Tim Keel's Blog: Quick Blog Update

January 23, 2009

Quick Blog Update

Hey friends...sorry it's been a light week on the blog. Between Tuesdays election festivities, JW staffing responsibilities, and hosting an out-of-town guest around the church this week, I have not had the time to give our book discussion the attention I promised - or this blog much attention at all. So, a couple quick things.

First - found these stories awaiting me in my RSS reader this afternoon. I love this headline: Obama administration frustrated by old White House PCs. Certainly a sign of a generational political shift, no? Here's another: Mac-savvy Obama staffers frustrated with legacy White House. A quick quote:

"President Obama's staff - accustomed to Macs, social media, and having the latest equipment - found Windows PCs with Microsoft Office 2003 in their new offices. Laptops were "scarce," apparently, and the team had trouble finding ways to update the redesigned White House website and add subtitles to web videos. Perhaps they were misled by the prominence of Mac hardware in the fictional-but-familiar West Wing version of the executive mansion."

Second - I am winding down Kathleen Norris's Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life. I'll just post a few more quotes. This struck me in my reading this morning. Norris is discussing her husband's terminal illness and the way in which it reduced her life to bathing him and emptying bedpans. In that time her faith struggles, particularly as she finds herself unable to take on many of the faith practices that had been an integral part of her life. Talking about the grace she found in the midst of that time, she writes:

"The comedy of grace is that it so often comes to us as loss, sorrow, and foul-smelling waste; if it came as gain, gladness, and sweetly smelling flowers, we would not be grateful. We would, as we are wont to do, take personal credit for the unwarranted gifts of God. It is easy to be attracted to the idea of grace - which one dictionary defines as 'divine love and protection bestowed freely on people' - but much harder to recognize this grace when it comes as pain and unwelcome change. In the depths of our confusion and anger, we ask: 'How can this be God's love? Where is God in this disaster?' For grace to be grace, it must give us things we didn't know we needed and take us to places where we didn't want to go. As we stumble through the crazily altered landscape of our lives, we find that God is enjoying our attention as never before. And maybe that is the point. It is a divine comedy."

I find that to be beautiful, hopeful, and true.