our hearts to let His nourishment penetrate the deepest core of our being.  At that moment, I can tell you that the phrase "Jesus Loves you" becomes so much more than a silly song. It will become the center of your life, and you will begin to wonder why you waited so long before you sat down at that kitchen table.

Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see how good God is. Oh, the joys of those who take refuge in him! -Psalm 38

Give all your worries and cares to Him, he really does care about you.  -1 Pete 5:7

The Original "High Thought."

Here I am, sitting at my usual desk, on my usual computer, sipping my usual cup of coffee, and feeling a bit hot in the office (as usual,). Never thought myself as a cubicle-dwelling-creature type but that is where I dwell, that is who I am. So, on this day February 1st 2010, exactly one year since sitting at this desk for the first time, I hereby come to the conclusion that I must do something unusual that will break my cycle of routine once in a while. And by "once in a while," I mean... about once a month. So, don't even bother checking this blog everyday. Got it? Great.
Lets get started.