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What is it that stops you from forgiving others?

Is it the pain of the wrong
burned into your mind and heart swelling up,
causing new pain and hurt?

Is it your pride
stinging from perceived injustice,
not believing people deserve a second chance?

Is it your sense of self righteousness
causing you to somehow believe
some people aren’t good enough to be forgiven?

Whatever the reason,
the words of Jesus are the same:

If someone sins against you,
forgive them.
If they do it again,
forgive them.

As often as you’re wronged,
so often should you forgive.

And when you seem to reach the end of your patience,
remember the mercy and forgiveness
of a God who cancels your debt
time
and time
and time again.

What blessings has God bestowed in your life?

Friends,
family,
ability,
wealth,
knowledge?

Acknowledge your blessings – treasures in life.

Reflect on God’s grace – unmerited favor to you.

Respond to God’s gifts,
earning a valuable increase for the Kingdom
with the investment you’ve been given.

Rabbi Joshua Martin Siegel works for the United Methodist Churches. The following is a transcript of his appearance on an NPR radio show.

NPR: Rabbi, thanks very much for being with us.

Glad to be here.

NPR: What do you do as the house Rabbi for a bunch of Methodists?

Well, I do teaching, I do some advising, but mainly I’m interested in helping to see how religion in our time can be revised or renewed by a new kind of dialog between Judaism and Christianity. I think the real path to Christian renewal is through the Jewish teachings.

NPR: I don’t mean this in a partisan way, but what is your interest in a renewal of Christianity, why would that interest you?

Because the real struggles are not between religions anymore. The real struggles are with the secularists, who think that all of life is around the here and the now and the experience, and those who say there’s something larger, something more eternal, there’s a deeper dimension to life that’s not limited to the here and the now and the experiential, and that’s under attack, so we have to find new ways to deliver that particular message. I think each religion has their own way of doing it, but I think Judaism has many opportunities to present it in new ways that I think the Christians could use in getting their particular message of renewal and spirituality across. The issue is between secularity and spirituality – not between religions.

NPR: A great many biblical scholars and ordinary readers who have read the Bible and the New Testament see a substantial difference between what is sometimes called the God of the Old Testament – calling down plagues on people, he can be quick to anger – and the God of the New Testament seems, if you please, kindler, gentler.

It just ain’t that way. At the heart of the Torah teachings is a God of love. Now sometimes people don’t see that because sometimes the God of love expresses its love in different ways than may be understood. Secondly, there’s two thousand —

NPR: Excuse me, I have to interrupt… You mean the plagues on Egypt were an expression of love?

Yes. The Pharaoh stood for the power of human beings, or of a human being to dominate the world. Pharaoh was stubborn. Pharaoh had a chance to give in, the first time, without any threats, but he thought he was all powerful, and unfortunately had to be taught a lesson. Yeah, sometimes out of your pain and suffering you can find God. Pain and suffering is real. The power of the redemptive God, as expressed by Jesus, as expressed in the Torah, is the capacity to overcome that kind of difficulty and bring people to a different place where they don’t see the world as divided into sons of light and sons of darkness – that there are evil people and good people. Easter and Passover come together, but they talk about the same thing – freeing yourself from your limitations to become who you’re created to be.

NPR: In this past year of working for the Methodist Church – what’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned about Christianity or about Christians?

I’ve learned about how hard it is to be a Christian. They struggle with this image of Jesus and all that he is and all that he was and all that he accomplished, and they’re beset by the secular culture, they’re beset by a lot of things. They’re also beset by this curse of having been all-powerful. You know, they kind of laid over the American landscape like a fog that was everywhere, and they’re so used to being everywhere that they don’t know how to be not everywhere, so they suffer with this new minority status, which is really a whole new ballgame for them, and that’s another way the Jews – who’ve been minorities for a long time – can help. They used to talk about the Christian century. I think this is becoming the Secular Century. But if it’s going to become the Christian century again, it’s going to be a new understanding of, a new presentation of what has historically been called Christianity, which will have a strong element of Jewish teaching associated with it.

NPR: You refer to the fact that Christians and Jews share the aspect of being people of faith in an increasingly secular world. I’m just sitting here thinking… I know Western Europe is increasingly secular according to the numbers, but I guess I had the impression that the rest of the world is not increasingly secular, that it’s on the contrary, more and more members of faith, and that’s sometimes the source obviously of great bitterness.

Well, it could be. I have a little different feeling. The mainstream Protestant religions in the United States and the West are declining, and I think that’s an issue. The Born-Agains sometimes have a kind of absolutism that I think borders on a lack of spirituality. So I think the essence of spirituality is humility – the capacity to truly listen to and respect and love others – you know Jesus said love your enemies and so on. And I think that’s the heart of the issue – who’s at the center? Is it you, or is it something larger than yourself, to which you owe allegiance, and to which you must give deference and try to follow its ways. The religious traditions provide a path, but I think we have to discover new ways, which are really old ways, which allow us to trod that path more effectively, more creatively, but together, rather than each in our own way.

This weekend wasn’t the first time I’d taken the LX-2 on a big trip, but it was the first time since I’d gotten it that I convinced myself to take it on a big trip along with my D200. Since it’s a camera that most people are looking at either as an SLR backup or instead of buying an SLR in general, I thought it might be good to give an overall review of the LX-2, as well as comparing/contrasting it with SLR’s. I’m not planning to go through the ergonomics of the camera as such. Ergonomics and user interface is generally not your most important concern, particularly on a point and shoot. As a result, I plan to focus most on actually using the camera, and the pictures you (can) get out of it.

Before I start, let me say that I realize comparing the LX-2 with a D200 is not terribly fair. However, it’s important to keep in mind that most of the comparisons that hold true comparing the LX-2 with the D200 would also hold with the D40/D50, or XTi.

The Good

1. Size & Weight – The LX-2 is small and light. For most of my trip I carried it in my coat pocket, which gave me easy access to using it. I also felt a bit more inconspicuous while taking pictures on streets and in subway station. Pulling out an SLR often draws a lot of attention, but snapping away with a point and shoot isn’t really seen as that big of a deal. As a result, you’re not too unwilling to try shots like this one in the middle of a large group of people during rush hour at Times Square:

   

2. Features – I don’t know of any other point and shoot camera that packs this many features into one package. Full manual control, the ability to shoot in RAW, 60 second exposures, Image Stabilization, a decent movie mode, 16:9 native capture – the list goes on. The LX-2 is a very versatile camera that gives you n amazing amount of creative control without forcing you to carry around several pounds of equipment, which allows you to capture more shots than you would otherwise get.
3. “Leica” lens – I put Leica in quotes because, like Sony with their “Zeiss” lenses, there’s probably more to the story than just the name. While the LX-2 is at least rebadged and sold as a real Leica with the red dot, if I were having to base my decision to buy an M8 or not based only on the LX-2, I would save my $5000. That said, the LX-2’s lens is very sharp, relatively contrasty, and very capable. It is honestly *at times* capable of rivaling my Nikon 17-55, though it does have one severe shortcoming, to be discussed later. At the end of the day though, you can still get beautiful, saturated results like this without too much work:

   

4. Build Quality – The LX-2 doesn’t feel like a cheap, plasticy camera. It has a fair amount of metal in it, and you don’t feel like you’re going to break it by breathing around it. As previously mentioned, the fact that it’s basically a Leica without the red dot speaks highly to its construction.

The Not so Good

1. Speed (the ISO kind) – Due to the nature of the LX-2’s sensor, noise is a serious problem. As a result, it is not advised to ever shoot much above 400 if you are planning on printing your picture, and it is certainly advisable to shoot at 100 whenever possible. If shooting at 100 is not possible, it’s often advisable to make it possible. The following are two pictures which somewhat illustrate my point. The subject is not really important, but each shows a 1:1 crop off an LX-2 image taken at the same time, of the same subject. The first image was taken at ISO 100, and the second at ISO 800. While the first image is blurred due to hand-holding at over 1/2 a second, you can still see an extreme amount of difference in the noise levels of the two images:

   

   Clearly, the LX-2 suffers both from chromatic and luminance noise in spades anytime the ISO increases.

   

2. Noise (not the loud kind) – Even when shooting at ISO 100, the LX-2’s sensor still suffers from noise problems. Below are two images taken from the same spot, but slightly different perspectives. The first image is from the LX-2, and the second is from the D200. Both are 1:1 crops.

   

   Now on first glance these two cropped photos appear to have similar amounts of noise – which would be good if they had both been taken at 100, but unfortunately the LX-2 was on ISO 100 while the D200 was on ISO 400. Additionally, not only does the LX-2 image have approximately the same amount of noise as the D200’s photo @ISO 400, the D200 noise pattern is smaller and more film-like than that of the LX-2, leading to a more pleasant image overall.

   The combined message of these two points is simple – the LX-2 will have more noise and require you to shoot at a slower shutter speed. If you have a tripod or a well lit room or are shooting outdoors, this may not matter to you, but if you are an average point and shoot user who is just looking to take pictures of the dog and kids, this could cause you fits. Often you can compensate for some of this, but it is just a reality of the camera, and one that must be dealt with.

   

3. Chromatic Aberration – Using Starfish’s filtering technique to spot problem areas for chromatic aberration is extremely instructive in this case. The following pictures represent almost the worst case for CA, but none the less shows the scope of the problem on the LX-2’s lens. The first is the normal image, unfiltered, followed by the filtered image, CA amplified by ~6dB (2 stops).

   

   

   Obviously in this case, the CA is extremely well defined and easily detectable in the original image as well. CA can lead to lack of sharpness and definition in your pictures, and in general is just something you’d prefer not to deal with.

4. Filesize – The LX-2’s raw files take up 20MB each. The LX-2’s JPG’s take up 2-3 MB each. There is no option to turn the JPG off if you’re shooting RAW. The result of all of this is that you need extremely large memory cards in order to use the LX-2 for any length of time. The RAW files can be compressed to DNG’s after bringing them onto the computer, but it’s none the less a severe pain to not have an option to compress in native format.

The Wishlist

Not that any Panasonic/Leica engineers are out there reading this right now, but if they were, I do have a wishlist of things I’d like to see in an LX-3:

1. A Less Noisy Sensor – The LX-2 is fantastic, but it would be much more so were it paired with a capable sensor. The Fuji F30, for instance, gives usable results up to 3200. Why can’t the LX-2?
2. Faster write times / Smaller file sizes – This one is almost free. Reducing the filesize reduces write times and makes the memory go that much further. There’s no reason not to do it, and it would help shooting out significantly.
3. Slightly better movie mode – The LX-2 does… well, ok. But 720p @30fps would be very nice. As would slightly better quality on the compression algorithms.

And… That’s about it.

The Verdict

The LX-2 is a very good camera for what it is, but a very bad camera for what it is not. It’s not good for shooting indoors (in general), shooting action (in general) or shooting in low light (in general). It is, however, capable of stunning results that will rival an SLR, and if your primary goal is artistic photography, it is certainly an investment worth making.

A couple of HDR’s from Monday night. I hope to do an LX-2 review of sorts within the next couple of days, pending projects and such.

part 1 from NY

For those of you who are keeping score, these were all taken with the Panasonic LX-2. Clearly, it is possible to get good results from a point and shoot (even one with a small sensor) as long as you know what you’re doing and are willing to be patient with it – and it’s also a lot easier to take pictures without drawing attention to yourself when you’re using a normal looking point and shoot instead of a huge SLR.

Where are you right now?

Are you rejoicing,
aware of God’s blessings,
bathing in the warmth of his provision and grace?

Are you broken, hurting,
feeling lost and alone,
uncertain of God’s presence or care?

Await with eager anticipation His return,
knowing that wherever you may be,
Christ’s desire
is to draw you closer to himself.

I don’t usually recommend books, likely because I don’t usually finish books, but I just finished listening to the audio book of Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness, and found it quite intriguing. As Gilbert says, “Despite the third word in the title, this is not an instruction manual that will tell you anything useful about how to be happy. Those books are located in the self-help section two aisles over, and once you’ve bought one, done everything it says to do and found yourself miserable anyway, you can always come back here to find out why.”

Here’s an extended quote from the end of the first chapter:

So if the question is, ‘Why should we want to control our futures?’, then the surprisingly right answer is that it feels good to do so, period. Impact is rewarding. Mattering makes us happy. The act of steering one’s boat down the river of time is a source of pleasure, regardless of one’s port of call. Now at this point you probably believe two things: first, you probably believe that if you never heard the phrase, ‘the river of time’ again, it would be too soon. Amen. Second, you probably believe that even if the act of steering a metaphorical boat down a clichéd river is a source of pleasure and well being, where the boat goes matters much, much more. Playing captain is a joy all its own, but the real reason why we want to steer our ships is so we can get them to Honalee instead of Jersey City.

The nature of a place determines how we feel upon arrival, and our uniquely human ability to think about the extended future allows us to choose the best destinations, and avoid the worst. We are the apes who learned to look forward because doing so enables us to shop among the many fates that might befall us, and select the best one. Other animals must experience an event in order to learn about its pleasures and pains, but our powers of foresight allow us to imagine that which has not yet happened, and hence spare ourselves the hard lessons of experience.

We needn’t reach out and touch an ember to know that it will hurt to do so, and we needn’t experience abandonment, scorn, eviction, demotion, disease or divorce to know that all of these are undesirable ends that we should do our best to avoid. We want, and we should want, to control the direction of our boat, because some futures are better than others, and even from this distance, we should be able to tell which are which.

This idea is so obvious that it barely seems worth mentioning, but I’m going to mention it anyway. Indeed, I’m going to spend the rest of this book mentioning it, because it will probably take more than a few mentions to convince you that what looks like an obvious idea is, in fact the surprisingly wrong answer to our question.

We insist on steering our boats because we think we have a pretty good idea of where we should go, but the truth is that much of our steering is in vain, not because the boat won’t respond, and not because we can’t find our destination, but because the future is fundamentally different than it appears through the perspecti-scope.

Just as we experience illusions of eyesight – isn’t it strange how one line looks longer than the other even though it isn’t? – and illusions of hindsight – isn’t it strange how I can’t remember taking out the garbage even though I did? – so too do we experience illusions of foresight, and all three types of illusion are explained by the same basic principles of human psychology.

To be perfectly honest, I won’t be just mentioning this surprisingly wrong answer, I’ll be pounding and pummeling it until it gives up and goes home. The surprisingly wrong answer is apparently so sensible and so widely believed that only a protracted thrashing has any hope of expunging it from our conventional wisdom. So before the grudge match begins, let me share with you my plan of attack:

In Part 2, Subjectivity, I’ll tell you about the science of happiness. We all steer ourselves toward the futures that we think will make us happy, but what does that word really mean, and how can we ever hope to achieve solid, scientific answers to questions about something as gossamer as a feeling? We use our eyes to look into space and our imaginations to look into time. Just as our eyes sometimes lead us to see things as they are not, our imaginations sometimes lead us to foresee things as they will not be. Imagination suffers from three shortcomings that give rise to the illusions of foresight with which this book is chiefly concerned.

In Part 3, Realism, I’ll tell you about the first shortcoming. Imagination works so quickly, quietly, and effectively, that we are insufficiently skeptical of its products.

In Part 4, Present-ism, I’ll tell you about the second shortcoming. Imagination’s products are, well, not particularly imaginative, which is why the imagined future often looks so much like the actual present.

In Part 5, Rationalization, I’ll tell you about the third shortcoming. Imagination has a hard time telling us about how we will think about the future when we get there. If we have trouble foreseeing future events, then we have even more trouble foreseeing how we will see them when they happen.

Finally, in Part 6, Corrigibility, I’ll tell you why illusions of foresight aren’t easily remedied by personal experience, or by the wisdom we inherit from our grandmothers. I’ll conclude by telling you about a simple remedy for these illusions that you’ll almost certainly not accept.

By the time you finish these chapters, I hope you’ll understand why most of us spend so much of our lives turning rudders and hoisting sails, only to find that Shangri-La isn’t what, and where, we thought it would be.

a few pics from my time at home.

Happy Easter!

Have you ever seen a fruit tree, branches full with nature’s harvest, limbs heavy, burdened under the load?

Imagine how it provides for all those around it – human, animal, insect and plant – a source of benefit for all in its range.

May you be that tree:
a source of beauty,
of richness,
of wonder.

May you soak up the richness of God’s provision,
and in return,
may you give richly to those around you,
blessing them not only because of your good deeds,
but by the goodness of who you are

I was reading an article in a Christian magazine recently, and in the middle of the article, the author attempted to support his point with a bulleted list of reasons why he was right. I cringed a bit when I read the first reason: “It’s commanded in the Bible.”

Now I’m not here to suggest that Biblical commands aren’t justification enough for doing something for Christians. What I am here to suggest is that they are no justification at all for doing something if you don’t believe the Bible. Furthermore, in an increasingly post-modern age where the Bible is looked at less as a set of commands and more as a narrative, it is likely to become more and more difficult to extract command out of the narrative as opposed to example and principle.

What does it say about our subculture that ultimately the best reason we can give for doing something is that we feel (legitimately or not) that it is commanded in the Bible? As I listen to arguments about women’s roles and instrumental music and baptism, again and again the top sheet reason given by the opposition in each of these cases is that “It’s commanded in the Bible.” As my good friend Jeremy Hegi recently said, “When someone stands up and stridently says, ‘The Bible clearly teaches …’, that’s when red flags should start to go up.’”

In reality, a biblical command argument will only be accepted if the following two conditions are met: 1) you believe the Bible and 2) you agree with the arguments interpretation of what the Bible says. A perfectly good example of this is regarding the women’s roles issue. “Women are commanded in the Bible to be silent,” one group would say, “therefore they should not be allowed to lead prayers during church services.” The response, “Fine. Make them be silent. Don’t let them talk or sing or make any noise for the duration of the service.” “But that’s not what the Bible says!”, comes the protest in reply. “Ah contraire, that is *exactly* what the Bible says.” “But that’s not what the Bible means!” At this point, however, we are no longer in a discussion about what the Bible *says* in 1 Timothy 2, but rather how we interpret what the Bible says – which is really the core issue of citing Biblical command as a compulsion for action, even among Christians.

Consider, for a moment, what alternatives might reach people outside our own way of thinking, and indeed outside the Christian subculture altogether. Consider whether reason is the arena and argument the commodity that will succeed in a landscape less and less often governed by “truth” and “correctness”, and more often governed by community. If we cannot shift our thinking away from reasoning based primarily on our own letters of the law and our own comfortable interpretations of Scripture and toward practical, creative, relevant approaches to a culture already skeptical of dogma, the long term future of our institutional churches is in serious doubt.