I feel sure that a number of my readers will be interested in this from Mindy's blog.

Dr Samuel T. Logan, President and Professor of Church History Emeritus at Westminster Theological Seminary, was the guest preacher at Cresheim Valley Church this morning.

He began with a poem.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there's some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost

Dr Logan used the poem to explain how it is that literature, even fictional literature, can convey truth. He spoke very movingly about how this poem captured the struggle of the terminally ill, longing for a rest from their pain, but knowing that there is still a journey to be completed.

He then introduced a second poem.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Dr Logan actually preached on Luke 15. He made the point that the three parables there are simply three short stories. They, like all good literature, have a bigger purpose than mere information. They aim to grip the heart, to move us from the grumbling of the Pharisees in v1-2, to delight in our father, the 'running father' who is the subject of the third parable. Indeed the parables themselves are examples of the father's love that extends mercy and compassionate understanding to his wayward children.

A third poem which I think may have been the words to a hymn I didn't recognise drew the sermon to a close.

What made this such a powerful sermon was the way in which it matched its subject matter. The sermon gripped our hearts and showed us the love of the running father that Luke 15 speaks of. As Dr Logan pointed out, to know the truth of this isn't enough - even the devil knows this - we need to experience it and respond to it with all our hearts, minds, souls and strength.

I've just signed up for Mozy, a remote backup system that works automatically, which is good if you're like me and can never be bothered to back up. It'll identify the kind of files most likely to need backing up, and whenever you change things, there's just a button on the taskbar of your desktop to click to start the automatic backup. And it can wait until your computer's idle if you like, to stop it slowing down your system. You get 2 GB storage for free, and if you click here to sign up, I'll get another 256 MB too!

'The Unbelievable Truth' is proving to be a surprisingly informative programme.

I think I may suffer from pogonophobia. Fear of beards, apparently.

So, I was just reading in 'The Wisdom of Solomon' (not for fun, in order to write a summary to hand in) this:

Moreover, these people [the Egyptians] worship animals, the most revolting animals [cats]. Compared with the rest of the brute creation, their divinities are the least intelligent. Even as animals they are without a trace of beauty which might make them desirable. When God approved and blessed his work, they were left out.

I think it's fair to say that the author of this book (not Solomon) didn't much care for cats.

What's odd is that, just as I was reading this section, I was listening to a new Radio 4 panel game called 'The Unbelievable Truth' in which contestants attempt to identify the true facts among a barrage of lies. Tony Hawks was reading some nonsense about cats when he began with the phrase, 'According to Hebrew folklore...' Apparently, there is a legend that says cats were created on the ark, in order to deal with the problem of rats, by the simple means of a lion sneezing out a cat.

Which would explain why they weren't approved by God in Genesis 1.

Oh, and this was one of the so-called 'true' facts which nobody spotted. Although, as one of the panellists pointed out, true in the sense of folklore, in other words, a lie that people have been telling for ages.

I saw Eternity the other Night
Like a great ring of pure and endless Light,
all calm, as it was bright,
And round beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years,
Driv'n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world
And all her train were hurled.

H. Vaughan.

Apparently today is Stott's 86th birthday and also marks the start of his (proper) retirement. Mark Meynell of All Souls, Langham Place, reflects on Stott's global impact and wishes him a happy retirement here.

O Duty,
Why hast thou not the visage of a sweetie or a cutie?
Why glitter thy spectacles so ominously?
Why art thou clad so abominously?
Why art thou so different from Venus
And why do thou and I have so few interests mutually in common between us?
Why art thou fifty per cent martyr?
And fifty-one per cent Tartar?

Why is it thy unfortunate wont
To try to attract people by calling on them either to leave undone the deeds they like, or to do the deeds they don't?
Why art thou so like an April post-mortem
Or something that died in the ortumn?
Above all, why dost thou continue to hound me?
Why art thou always albatrossly hanging around me?

Thou so ubiquitous,
And I so iniquitous.
I seem to be the one person in the world thou art perpetually preaching at who or to who;
Whatever looks like fun, there art thou standing between me and it, calling yoo-hoo.
O Duty, Duty!
How noble a man should I be hadst thou the visage of a sweetie or a cutie!
But as it is thou art so much forbiddinger than a Wodehouse hero's forbiddingest aunt
That in the words of the poet, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, this erstwhile youth replies, I just can't.

Ogden Nash

Who can resist a poem that contains the line 'thou art so much forbiddinger than a Wodehoues hero's forbiddingest aunt'? Forbidding indeed!

If you can't tell your Dtr from your DtH, your Deuteronomic from your Deuteronomistic, your Deuteronomastic from your Deuteranomaly, never fear! Mark Traphagen has a list of these and many other useless definitions here.

I've been carefully avoiding most of my very favourite poems in this poem of the day for National Poetry Month. Not because I don't think they should be submitted to this kind of Top 30 poll status, but because they're already up on the blog elsewhere. But I was surprised to find that this poem was not. And it definitely comes in at least my top five. Probably top 3.

Love

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

'A guest,' I answer'd, 'worthy to be here':
Love said, 'You shall be he.'
'I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.'
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
'Who made the eyes but I?'

'Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.'
'And know you not,' says Love, 'Who bore the blame?'
'My dear, then I will serve.'
'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.'
So I did sit and eat.

George Herbert

Not kissing Geri Halliwell.

Anyone who buys into James Kugel's nonsense about there being no such thing as Hebrew poetry, because after all it's just 'heightened prose' should be made to read Ian McMillan's poems. He's from Barnsley which is in the north of England and he is one of the most down to earth poets I know. I love when he presents programmes on Radio 4. You'll have to read this aloud in your best Barnsley accent to get the proper feel of it.

CONNECTED

Before, when you got mail,
It was a chap in a cap with a sack packed full;
Before, when you researched
You sat and sweated in a library that was just this side of dull;

And when you booked your holidays
You stood there in a queue
Behind a family of five and a pensioner or two
And life seemed so much slower, somehow;
There was acres of last week and just half a glimpse of now;

Today you click
On a mouse
And you can shop till you drop without leaving the house
And now you send
Your blogs
Right across the globe and the photos of your dogs
Can appear on your site in the twinkling of an eye
And in a tick you get a picture back of Grandma saying Hi!
Framed against the backdrop of a California sky…

And it’s been fifteen years from before to this
And now we’re living in a universe of constant cyber bliss!
And like the first fire in the cave
Or the first turning of The Wheel
The internet is changing how we think and speak and feel
And in the next fifteen years the net will turn and twist again
And go down murky sidestreets far beyond this Barnsley brain
And one thing’s certain: the net is here forever,
Constant as taxes, unpredictable as weather…

And before I’m dragged right under in a growing tide of spam
I’ve time for just this one last post: I click therefore I am!

It's hardly iambic pentameter, though there is a clear rhythm to the poem. There is rhyme but not in any very strict pattern. There's lots of lovely alliteration and assonance and some wonderful imagery. But there is no sentence in the poem that couldn't be uttered in everyday conversation. So presumably Kugel would turn up his nose and call this merely 'heightened prose.'

Exactly.

Or, as the rest of us call it, poetry.

David Peterson

Oh dear.

Some historical background
A few years ago a popular evangelical Christian leader in the UK, Steve Chalke, together with a lesser-known co-author, Alan Mann, published a book called 'The Lost Message of Jesus' which was immediately controversial for its rejection of the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement. Chalke likened this doctrine to cosmic child abuse. Not unnaturally, evangelicals were concerned. Public debates were held and the Evangelical Alliance sponsored a symposium at which the keynote speaker was Joel B. Green, author of 'Recovering the Scandal of the Cross' in which he made the same point as Chalke in a (slightly) more carefully argued and theologically nuanced way. A number of objections against both a caricatured doctrine of PSA and the carefully articulated orthodox doctrine were made at the symposium, along the lines of : believing PSA endorses violence and hatred; PSA doesn't speak to the needs of society; people don't understand PSA. These were all carefully and persuasively refuted by Garry Williams who gave the final address of the symposium.

Steve Chalke spoke briefly at the first meeting of the symposium, outlining his position. He then left, too busy to have to hear anyone who disagreed with him. His co-author, Alan Mann, attended the whole event and at the final Q & A session made a public statement of his position in which he confirmed that he did hold to PSA, that he'd been glad to hear it defended at the symposium, and that he was sorry for having written the book in a way that made that unclear.

So now what's happened?
The debate rages in the UK. Before Easter, Canon Jeffery John (who was at the centre of controversy once before when he, a professed homosexual, was appointed as a bishop and then forced to refuse the office), published an article in which he also rejected PSA. Not surprising from a liberal like John. This is how the BBC reported the debate and gives an indication of the kind of nonsense being talked by many who should know better.

But here's where it all gets very odd, and profoundly disturbing. Tom Wright writes an article discussing a number of recent publications on PSA including Jeffrey John's statement and a book by three men from Oak Hill, Pierced for our Transgressions, in which they offer a defence of PSA.

Jeffrey John comes in for a well-deserved critique by Wright. He is accused of rejecting a caricature of the doctrine, rather than seeking to understanding the doctrine itself.

Steve Chalke, mentioned in the context of PFOT, comes in for a ringing endorsement. Apparently he does believe in PSA, though he'll only admit to it in private (I seem to remember Derek Tidball saying the same thing at the EA symposium).

Drs Ovey, Jeffery and Sach, authors of PFOT, are given a real run through the mill. Not enough biblical theology, especially of the new perspective kind. If only they'd read Wright, they'd understand. Their work is accused of being deeply unbiblical and is, for Wright, a springboard into a general, swingeing critique of evangelical thought. He pits evangelical tradition against the bible and argues that contemporary evangelicalism (in large part, accidentally, and unintentionally, but nevertheless so) has stopped its ears to the bible. You can find the authors' response to Wright's critique here.

I have no idea what prompted Wright to write this article in the way that he has done. He has been a friend of Oak Hill, participating in debates there in the fairly recent past. Though there remains some debate about the NPP at Oak Hill (as, to be fair, there is almost everywhere), his work is recognised as scholarly, thoughtful and, in many, many respects, enormously valuable. Of course PFOT is not the book Wright would have written on PSA. Perhaps he is right that a greater emphasis on biblical theology would make the point even more strongly. Probably he is right that evangelicals need to be challenged about their true commitment to the bible, rather than their own dearly held interpretations of it.

And yet, I cannot help wishing for a little more of the grace Wright extends to Steve Chalke (reading him extremely generously) to have been extended to Steve Jeffery, Andrew Sach, and Mike Ovey. I don't suppose their book is perfect, but I'm sure it's jolly good and I know it is a much needed counter to the kind of nonsense being talked by Jeffery John and many of the speakers at the EA symposium.

I blogged about Christian disagreement once before and I link to it again because it seems to me that Wesley and Whitefield remain such rare examples of grace and humility among brothers. Would that we would learn from them.

I do like Mark Steel. I know he's ridiculously left wing, and anti-religion and all that. But he's very funny and surprisingly well-informed. So take half an hour to listen to him on Oliver Cromwell here. You might just learn something in amongst the laughs.

Today is supposedly the anniversary of both Shakespeare's birth and death. To the presumed delight of his mother, and the edification of millions, these events did not happen in the same year. So we have this to enjoy:

Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Quite right.

Tomorrow the Monty Python 'Spamalot' cast are staging a world record breaking attempt to create the largest ever coconut-playing orchestra. The song will be 'Always look on the bright side of life'. Those worried that the musical performance may not be of the highest standard will be relieved to know that there is a rehearsal time planned beforehand.

Coconuts will be provided free of charge.

I agree with James Oakley: Garry Williams must be made to go.

It's hardly possible to believe that less than a week ago there was snow on the ground, and today there's blossom on the trees and it's warm enough for shorts and t-shirt. So it seems like a good time for a poem about spring.

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as spring -
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. -Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

One day there will be time and space to watch the blue that is all in a rush with richness, and the weeds that shoot long and lovely and lush. I hope there will be seasons in the new heavens and the new earth, even though there will be no sun. For the joy of spring following winter, and summer spring, and autumn summer, and winter autumn is one I would surely miss.

I feel I should say that these 30 poems for National Poetry Month are not exactly my 'top 30 of all time'. I've tried to choose poems that I haven't had on the blog before, so that eliminates some favourites. And I've tried to choose seasonally appropriate poems, so that eliminates some others. But all of these are poems that I love to read and hear and mull over. I hope you do too.

This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-Paradise;
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war;
This happy breed of men, this little world;
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands;
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Feared by their breed, and famous by their birth,
Renowned for their deeds as far from home,
For Christian service and true chivalry,
As is the sepulchre, in stubborn Jewry,
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son;
This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out - I die pronouncing it -
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea,
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots, and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.

From Richard II, Act 2, scene i

I don't know if anyone is learning these poems, but if so, you'll be pleased with the one I've chosen today!

I May, I might, I must

If you will tell me why the fen
appears impassable, I then
will tell you why I think that I
can get across it if I try.

Marianne Moore

Today the sun is shining and it's warm outside. We have internet access again and I found my watch after a week hiding down the side of a chair. I've done (some) work that I needed to and been shopping too. Tonight I'm going out for dinner with some friends at a Malaysian restaurant in the city. I think that counts as a good day all round.

So says this week's 'Weekly Telegraph'. And (as I have been saying for the last 6 months), I wholeheartedly agree. Now, finally, so does BBC America, which has decided to scrap the show, currently on air twice a day. Also on the chopping block are such favourites as 'Are you being served?', 'Keeping up Appearances' and 'The Avengers.' Not before time.

What, you may wonder, is going to replace such treats as these?

Hollyoaks. Oh dear.

Wire in the Blood. No comment.

Footballers Wives. *hides head in despair*

This is descibed by Garth Ancier, head of BBC America as 'the very best in contemporary British programming.'

No. No, no, no. No.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any - lifted from the no
of all nothing - human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

e. e. cummings

I find Cummings' idiosyncratic use of punctuation and capitalization irritating, to say the least. But there is an irrepressible joy about this poem that I can't help warming to despite that. And some amazing use of language: 'human merely being', and 'a blue true dream of sky', and so on. Read it, read it aloud, read it again, let it thrill your heart with thanks to God for this creation.

The Comcast guy finally fixed the problem with our internet today - after a week without it. It's been an... interesting... experience. Obviously, I've had access in the library so it's not that I've been absolutely cut off from the world. But I have really missed it at home, which is where I normally blog, check blogs, write emails, check Facebook etc. - all the fun stuff! And when I'm at the library, I feel guilty about doing those things when I ought to be working.

So now prepare yourselves for a whole spate of guilt-free blogging. I have photos from New England, stories about Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain, an article from the Telegraph about British TV in America, a handful of theological reflections, and notes from classes (who knew Dr Poythress was an American Idol fan?) all lined up for your entertainment and education. Stay tuned!

I don't know if anyone else is still reading these, but I'm enjoying them and it's nice to think I'll have an online anthology of some of my favourite pieces always available.

Tamer and Hawk

I thought I was so tough,
But gentled at your hands
Cannot be quick enough
To fly for you and show
That when I go I go
At your commands.

Even in flight above
I am no longer free:
You seeled me with your love,
I am blind to other birds-
The habit of your words
Has hooded me.

As formerly, I wheel
I hover and I twist,
But only want the feel,
In my possessive thought,
Of catcher and of caught
Upon your wrist.

You but half-civilize,
Taming me in this way.
Through having only eyes
For you I fear to lose,
I lose to keep, and choose
Tamer as prey.

Thom Gunn

Oh, and I had to look up 'seeled'

seel
1. to sew shut (the eyes of a falcon) during parts of its training.
2. Archaic.
a. to close (the eyes).
b. to blind.

But it makes a nice pun on 'sealed', don't you think?

WTS Bookstore proudly present their new 'Sale of the Week' feature and no, Nicholas Parsons will not be appearing.

WTSBOOKS Sale of the Week

You know you want to click on the link...

Thanks to everyone who's clicked so far. I have already amassed a grand total of 57 credits entitling me to a $10 gift voucher. Still working up to

A full set of 3 volumes of Turretin

Here's some handy hints for anyone thinking of setting up an automated telephone helpline:

(i) Press buttons are much easier to control than the kind where you have to speak your answer and hope that the computer can understand you. Especially if you have a foreign accent.

(ii) Don't expect your customer to be able to diagnose the problem themselves. That's why they're ringing for help. Don't treat them like an idiot either. Generally if they tell you they can't access the internet, they have actually tried to access the internet.

(iii) If you have selected the option, 'I can't access the internet' then the message, 'We are currently experiencing higher than normal demand. We strongly encourage you to visit comcast.net/help to help solve your problem' is going to cause your customer to throw the phone across the room, scream, shout or burst into tears.

(iv) If you have to put your customer who is experiencing trouble with the service on hold, playing a looped message advertising your efficient, reliable services is going to have a similar effect. The longer the customer is left on hold with this kind of irritation, the less rational and understanding they are going to be when they finally speak to a real person. Try some soothing music. Or better still, silence.

(v) Don't lie. If the call is not going to be answered 'right away' don't say that it is.

(vi) Don't claim to always be experiencing 'higher than normal demand.' If you always have that level, then that is normal. Deal with it.

I believe this poem won some poll in the UK a few years ago, but it may be new to my American readers.

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old and start to wear purple.

Jenny Joseph