A Bold Assertion

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
  It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
  It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
  And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
  And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
  There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
  Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
  World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

God’s Grandeur, by Gerard Manley Hopkins

I’m here to talk about the world, God, people, and everything else in between. I’m here to talk about faith, specifically Christian faith, and what it might mean. Practically. Today. I’m here to talk about faith, hope, and love. And grace. I’m here to talk about God.

I’m here to talk about reason and knowledge. I’m here to talk about science and human understanding. I’m here to talk about human endeavor and human achievement and human limitations. Most of all, I’m here to talk about what these might have to do with anything in the previous paragraph. I’ll tell you this much: they have everything to do with it.

Who Am I?

My name is David. I am a Christian. I was born in Washington state, into the fundamentalist evangelical independent bible church movement. I was baptized in the swimming pool of a Four Square pastor. I reached my majority in a charismatic church.

I first heard the word “evangelical” when I went off to study English Literature at Wheaton College, and I learned that I was one. I quickly discovered that my faith had deeper roots than I had once supposed. After visiting a few local churches, I started attending a charismatic, liturgical church that desperately wanted to be Anglican. Now I’m out of college, married, and working as a typesetter for a small bible publisher. We finally did become Anglican, and we are now a part of AMIA and Common Cause.

Astute readers will note a lack of formal theological training in the above paragraphs. I am not destined for the pulpit or the halls of academia. I am a wordsmith by trade and a writer by calling. I have just enough theological training to be dangerous, for though my body was baptized in that swimming pool so many years ago, I know that I have steeped longer in the modern American liberal mindset than I have in the way of Christ, the Scriptures, and the teachings of the saints. I seek a transformation of my mind and a baptism of my imagination.

21 Aug 2008