Matt Jones' Random Acts of Verbiage

Summer UCF allowed me the opportunity to read a book that I had been wanting to read for a long time: C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold. It is a beautiful retelling of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, a second century Latin novel which is itself most likely a retelling of an older Greek myth. Lewis continually amazes me with his ability to tell a story and infuse it with so much meaning. I wanted to highlight three passages here, both of which come towards the end of the book.

I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

Wise words I think. We are often very arrogant when we speak to God; what makes us so sure we are justified in our petitions? Why are we so quick to complain about things? We need to grow up and draw close to him before we should expect Him to listen to us. Because He is gracious, He does often listen to us even before then, but why should we expect it?

The next scene is just after Orual has made her petition to the gods, the Fox explains to her what will happen next:

“We must go to your true judges now. I am to bring you there.”

“My judges?”

“Why, yes, child. The gods have been accused by you. Now’s their turn.”

“I cannot hope for mercy.”

“Infinite hopes - and fears - may both be yours. Be sure that, whatever else you get, you will not get justice.”

“Are the gods not just?”

“Oh no, child. What would become of us if they were? But come and see.”

I love this passage! We should be thankful God doesn’t deal with us justly! This is so profound I think.

And finally, just before Orual’s death, Lewis hits us across the face with her final monologe:

I ended my first book with the words no answer. I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before yoru face questions die away. What other answer would suffice? Only words, words; to be led out to battle against other words.

Beautiful. Read the book.

Mr. and Mrs. KC and Hilary Dameron and their wedding party

This weekend I had the huge pleasure of heading down to the Dameron “compound” in Montesano, WA and saw two good friends get married. KC and Hilary finally got hitched! Huzzah! The weekend was a whole lot of fun; I got to hang out with friends, eat good food, and relax in the beautiful weather on some equally beautiful property. Hilary was beautiful, KC choked up, and there was lots of dancing: could things have gone any better? To see some of the pictures that I took, check out my Flickr set: KC and Hilary Get Married!

Dan and Stacey… and Hilary and KC… and even Dan and KC’s mom Sammy keep trying to set me up. Think I have a chance?

Back in early August I ended my North Whatcom County Young Life career by taking a bunch of middle schoolers from the Ferndale area down to Wildhorse Canyon in the middle of central Oregon. It was good times. North Whatcom took about 150 students and we joined up with other 500 or so from around the northwest for five days of fun! There the kids could build on the relationships that they have, were served by amazing volunteers, played games, swam, went down zip lines, fell 50 feet in a giant swing, and, most importantly, heard the Gospel Message.

I don’t think I’ll say too much about the trip, but feel free to ask anything about it! Enjoy the pictures from the trip, it really was lots of fun. Check out the full set over at my flickr set: Young Life @ Wildhorse Canyon. There are lots more there! Feel free to comment! You can also view them as a slide show!

The Ferndale team!

We totally love each other!

Ready to take the plunge on the swing with Justin and Dylan!

Climbing the wall… it was a pretty easy route.

A few of us after our night swimming.

The view of Wildhorse Canyon from the top of Communication Hill.

Please check all the other pictures out at the flickr set: Young Life @ Wildhorse Canyon (slideshow). We had such a great time! If you have MySpace you can check out of few video clips that I took: Taking the plunge on the giant swing - Me coming down the zip line - Jade getting smacked in the face with an egg!

This has been one of the longer stretches of no posting for me. And this is only the beginning I suppose. There are lot of posts to get up and I am way behind. School starts for Bellevue on Tuesday and I am pretty excited about that! Fortunately I don’t have actual classes at SPU until the end of September so this will be a somewhat relaxing month as I become used to and involved at Tillicum. So here are the things I need to get up (more as a reminder to me):