sacred journeys

Finally — I am jumping ship. Voxtropolis has been killing me of late.

To get to new blog Just click here or copy and paste this… http://gregorylarson.wordpress.com/

I got so tired of the blog updates, and losing posts — that I gave up blogging for a couple of weeks. However (crossing my fingers) — voxtropolis, my blogging host has resolved their issues.

A friend of ours (Dan) — sent this email yesterday:

From: Dan ….
Sent: Saturday, April 12, 2008 3:12 PM
To: Greg Larson
Subject: dude, the temperature difference!

Currently in zip code 55417: 32 degrees.

Currently in zip code 90029: 94 degrees.

However, as you can see — it will be cooling down to a blustery high of 65 in a couple of days…

83°F - Clear
Wind: W at 1 mph
Humidity: 17%

Today

94° | 58°

Mon

83° | 54°

Tue

65° | 47°

Wed

70° | 49°

Well, if you thought the writers strike was nasty, the potential actors strike might even get nastier, as different actors unions are starting to fight with themselves already…

The bitter weekend divorce between two actors unions in upcoming contract talks with Hollywood producers mirrors a scene from a daytime soap opera — and casts stars from the genre in pivotal roles.

What will America do if that happens??!! Will American culture survive??!! We’ll see.

So my friend Ed took me out to this fabulous Japanese restaurant in Koreatown earlier this week.

Someday, they will make a camera on phones that do not take absolute junk photos, but until they do — this is as good as it gets…

Even though it is hard to tell, the food came around on a little conveyor belt. It was absolutely delicious. I have not had sushi much, looking forward to going again.

We don’t live in south Los Angeles, but every time you drive to LAX, or go past downtown, or take the Metro to Long Beach — you are going through, or close to south-central (even though that is not the politically correct way to call south LA these days).

Anyway, read this article today in the LA Times — Living with staggering violence in South L.A.

I felt unbelievable sadness for the hopelessness in this community.

Now that we have planted a church on the west side, Kairos is hoping to plant another neighborhood church close to downtown in 2010.
It made me hope that Kairos could bring light in a multitude of ways here…

This is how we say it at times…. “Living in the city of L.A., in the way of Jesus — seeking to renew this urban area spiritually, socially, & culturally…”

Another thought about planting churches in urban areas:

“In general, a church must be more deeply and practically committed to deeds of compassion and social justice than traditional liberal churches and more deeply and practically committed to evangelism and conversion than traditional fundamentalist churches. This kind of church is profoundly ‘counter-intuitive’ to American observers. It breaks their ability to categorize (and dismiss) it as liberal or conservative. Only this kind of church has any chance in the non- Christian west.” - Tim Keller

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.

–G.K. Chesterton

So driving around, and took a couple of shots of the economically depressed neighborhood….

Then Caleb and I are stopped at a light, and what drives by — but a Ferrari….

The juxtaposition of the scenes — was kind of crazy & funny at the same time. Some of the apartments around Kairos have many people in a one bedroom place, and then a car (that is easily over $100,000) drives by.

Only in LA.

“Sixteen Candles,” “Pretty in Pink,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “The Breakfast Club,”

okay, if you are not my age (lets just say over 30 ) — you probably don’t remember them. Today, when I was giving latimes.com my quick perusal, I came across this article….

John Hughes’ imprint remains. He’s still revered in Hollywood, but whatever happened to the king of the teens?

It brought me down memory lane.

So, I finally got around to surfing in the Pacific. It was unbelievably cold, and unbelievably fun. However, not sure you could call what I was doing — surfing. I laid on top of the surfboard a lot and got crushed by a couple of waves. However, I am crazy enough to go back out there again sometime soon.

Here are a couple of pre-surfing shots:

A fantastic article in First Things with Pastor Tim Keller regarding his book ‘A Reason for God’

One long quote from the article:
I don’t mention it in [The Reason for God], but I think there are always doubts that, if you come to grips with them—I think there’s doubts that you have, that you always have, that you ought to be more forthright and address them, for two reasons. One is, then you’re a better apologist. Because now people are coming shootin’ stuff at you in a way they wouldn’t when I was growing up.

But the other is, it’s actually good for your faith to actually work it out. Here’s my illustration. I don’t know what your readers will think. When I was recovering from thyroid cancer, from the surgery, I actually had time on my hands, something I never have had in years and probably never will again unless I have something else like that. And so I read every word of N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God—all eight hundred pages, even the indices (laughs), because I didn’t have anything else to do. And it was kind of startling to me, because we do live in a less rational sort of anti-foundationalist approach, and he was just taking a nice old-fashioned approach: There’s no historically viable alternative explanation for the birth of the Christian Church than the fact that the early Christians thought they saw Jesus Christ and touched him and that he was raised from the dead. As I was reading it, I realized I was coming to greater certainty, and that when I closed the book, I said, at a time when it was very important to me to feel this way, I said, “He really really really did rise from the dead.” And I said, “Well, didn’t I believe that before?” Of course I believed it before—I defended it, and I think before I certainly would have died for that belief. But actually, there were still doubts in there, and the doubts were taken down 50 percent or something. I didn’t even know they were there. And it was a wonderful experience It was both an intellectual and emotional experience: You’re facing death, you’re not sure you’re going to get over the cancer. And the rigorous intellectual process of going through all the alternative explanations for how the Christian Church started, except the resurrection—none of them are even tenable. It was quite an experience.

So in a way I was working on a doubt and it was a wonderful experience and I took it down. Maybe there is a deeper level of doubt that I don’t even know is there yet. So it’s for you and your ability to be a good apologist.