Scribblings Archives - Page 27 of 34

On December 3, 2013 By Kuyperian In Culture, Politics, Scribblings, Wisdom Like

The Tip That Keeps on Giving

Information does tend to flow in trends through the social media conduits. For sheer lack of time, I find myself being fed ideas on what to think about in a given day, or what book to put on the reading list for the new year. And that’s okay, we tend to see what’s in front of us by design. Such is our need for community.

Of late, a bit of chatter that seemed to be recurrent in my November social feed troughs are several stories about the behavior of members of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ at the table. Not the communion table, mind you, but the local eatery. Said stories regard the practice of tipping of food servers. One article even asked, “what would Jesus tip?”

My wife and I have a long history of a debate that I lovingly refer to as “The Tip”. The Tip Debate began back before our eleven-year marriage. It even threatened said-marriage from ever materializing at one point in time. It caused me to seriously question my life decisions and God’s will in my life (Lord, forgive me but it’s the truth). In an effort to preserve the union, the Tip Debate has caused me to black list certain establishments wherein my wife has formerly been employed due to the unbearable dining experience of trying to enjoy a meal and maintain rare adult conversation while she leaves mid-sentence to go find the maitre d’ in order to report an observed insufficiency in staff performance. Yeah. It was a dark time.

An old friend, with what some would refer to as a sense of the humorous, had a propensity for the charming habit of placing a stack of brand new one dollar bills on the table, in plain view of the desperately stressed, over-worked and under-appreciated server. As the attendee would approach the table, my friend’s keen gaze would intensify and his hand would hover over the meager mound of moolah ^a. One wrong move, and he would swipe away one of the dollars with a relished drama. No tip for you!

I’m happy to report that today I am in a position to regard myself as somewhat of a good tipper, which is closer to where my wife wants me to be. All was well on that front.

But then these shysters in sheep’s clothing have to come along and stir up the coals of a long quelled discussion on proper tipping etiquette. The first to come to my attention was the story of Christian diners who left a “tip tract”. You’ve heard of these ingenious devices that turn the two-edged sword of the Word into a knife in the ribs? They consist of what appears to be a respectable tip – a tenner, a Jackson, a Benjamin, WHAT?!? – but once removed from the bill holder by the server, it is revealed to be a slight-of-hand Gospel witness all up in what was your momentarily excited face.

: Stupid Human Tricks

Another such instance of the golden tip was a tale circulating about Christian patrons who left no tip whatsoever. At least, not in monetary form. Rather, an explanatory note was left that read: Sorry, but I can’t tip as I do not agree with your lifestyle, Love you (emoticon winky, bemused, apologetic smileyface, tear). Treasures in heaven, y’all, which you will never enjoy because you won’t ever get there lest ye REPENT!!! And I’ll give you your pen back if you give me an extra mint (they’re wafer thin). Bill Maher couldn’t believe it ^b

The Internet Justice Brigade (IJB) wasted no time in exposing this story as false and discrediting the former Marine as a troubled soul with an instagram account and a history of conduct issues – reportedly. Wounded warrior indeed. Your chosen means can weaken your cause.

The story was then book-ended by a tale of the most bodacious tip ever left in the name of Christ. Customary gratuity is bush league to @TipsForJesus ^c. That’s one way to do that, steward. I hope you’re still giving thanks to YahWeh when the APR kicks in on that American Express. May we all aspire to such generosity at sports bars.

You know the kind of tipping story I’d like to read? One that mentions the vocational courses in Europe that can last as long as two years or more before restaurateurs will allow be-gloved servers to hit the floor and represent their brand. And how no one is entitled to an income just for showing up, especially if they cannot fulfill their job role in a satisfactory way that is equal to or greater than their agreed upon compensation. And I say that as a person who has worked in kitchens and on wait staffs, and stunk at it. Your relationship with Jesus may get you a job, but it’s still up to you to see it done.

I personally like the stories of innovators in the food industry who have raised their pay scales, done away with Darwinian tipping system, and won lifelong loyalty in customers (and employees) in doing so^d. Showing up again ought to be all the gratitude any of us require. A little extra expression of gratitude – a manifestation of appreciation in tangible means? Well, that’s straight gravy. Serve your neighbor as you would be served. Judge your neighbors service as your would have your service judged.

A little Capon is appropriate, I believe:

‘O Lord, refresh our sensibilities. Give us this day our daily taste. Restore to us soups that spoons will not sink in and sauces which are never the same twice. Raise up among us stews with more gravy than we have bread to blot it with, and casseroles that put starch and substance in our limp modernity. Take away our fear of fat, and make us glad of the oil which ran upon Aaron’s beard. Give us pasta with a hundred fillings, and rice in a thousand variations. Above all, give us grace to live as true folk – to fast till we come to a refreshed sense of what we have and then to dine gratefully on all that comes to hand. Drive far from us, O Most Bountiful, all creatures of air and darkness; cast out the demons that possess us; deliver us from the fear of calories and the bondage of nutrition; and set us free once more in our own land, where we shall serve thee as though hast blessed us – with the dew of heaven, the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine’. – Robert Farrar Capon, 1925-2013 ^e

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from the Irish moll oir – pile of gold, Daniel Cassidy, How the Irish Invented Slang, 2007 (back)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/10/1254527/-MUST-SEE-Bill-Maher-BLASTS-selfish-Christian-hypocrites-who-don-t-tip-waiters# (back)
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/12/02/248245882/tipsforjesus-is-leaving-thousands-of-dollars-for-servers (back)
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2013/08/tipless_restaurants_the_linkery_s_owner_explains_why_abolishing_tipping.html (back)
The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection (Garden City: Doubleday, 1969), 278 (back)

On November 23, 2013 By Uri Brito In Scribblings Like

Uri Brito: A History of “Knockout”

This may have to be one of the most disturbing instances of modern human brutality:

As a 78-year-old woman walked down the street in Brooklyn, carrying her purse and bags, a young black male, about 20 years old, punched her in the head as hard as he could and ran away. The man said nothing and didn’t steal a single item.

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On November 20, 2013 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Marc Hays: A Properly Christian Humanism

“For the scientists who were functioning on a Christian base, there was an incentive to continue searching for the objective truth which they had good reason to know was there. Then, too, with the biblical emphasis on the rightness of work and the dignity of all vocations, it was natural that the things that were learned should flow over into the practical side and not remain the matter of mere intellectual curiosity and that, in other words, technology, in the beneficial sense, should be born.

What was the view of these modern scientists on a Christian base? They held to the concept of the uniformity of natural causes in an open system, or, as it may also be expressed, the uniformity of natural causes in a limited time span. God has made a cause-and-effect universe; therefore we can find out something about the causes and the effects. But (and the but is very important) it is an open universe because God and man are outside of the uniformity of natural causes. In other words, all that exists is not one big cosmic machine which includes everything. Of course, if a person steps in front of a moving auto, the cause-and-effect universe functions upon him; but God and people are not a part of a total cosmic machine. Things go on in a cause-and-effect sequence, but at a point of time the direction may be changed by God or by people. Consequently, there is a place for God, but there is also a proper place for man.

This carries with it something profound–that the machine, whether the cosmic machine or the machines people make, is neither master nor a threat–because the machine does not include everything. There is something which is “outside” of the cosmic machine, and there is a place for man to be man.”

Francis Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live, Chapter 7, “The Rise of Modern Science”

Click on the book cover to magically travel to a bookseller somewhere in the Amazon.

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On November 18, 2013 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Marc Hays: GKC – Fixed Ideals & Whistler’s Mother

This week is supposed to belong to C. S. Lewis, but here I am quoting Chesterton. Again. Don’t be sad. You’ll read plenty of Lewis quotes this week, I assure you, and rightly so. He is to be honored, but thanks to a second gunman on a grassy knoll, Lewis has already had to share this week for the past 50 years, so my blog entry will come as no surprise to him.

Enough chit-chat. Back to my Chestercrush.

In his epic battle against the so-called “progressives,” Chesterton notes that their goals are always changing. The “ideal” to be attained is always the newest one. Everyone votes for “Change,” even as recently as 2008, but the reality is that when the masses are sold on “Change,” the only ones to actually reap anything profitable are the ones who are selling it. If “progress” is the only goal, then any change at all makes the constituency happy. But it doesn’t make them happy freemen. It makes them happy slaves, and it prevents any real progress.

Here’s an excerpt from Orthodoxy, Chapter 7, “The Eternal Revolution”:

“This, therefore, is our first requirement about the ideal towards which progress is directed; it must be fixed. Whistler used to make many rapid studies of a sitter; it did not matter if he tore up twenty portraits. But it would matter if he looked up twenty times, and each time saw a new person sitting placidly for his portrait. So it does not matter (comparatively speaking) how often humanity fails to imitate its ideal; for then all its old failures are fruitful. But it does frightfully matter how often humanity changes its ideal; for then all its old failures are fruitless. The question therefore becomes this: How can we keep the artist discontented with his pictures while preventing him from being vitally discontented with his art? How can we make a man always dissatisfied with his work, yet always satisfied with working? How can we make sure that the portrait painter will throw the portrait out of window instead of taking the natural and more human course of throwing the sitter out of window?”

This is only a small portion of a fantastic essay from a monumental book. You can read it online, or download several different formats, here.

You can download it for your Kindle App here.

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On November 16, 2013 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Uri Brito: Martin Bashir’s Abusive Response to Palin

In a strange rant against Palin’s remarks, MSNBC’s Martin Bashir offered one of the most repulsive analysis of a politician I have heard in the last five years. Take a listen and leave your comments:

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On November 15, 2013 By Uri Brito In Scribblings Like

Uri Brito: On China’s “One-Child Policy”

According to Slate:

Big news for Chinese families today as the ruling party announces a major reform to the infamous “one child” policy. Now an urban couple can have two kids as long as one of the two parents is an only child.

This is not full good news–which would mean a repeal on any limitations on how many children parents could have–but it is good news. We, at Kuyperian, believe that the Gospel changes the world, but it changes the world in a leavening sort of way. We are witnessing a gospel revolution in China; the type that begins in hidden house churches, but will one day become a vast spectacle of faith for the world to see. There is a certain incremental element of the good news that changes societies at different speeds at different times. Every little change is reason to rejoice. Thanks be to God.<>racer mobile online

On November 14, 2013 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Marc Hays: Always Read the Preface!

I used to think that the preface of a book was just perfunctory, perhaps a tradition of some bygone era, ever lingering to force the reader to flip through more pages before arriving at the important stuff. When I became a man, I put away childish things. Now the preface is the threshold from this world to the fresh, exciting world of “Chapter 1.” It’s the handshake, where the author tells the reader, “Howdy,” and the reader responds, “Pleased to meetcha.” It’s the aroma that always reaches your nose before you can ever take the first bite. Speaking of food, here’s the first part of the preface from the first edition of Robert Farrar Capon’s, The Supper of the Lamb:

“Once upon a time, there was a musician who always complained that half the notes he wanted to play were not on the piano. They lay, he claimed, between the keys where he could never get at them. Accordingly, he took up fiddling, which has no such limitations, and lived happily ever after.

This is a book on cooking; but like the musician, it concentrates more on the cracks and interstices of the culinary keyboard than on the conventional notes themselves. It, too, involves considerable fiddling around-some of it rather low, but some of it very high indeed. Nevertheless, I commend it to you in all seriousness. From it, you may learn things you never knew, or be confirmed in prejudices you’ve always held-or even come away with a recipe or two to add to your collection. In any case, you will find it a leisurely and unhurried book: The outlandish recipe with which it begins last the whole work through and provides, not so much an outline, as a fixed star under which the length and breadth of cooking is explored.”

Now Robert Capon has said, “Hello,” and from what I’ve gathered, he really means it.

Register over on the sidebar to win a copy of this phenomenal literary cookbook.

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On November 13, 2013 By Peter Jones In Scribblings, Worship Like

Peter Jones: C.S. Lewis on Confessing Our Sins

In the quote below C.S. Lewis is commenting on this phrase from the General Confession in the Book of Common Prayer, “But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us miserable offenders.” At my church, we say this confession, but replace “offenders” with “sinners.” The quote is one of the best I have ever read on how to confess our sins and the results of confession. Almost every line, especially of the last paragraph, is worth your careful time.

“It is essential [when confessing our sins] to use the plain, simple, old-fashioned words that you would use about anyone else. I mean words like theft, or fornication, or hatred, instead of ‘I did not mean to be dishonest’ or ‘I was only a boy then’ or ‘I lost my temper. I think that this steady facing of what one does know and bringing it before God, without excuses, and seriously asking for Forgiveness and Grace, and resolving as far as in one lies to do better, is the only way in which we can ever begin to know the fatal thing which is always there, and preventing us from becoming perfectly just to our wife or husband, or being a better employer or employee. If this process is gone through, I do not doubt that most of us will come to understand and to share these old words like ‘contrite,’miserable’ and intolerable.’

Does that sound very gloomy? Does Christianity encourage morbid introspection? The alternative is much more morbid. Those who do not think about their own sins make up for it by thinking incessantly about the sins of others. It is healthier to think of one’s own. It is the reverse of morbid. It is not even, in the long run, very gloomy. A serious attempt to repent and to really know one’s own sin is in the long run a lightening and relieving process. Of course, there is bound to be a first dismay and often terror and later great pain, yet that is much less in the long run than the anguish of a mass of unrepented and unexamined sins, lurking in the background of our minds. It is the difference between the pain of a tooth about which you should go to the dentist, and the simple straight-forward pain which you know is getting less and less every moment when you have had the tooth out.”<>

On November 9, 2013 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Marc Hays: Narcissism Upside-Down

And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Matthew 22:39

The greatest commandment: love God.

Next: your neighbor.

In what manner? Like you love yourself.

We’re each at the center of our own universe. It does actually all revolve around us. No matter where we go, there we are. Relatively speaking, we’re all ubiquitous to ourselves.

I can’t make a single decision without wondering WWID: What Would I Do?

I can’t speak a single word without wondering: What would I say?

I can’t eat a single meal without consulting my appetites, or make a single purchase without considering my desires.

We know how to love ourselves. In fact, if we hate ourselves, we go against the very course of nature. “No one has ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it.” (Eph 5:29)

What if we loved our neighbors as we loved ourselves? What if we thought about how we would want to be treated before we did, said, thought, bought, or ate anything? What if I actually paid attention to those around me, so that I could know how to attend to their needs like I hope they would attend to mine? What if I stopped for someone broken down beside the interstate or picked up someone who was walking? Or bought a cup of coffee for a friend who was short on cash? Or bought a meal for a complete stranger, and then stayed to eat it with them?

Or spoke a soft word when wrath needed to be turned away? Or spoke a hard word when a hard word needed to be said? Or said “thank you” for the slightest blessing? Or praised someone for doing well, or praised someone for doing something mediocre? Or loved someone who is hard to love? Or loved an enemy? Or…? Or…? Or…?

Well then, I would be loving God by loving my neighbor, and loving my neighbor by remembering what it’s like to love myself.

Narcissism. Upside-Down.

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On November 7, 2013 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Marc Hays: GKC–Why Don’t Bankers Sing While Banking?

If you have a moment this morning to read, then I offer you a snippet of GKC’s essay, “The Little Birds Who Won’t Sing,” from the Tremendous Trifles collection. It’s brilliant, as always. So, without further ado, I give you…G.K. Chesterton:

“…I walked along the pier at Ostend; and I heard some sailors uttering a measured shout as they laboured, and I remembered that sailors still sing in chorus while they work, and even sing different songs according to what part of their work they are doing. And a little while afterwards, when my sea journey was over, the sight of men working in the English fields reminded me again that there are still songs for harvest and for many agricultural routines. And I suddenly wondered why if this were so it should be quite unknown, for any modern trade to have a ritual poetry. How did people come to chant rude poems while pulling certain ropes or gathering certain fruit, and why did nobody do anything of the kind while producing any of the modern things? Why is a modern newspaper never printed by people singing in chorus? Why do shopmen seldom, if ever, sing?

…..

If reapers sing while reaping, why should not auditors sing while auditing and bankers while banking? If there are songs for all the separate things that have to be done in a boat, why are there not songs for all the separate things that have to be done in a bank? As the train from Dover flew through the Kentish gardens, I tried to write a few songs suitable for commercial gentlemen. Thus, the work of bank clerks when casting up columns might begin with a thundering chorus in praise of Simple Addition.

“Up my lads and lift the ledgers, sleep and ease are o’er. Hear the Stars of Morning shouting: ‘Two and Two are four.’ Though the creeds and realms are reeling, though the sophists roar, Though we weep and pawn our watches, Two and Two are Four.”

…..

And as I came into the cloud of London I met a friend of mine who actually is in a bank, and submitted these suggestions in rhyme to him for use among his colleagues. But he was not very hopeful about the matter. It was not (he assured me) that he underrated the verses, or in any sense lamented their lack of polish. No; it was rather, he felt, an indefinable something in the very atmosphere of the society in which we live that makes it spiritually difficult to sing in banks. And I think he must be right; though the matter is very mysterious. I may observe here that I think there must be some mistake in the calculations of the Socialists. They put down all our distress, not to a moral tone, but to the chaos of private enterprise. Now, banks are private; but post-offices are Socialistic: therefore I naturally expected that the post-office would fall into the collectivist idea of a chorus. Judge of my surprise when the lady in my local post-office (whom I urged to sing) dismissed the idea with far more coldness than the bank clerk had done. She seemed indeed, to be in a considerably greater state of depression than he. Should any one suppose that this was the effect of the verses themselves, it is only fair to say that the specimen verse of the Post-Office Hymn ran thus:

     "O'er London our letters are shaken like snow,
      Our wires o'er the world like the thunderbolts go.
      The news that may marry a maiden in Sark,
      Or kill an old lady in Finsbury Park."

Chorus (with a swing of joy and energy):

     "Or kill an old lady in Finsbury Park."

…And at the end of my reflections I had really got no further than the sub-conscious feeling of my friend the bank-clerk—that there is something spiritually suffocating about our life; not about our laws merely, but about our life. Bank-clerks are without songs, not because they are poor, but because they are sad. Sailors are much poorer. As I passed homewards I passed a little tin building of some religious sort, which was shaken with shouting as a trumpet is torn with its own tongue. THEY were singing anyhow; and I had for an instant a fancy I had often had before: that with us the super-human is the only place where you can find the human. Human nature is hunted and has fled into sanctuary.”

Go to Gutenberg.org to the read the whole essay. This one is chapter XXX.

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