Burning Ones

Posts in ‘Uncategorized’

• Get emacs server Working in Emacs.app 23.1 on Leopard

  From February 10, 2010 @ 6:00 am

  I recently upgraded from Emacs 23 alpha (the version MacPorts installed by default for a long time) to 23.1 and it broke a few things. I’m wrote up an extremely short (2 posts) series on getting them working again. You can read part one on ispell and interprogram paste if you’d like.

  I’m entirely indebted to the friendly folks at the Emacs Users Mailing List for every solution that I present here. One of these days I’ll know Emacs well enough to troubleshoot my own problems.

  Even with the switch to open /Applications/MacPorts/Emacs.app I found that I could no longer run emacsclient. This is an issue because I use that as my default EDITOR on every box I own. It turns out that 23.1 now ships with it’s own binaries of a number of applications like this that know how to communicate with Emacs.app rather than vanilla Emacs 22.3 as installed.

  The solution is to prepend the new bin directory located in /Applications/MacPorts/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/ to your PATH in your .bashrc file. This allows you to run the emacsclient binary found in that bin directory rather than the one installed by Apple or MacPorts (if you have the command line version installed as well as Emacs.app).

  To review (wraps marked with ¬):

  1. Prepend …/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin to your PATH

     if [ ¬
         -d …/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin ¬
        ] ; then
         export PATH=… ¬
             /Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/bin ¬
             :$PATH
     fi
     

  2. Run Emacs.app via Terminal.app

     open /Applications/MacPorts/Emacs.app
     

  Voila.

• Reflections on The Sermon on the Mount: The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12)

  From July 10, 2009 @ 4:00 am

  Mine:

  Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.

  And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:

  Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

  Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

  Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

  Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

  Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

  Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

  Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

  Real:

  Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.

  And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:

  Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

  Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

  Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

  Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

  Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

  Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

  Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

  Unified Diff (other than minor grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes that have no bearing on the texts meaning) :

  diff -u mine theirs
  

  (That feels pretty good. :)

  Reflection:

  What to say about the Beatitudes… Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones dedicated a whole sermon to each one, plus 2 introductory and a reflection before moving on to the rest of the Sermon! And here I am with a tiny little blog entry.

  Seems kinda pathetic.

  Ah well, my goal isn’t to exege/exegete/exegesis (I’ve always assumed the term was ‘exegete’, just as the article says) the passage; just to throw out what hit me as I memorized it.

  • The phrase, ’seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain…’ has always bugged me. I’ve heard it preached two ways.

    At IHOP-KC, they use the phrase to indicate that the Sermon is Christianity 101. Jesus’s going up on the mountain indicates that Jesus was trying to be as visible as he could and speak to as many people as he could (presumably his voice would have more reach speaking from an elevated height). This makes sense to me, as the rest of the New Testament does indeed seem to indicate that the principles set fourth in the Sermon are the grounding principles that should govern the life of a Christian. Beyond that, historically the Sermon has been interpreted thus.

    At a few other churches (I can specifically remember a Generation Church message from Judah Smith, although I can’t find it in their archive. Honestly, their messages aren’t all that good, or at least they weren’t when I was listening to them.), I’ve heard it preached that Jesus went up on the mountain specifically to raise the bar of entry. He looks around, sees a bunch of people, and says to himself, “I’m going to find out who’s serious. Anyone who follows me up this mountain should be enough evidence.” This would seem to be supported by the next statement that ‘when he sat down, his disciples came to him.’ The text seems to indicate that the people he’s talking to are his disciples.

    It’s hairy and either way involves reading into the text something. On the one hand, Jesus may have been George-Whitfielding or C.H.-Spurgeoning it and shouting his lungs out from the top of a mountain so that all the crowds (because they were numerous) could hear him. On the other hand, he may have been sitting in a tiny grove with a select group of people around him who had been willing to climb the mountain because they were interested in him. The text isn’t all that clear. I think, despite the text leaning more heavily to the bar raising interpretation, the rest of the New Testament does point towards the Sermon being for the great mass of Christianity.

  • There’s a great degree of debate around the meaning of ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’ and the synoptic passage in Luke where ‘in spirit’ is dropped.

    I’ve debated this long and hard with several of my friends and when it comes down to it, no consensus was reached. I’m of the firm opinion that Christians should seek to live life as simply as God will permit them to live it, because simplicity offers freedom from the cares of the world. This does not deny the fact that God does call some people to have lots of money, but even then I do struggle with God calling people to live lives of extravagance. I suppose if he’s called you to live in a rich neighborhood then you have to live in a big house. But, again, your life should be as simple as it can be while still fulfilling the call God has placed on it.

    Others seem to see this position as too simplistic and despising the blessing God wants to pour out on his people, not only spiritually, but physically. Obviously, this leans towards the prosperity Gospel, but I see some merit to it. As with most things in the Christian life, the answer isn’t black and white and the issue ultimately comes down to you examining your heart before God to see if your motives are giving glory and honor to God.

    Now, because you’re an astute reader you’ve noticed that I’ve conveniently ignored the passage I memorized and focused on the one that ends with ‘you poor’. I have a good reason, though, for ignoring the ‘in spirit’ version: I have no idea what it means. It may mean having a humble and appropriate opinion of yourself. Maybe it means having a humble attitude despite having wealth? I don’t know. I’ve thought harder about the other version. /me shrugs.

  • The promises in the Beatitudes are insane. I’ll list them in the hopes that their full weight would be felt. We get:

    1. The kingdom of heaven.
    2. To be comforted.
    3. The earth.
    4. To be satisfied.
    5. Mercy.
    6. To see God.
    7. To be son’s of God.
    8. A great reward in heaven.

    We, who deserve (notice the lack of the ‘d’ on the end of that. We don’t ever go from deserving to no longer deserving. Only Christ gives us any hope. That’s why it’s awesome that we receive mercy.) hell instead get all of that, provided we move towards being poor in spirit, mourning, meekness, hunger and thirst for righteousness, mercy, purity of heart, peace making, and righteousness that always leads to persecution.

    If this doesn’t strike as the most ridiculous and unjust thing, you don’t know your own sin.

  • I have always clung to the promise that when I hunger and thirst for righteousness, I will be satisfied. What I love about the promise is that it’s not made to those who are righteous and it’s not made to those who have the ability to be made righteous. It’s made to people who desire righteousness. God wants our desire for righteousness, not our ability. Once we desire righteousness, it’s him who completes it. In fact, it’s him who gives us the desire in the first place by his grace!

  • One new thing that really hit me when I memorized this section of the Sermon was that the peacemakers will be called sons of God. I had never seen before seen the connection here between peacemakers being called sons of God and Jesus being the Son of God. There’s a reason all of these blessings are connected with the behaviors they are connected with. I don’t understand or know them all, but this one I believe I’ve seen in part.

    Jesus is the ultimate peacemaker. He is called our mediator. A mediator is someone who comes between two parties who’ve got beef with each other and helps mediate a solution. He reconciles the two parties who otherwise would have no hope of being reconciled. There’s never been a relationship in all of history that required a mediator more than God and us. He, the infinite being infinitely worthy of our worship, attention, adoration, and obedience was belittled, mocked, and disobeyed by our first parents and every human being since from birth. This is a crime infinitely worthy of an infinite punishment. God’s infinite mercy led him to be dissatisfied with pouring that infinite punishment out on some of us, though, and in the most unjust and undeserved exchange in history, Jesus willingly substituted the life he lived for the life we all have lived, died the death we should have died, and then God raised him from the dead three days later to prove for all of history that his sacrifice had been fully accepted and pleasing.

    Thus, he made peace between us and the Father for all of eternity, enabling us to enter the relationship the Trinity has shared in eternity.

    He is our peacemaker!

    What this verse, then, is saying is that we who make peace are following in his footsteps. Peacemakers who pursue Godly peace are truly sons of God as only the Son of God has been in perfection.

  • Finally, the fact that the righteous will be persecuted was highlighted to me again. This, again, is a hard topic. Jesus does not bless all persecution as some of my more cantankerous brethren seem to think he did. He only blesses persecution for righteousness and for his sake. Of course, myself and my curmudgeonly brethren always think that we’re being persecuted for righteousness sake. This is, of course, ridiculous. We are sinners. At Advance 09 this year someone said that we want people to stumble on or exult in the rock of Christ but often times they simply stumble on our ministry style or our personality or our music or our location long before they get to learn if Christ is a stumbling block to them. This is an insightful statement. I believe that is one application of this verse. We will be persecuted! I tremble every time I let myself think about how little I am. At the same time, we can’t use this verse to indicate that all of our persecution is because of how righteous we are. I think it will always be a mix in this life. There will be some aspects that are because of righteousness, but often times the lion’s share will be because we sinned and are being punished justly for it.

  ---

  Whew… That was not insignificant. If you stuck the whole way through and are now reading this, I hope you were blessed. I was. If you have any thoughts on the Sermon, please leave a comment or contact me.

• The Last 3 Years

  From June 26, 2009 @ 6:00 am

  Tim and I were talking about how much has happened since we’ve been married.

  We got married and moved in with my parent’s.
  I shaved my dreads off.
  I quit college. My family freaked.
  Tim’s mom passed away.
  Tim started working for the government.
  Alex & Jaclyn, our best friends, got married and moved away.
  We became pregnant.
  We moved to Norristown.
  Katie, Tim’s sister, and her husband got married.
  God gave us the most beautiful little girl.

  I always want my life to be this exciting.

• Recent Knitwear

  From June 22, 2009 @ 6:00 am

  Here are some of recently completed projects:

  Natalya’s Sundress

  This one took me a very long time (like a month) because I kept continually misreading the pattern and had to either undo or start over.

  

  Gracie’s Sunhat

  

  Arabelle’s Outfit

  The original plan was to make Gracie a sunhat and Arabelle a dress, but when I finished Gracie’s sunhat it hardly fit on Fiery’s head. Perfect for a new baby… just like Arabelle! So I instead knitting a much larger hat for Gracie and incorporated the original sunhat into Arabelle’s dress. Her dress was the same pattern as Natalya’s and took me half the time since I already knew what I was doing (well, kinda).

  

  I think I was in a ruffle mood this month :-)

• EC Update

  From June 04, 2009 @ 12:00 pm

  The biggest news is that Fiery has now been holding it in for 1+  hours. This is wonderful compared to 20 minutes and I’ve been catching more :-)

  Unfortunately she’s pooping 1-2 times a day at unknowable times, so I’m happy if I catch one of them. What’s ultra cute is that she rocks on the potty when she’s about to poop.

  I always clap and go “yay!” when we catch a pee or poo and she immediately starts clapping and going “yay!” but with a face that says she has NO idea why she’s doing it.

  My goal right now is to get one no-miss day.

• Noah’s Blog: Day 13

  From June 02, 2009 @ 12:00 pm

  Today I showed Emzara what rain looks like. Since I was working off of a dream it was harder than I thought. When I tried explaining it to her in words her eyes bulged and she started to panic because all she could picture was a giant sea dropping on us and she exclaimed, “we’ll be squished!” she paused and then quickly added, “and then drowned!” It was cute and it made me chuckle.

  I thought it would then be best to just show her. I think the easiest way would have been to take her to a water fall but it’s a half a day’s trip to the nearest one and with all this planning we really can’t afford to take an entire day away from the Project.

  So I took one of our wooden bowls and made a few very small holes with it. I held the bowl and told Emzara to pour water into it. She watched as drops of water fell through the holes and landed in the dirt. I explained to her it was like this but at times faster with bigger drops. I think she understood but it was hard to tell because she started ranting about how I ruined one of her favorite mixing bowls.

• The Problem of Freeware.

  From April 29, 2009 @ 4:00 am

  I’ll come right out and say it: “I’m a hypocrite here. A big one.” Here’s the thing: I have this big belief in the power of making something free. Anything. I believe that when someone makes what they make available to as wide an audience as possible, they’re saying that they believe their product is valuable enough that everyone who can use it should use it because it would improve their lives that much. Something in me just screams, “Yes! That’s the way to do it! Nothing else makes a lick of sense!”. After all, if the idea or product is so important, why would you make it impossible for the vast majority of people on the earth to obtain it (as in, most products made for consumption in the U.S.)?

  ---

  I see a lot of this in Christian organizations especially. It really bothers me that people will put copyrights on Bible translations and charge licensing fees for worship music and sue for plagiarism for books on theology. What bothers me so much is not that they’re getting paid, but quite simply that their attitude seems to infer a sense of ownership over this stuff. I’m a pretty firm believer in the doctrine of Total Depravity and an outworking of that doctrine would indicate that nothing good can come of us. “Every good and perfect gift comes from above” (James 1:17) is one way that I might choose to prove this. In other words, in a very real sense, works of theology and doctrine and works of glorifying God (such as a worship song) are not of us. I don’t like the idea of getting ultra-possesive about something that was given to us that we could never have hoped to produce on our own. Also, it’s a little self-defeating. The point of God giving us gifts is so that the wider body of Christ can benefit, not so that we can have a better experience or be a little bit more admired (1 Corinthians 12). If that’s the case you should make the gifts that God has given you available to as much of the body of Christ as is possible.

  However, that gets somewhat rantingly off the topic. Maybe one day I’ll finally write my book, “Christ Was Free: What Christians Have to Learn from the Open Source Movement.” Till then, moving on…

  ---

  Back to that issue of power. See, the power of giving something away because of the belief you have in its value comes down to this: The very fact that I know someone is sacrificing to give me something because they believe it’s worth that much to me makes me desire to give something back to them! The feeling is completely different than the feeling I get when I look at that 320 GB hard drive that I want so badly for my laptop. Seagate’s charging money for that. They’ve made a business decision that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t need it and thus they show their disinterest in making the world a better place (Honestly, who can fault them? We used to get buy just fine on MBs of static storage and KBs of RAM. Sheesh, what do I possibly need 320 GBs of internal space for?) through gregarious giving. Thus, I wouldn’t feel a bit of regret if sometime down the road they realized, aghast, that they had been undercharging for their product. It’s a business transaction at that point. They’ve fixed their price point and that’s what they’re sticking to. If they go belly up because of it, tut tut on them.

  But someone who believes so much in their product that even though they’d like to get paid for it, they’re willing to put selfless time into it and give it away to people because they believe it will make their life better… Well, that person deserves something in return, don’t they? At least, that’s what I believe.

  Really… I do.

  Now comes the problem, though, because I’m a dirty, rotten, no-good, inconsistent hypocrite. You see, even though I say that… Even though I believe that someone who gives their stuff away will be rewarded for it in the end because when they ask for money or to be supported in what their doing, they’ll receive it from people who are grateful for their generosity (i.e. me), I don’t actually, usually, in reality… buy software that I can get for free. Ugh. Now my dirty laundry’s out there.

  I’m not a liar. Don’t misunderstand me here. I do desire to give back to a person who has given to me much more than I desire to give anything to someone who expected something of me before they’d do anything in return. The problem then comes down to action. I’ve bought plenty of software that I could obtain in no other way than to buy it (because I don’t do illegal software, right. You don’t either, do you?). I don’t think I’ve ever even donated a dollar to a project that I could obtain for free (like OpenOffice.org or GNU Emacs). However, in my heart, I believe that I would.

  I know I don’t, but I still think I would!

  I can chalk it up to all sorts of lame excuses… “If I had more money I’d give something”, “If I used it more I’d give something”, “If the project made it easier to donate I’d give something”.

  Lame!

  But that’s the problem with Freeware (As in beer and as in freedom) isn’t it? The problem is that once you make something available for free, people that could have paid for it begin to feel like they can defer it. “Maybe it’s not so valuable after all.” “I’ll just give it a trial period before I decide what it’s worth.” “Thank God I don’t have to pay for this now, I need to upgrade OS X!” And suddenly you’ve been using a product for a decade that’s being developed by an army of volunteers working on their own time and all they’ve ever asked you for is to donate a few bucks via paypal and the only excuse you can come up with is that you haven’t gotten around to it yet.

  If I truly believe in this stuff, I need to get off my butt and start paying for the software that I use or contributing in some other meaningful way. And I do. I truly believe that this is the way to go, not just for software but for everything. Worship leaders shouldn’t let their record company copyright their stuff. Christian writers should allow pastors and people from around the world free access to the material. We should stop believing in the myth of ownership when it comes to these things and instead focus on helping people. But that requires that people are then generous in return.

  I hope they’re not all like me…

• We have some new alcohol habits

  From April 20, 2009 @ 1:35 pm

  Tim and I recently thought it’d be cool to become “wine and beer connoisseurs.” How things have changed! If you met me or Tim 6-12 months ago and told us you drink wine or beer for leisure we would have bitten off your head and told you how unChristian you are. That being said we have some unfortunate apologies to make to a lot of people.

  I am still against drinking for the “experience.” Although I don’t think you can argue biblically that drinking in and of itself is a sin, I think it is very easy to argue biblically that drinking with the point of getting drunk, or even just comfortably tipsy is wrong. As of right now I think I’m comfortably conscience-wise viewing wine or beer as cheese. I LOVE cheese. I love trying new kinds, learning about them, being able to tell the difference, etc. And I think its healthy to have that same appreciation for wine (and beer too… but I definietely think I’m more of a wine person). I feel like I am furthering my experience of God’s creation- although I’m not using that as an excuse to drink too much.

  So on Friday night we bought a bottle of Sutter Home Red California Wine (like $7 or $8 a bottle) and it wasn’t that bad. I know that its an acquired taste so I think it’ll take a bit before I can really appreciate it and have it not taste like cough syrup. On Saturday night we tried some Dark and Tan and I liked it less than the wine (Tim liked it more than I did). Although it is WONDERFUL to cook with- espeically with a good stew. I want to try it my sloppy joe’s next.

  I had no idea how my much wine my body could handle. I had a semi-empty stomach (we drank after dinner) and just after two or three sips I definitely felt more relaxed (I am still grokking my convictions on this). I don’t know why but I took a couple of sips more (I guess I was curious) and drank too much. That being said I have NO idea why people get drunk. I felt awful. I felt slow, stupid, lazy and in an all-around bad mood. I slowly got a head ache and I just wanted to sit around and wallow in self pity. Not a fun drunk; and I don’t even think I could have classified myself as “drunk.” It wasn’t even half of a glass. I’m sure I could have more fun/be more fun with practice but it’s totally not worth desensitizing my conscience in order to do so.

  Now that I’m trying to do book and movie reviews, I’ll add wine and beer reviews to the mix :-)

  EDIT: It’s “Black & Tan” not “Dark & Tan” I … feel like an idiot.

• No More Bad Thoughts!

  From April 15, 2009 @ 10:20 pm

  Upon having Fiery I will often have these horrible, horrendous thoughts about her. She gets abducted, killed, shot, stolen, stabbed, etc. in all these detailed scenarios or I get abducted, killed, shot, stolen or stabbed and she is without a mother.

  I didn’t know whether these things were demonic attacks or whether they were to be expected as I naturally worry about her as her mother.

  So awhile ago I got fed-up with these thoughts because they leave me depressed and fearful and so whenever I catch myself in some horrific fantasy I pray, “Lord, please protect my mind.” And then try and move on. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t.

  But just a few days ago I had a bad thought and when I routinely prayed that prayer I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I had to pray that. So praise God! We don’t have to be subject to fear as mothers over our children and prayer does work!

• Maintenance Notes

  From April 02, 2009 @ 7:00 pm

  Well I figured out the issue that we’re ‘having’ with our feed links not working. It turns out that we’re not so much having an issue as FeedSmith is. Apparently, FeedSmith uses “some WordPress plugin magic, and user-agent detection [to] simply forward all your feed traffic to FeedBurner” (emphasis added). Well, that’s awesome (truly, I’ve been really happy with the plugin so far), unless a new user agent comes onto the scene that FeedSmith doesn’t know about. /wave Google Chrome.

  At least, that’s my latest theory.

  You see I noticed that the feed links weren’t working while using Google Chrome at work. Naturally, I assumed that this would mean that all browsers had broken. It was only when I found the aforelinkedto page that I had the thought to try them in a different browser (“duh!”) and lo-and-behold they work beautifully. I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this yet but I’m going to try to roll my own fix for the fun of it.

  Whee!

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