Vinyl records are made by cutting grooves or ruts into the vinyl. The record (at this point called a lacquer) is placed on the cutting machine where electronic signals from the master recording travel to a cutting head, which holds a stylus or needle. The needle etches a groove into the record that spirals to the center of the circular disc. The imprinted lacquer is then sent to a production company, where it is coated in metal, such as silver or nickel, to create a metal master.
Our lives also operate in grooves. We operate a certain way, day after day after day. Sometimes our grooves — our habits, our ways of being — create beautiful music. Sometimes our grooves are more like ruts — they create sounds that are less inviting, even harsh.
Lent is a season in which we are invited to break out of the ruts we may have fallen into, by changing up our habits, and acknowledging that our lives, by God’s grace, do not have to fall into ruts that are etched in metal or stone.
We can be changed.
Invitation:
Grab a record, feel its edges, its grooves, its texture. Imagine the music it creates. Consider your own present practices:
— what are the grooves that create music? How can you nourish them?
— what are the ruts that you would like to get out of? Consider ways you can change your present practices. What are new grooves you could create? What space might open up if you change a current habit?
Records
Prayer:
God thank you for this life you given me.
I cherish the music you have allowed me to hear, as well as to create.
Forgive me for the ruts that increase the chaotic noise of the world.
Free me to live into grooves of grace that create beautiful music.
Music that sings of you.
In Christ, Amen.
James K. A. Smith wrote a new blog post this morning, and since, per usual, no comments are allowed, I thought I’d respond with a post of my own. He begins with this notion that there is now a “new apologetics” afoot in Christianity to make the faith more palatable in an age of intellectualism and postmodernity.
I see the innocence of a suburban lawn mower, and the progress from pushing to riding, and I see the oil gushing from a hole in a pipe in the Gulf of Mexico, and I see that oil in the sta-cold Big Gulp the suburbanite is drinking as he mows and I see him drinking the oil, or is it Coke or is it corn syrup or is it oil does it matter....
Why do her kids always seem so well-behaved?
Why do they get to go on such great vacations?
Why does he get so much credit when I work just as hard?
Why don’t I have such a great house…?
Why didn’t my great play make the softball game recap?
Jealousy begins when the attention moves from “here” to “there”.
If you're like me, you've been told once or twice that being a good Christian includes occasionally telling other people about Jesus.
Your reaction might go something like: “Ewww. Yuck. I’m not that interested in evangelism, or selling something, or anything like that.”
But there is another part of you which senses that if more people knew the Jesus who was a radical for peace, forgiveness, love, and justice—the world would be a better place. So how does one go about doing this, without feeling like an unwanted door-to-door salesperson or an awkward friend?
I came across this poem shortly after our move to Washington, DC. It was written by Pub Theology's favorite poet, Chuck Trafelet, whose self-published collection of poetry was discovered in our previous home in Traverse City, MI. Fitting for us at a number of levels, including (or especially) the title. Picture me reading this in a house full of boxes on a cold November evening in an unfamiliar city where we've just uprooted the entire family, wondering what in the world we've done.
It was timely.
Poem: ROOTS
as evening once again steals across the land
and midwinter cold settles in the bones
here so far from home and friends
beginning a new life – ending the old
bones, why do you pain me so
you know as well as I and better
we cannot turn back now...
