the waiting

kingdom panels

image copyright: nellis 2001

due date

baby is due today...
due dates are odd contrivances.
what do they really mean?
emotionally vexing things they are...
waiting,
waiting,
waiting,
i really want to meet this little person.
soon.

face

"the face is the gateway to infinity" said emmanuel levinas

in other words, it is only in the context of community that we can know.
know what, whom?

the Self, the Other and the Holy Other.

this is knowing truth. not as propositional but as living.
nietzsche claimed, "there are no facts, only interpretations"
and this is indeed the case, for it is only in dialogue with one another
that our petty "facts" become meaningful truths. text and context are
inseperable.

too long has christianity been wrapped up in greco/roman thinking,
issolating nuggets of knowledge, free-standing statments, and
individual propositions. only now are we re-discovering the wisdom
of hebraic relational thought from which we are so long departed.

lets look into the face of the other and together be thrust into infinity,
a conversation with God.

for more on relationality: martin buber, emmanuel levinas

if a picture is worth 1000 words...

then this was my first year at mars hill grad school.

image copyright: nellis 2005

los assaltados

image copyright: nellis 2005

flannery o'conner

"All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal."

"The fact is that the materials of the fiction writer are the humblest. Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction. It's not a grand enough job for you."

"At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily."

"In the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells."

into the mystery

so beautiful so transcendent
so exciting so sacred
so terrifying so awe-full
so naive so miraculous
so human so organic
so divine so beginning
so delightful so trusting
so brave so inviting
so risky so true

not that impressive

image copyright: nellis 2005

i'm working on an exegetical/genre paper for a class.
it's on the first pericope in ecclesiastes. we will all agree
with the unnamed wise man and qohelet who come to
the conclusion that indeed: all is meaningless under the
sun. but here it is the inversion of "under the sun" that
acts as the popular "but God..." phrase in the rest of
the old testament. from an above the sun perspective,
all things are infused with meaning because of the
christian eschatological hope of redemption.

david bazan captures this tension between futility and
hope in this short, beautiful and at once aweful lyric:

wouldn't it be so wonderful
if everything were meaningless
but everything is so meaningful
and most everything turns to shit
rejoice!

ambivalence and fatherhood

image copyright: nellis 2004

meaningful discourse

Meaningful discourse is always about something else, it transcends itself- you could say, it has a trajectory. Bob Dylan once said that art always leads you somewhere- but it never leads you nowhere. It is this characteristic of art that has proven to be difficult for the church. Christians are often fearful of the “hidden” meaning in “secular” media that may lead us astray. I remember the crusade against rock music for its subliminal messages on an album that if played backwards and three times slower could be deciphered as mantras to Satan. I remember the alarm over the New Age movement that had suddenly possessed pop culture in the late 80’s- we followed suit in the logical boycott of everyone’s favorite cartoons. It is this "witch-hunt" stance that marks the evangelical’s participation in the arts with superstition and suspicion, therefore removing us from the conversation and making any “artistic” efforts seem flat, irrelevant and ultimately narcissistic.

The invitation to the concerned Christ-follower is to engage with culture by being in, yet not of the world. Jesus himself articulates this tension in his well-known prayer for the disciples in John 17:6-19. As we begin to dialogue with the world in the arena of culture we will have moments where we exclaim, “Yes! This is my home!” But suddenly, all of creation will counter, “No! This is not your home!” Yet somehow, these seemingly contradictory statements are both correct in that the eschatological nature of our presence here infuses every moment and action with meaning. Turnau understood this when he said that it is hope that trains the imagination to see the world differently and then to follow that sight to act redemptively in culture.

How would things be different if followers of Jesus saw culture as the interplay between "General Revelation" (God's self-disclosure in creation) and "Common Grace" (God's good gifts to humankind) ? Wouldn't cultural engagment actually be, on some level, a conversation with God himself?

in response to:
Turnau III, Theodore A. (2002). Reflecting theologically on popular culture as meaningful: the role of sin, grace, and general revelation. Calvin Theological Journal: 270-296.

the calm before the storm

que honda guey?

quien dijo que dos burros nunca podran cambiar al mundo?

for gentlemen and scholars

for one group of men it was called "eagle and child"
or "bird and baby"- they were the inklings.
our space is engel's in historic downtown edomonds.
the beer is cold, the hogs are loud and the theology
is just off enough to still be orthodoxy.

my lover and i

as a matter of introductions: this is my lovely
wife (on viewers left)- ruthie. and this is myself
(on viewers right)- phil. soon this diad will become
a triad. soon... godspeed little one.

a passing

jane g. nellis

1917-2005

88 yrs old

nana, i honor your memory and

am inspired by your heart that bled

for this broken world. thankyou.

Out of at Home

She sent him out to get some eggs, milk and a bottle of their favorite
She didn’t mention what else they were out of at home

The market was alive with happenings. He bumped into their dentist
Who said remind her to floss then tossed a box of red candies in his cart

The gent at the meat counter said none today?
He returned a disappointed no and eyed a young lady in line

Flowers for the wife? said a voice from a stand
He glanced at the list and shook his head without a look up

He would do the least and get by
Let her no room to point or accuse

So he filled up the basket with the things she had asked for
And went back to what they were out of at home

a view of the sound

we've got the salt water breeze
sunset tonight
sludge tankers and please
don't forget the train
our holy faith

the metaphor of the moment

birth.

what is the relationship between
a piece of art and the artist?

obviously there is the connection of story.
the story of the piece cannot be told without
a mention of the story of the artist.

when i encounter a piece, i want to know its story
so that i can experience it as it was intended to be.
but i also do not want to know...

existentially speaking-
the piece should be experienced for what it is and
for what it may become for me in the moment i
encounter it.

for it takes on a life of its own, does it not?
often embodying aspects of truth or reality the artist
had not even begun to imagine nor intend.
it develops a voice.

the connections to birth and childrearing are many.

so let me sit with the piece a while longer
and later its story will be heard...

where shall you take me?

fatherhood is just around the corner.
a journey is about to begin that will forever change me.
i can't wait to see my child's feet.
feet that will take us all into new places.

elnellis

this is my blog

don't get too excited folks.