A New Attitude message for the Seniors:

The New Attitude website is up and running! Check it out.

This Na is gonna be bigger, better, and have way more space than before. But even with more room, we think it’ll be bursting at the seams. Although official registration opens in mid-January, we’re having a special two-day pre-registration event next week so you can secure your spot!

Registration will be open from noon on Monday (December 12th) until noon on Wednesday (December 14th) so you can secure your place for May.

Not only are we letting you reserve that seat, you’ll be entered to win a new 30GB iPod with Video! Now that’s one sweet Christmas present. So sign up next week!

That’s all for now folks. Oh, don’t forget to help us Save the Wheel!

The New Attitude Crew

An actual quote from the website:

For Singles, from graduating high school seniors (17 & above) to 100 year olds.

If you’re over 100, too bad.

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I found this recipe for the infamous Turkish Delight on the Into the Wardrobe website:

TURKISH DELIGHT

• 5 Tablespoons corn starch
• 1/2 cup cold water
• 1/2 cup hot water
• 2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1 teaspoon rosewater (or lemon juice)
• 2 cup pistachios (or other nuts, if you like)
• a bag of powdered sugar

mix corn starch with cold water
set aside

bring hot water, sugar, and OJ to a boil
add corn starch
simmer for 15 minutes
STIR OFTEN

remove from heat, add lemon juice and flavoring (whatever you choose)

stir in nuts
pour into buttered pan

when cooled and thickened (be patient!) cut into 1 inch cubes with
knife dipped in hot water

roll in powdered sugar.

If you try this, you must tell us how it goes. I suggest you listen to the David Crowder song Turkish Delight while preparing and eating.

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For those of you who have seen it, what do you think?

Read a review by Al Mohler or Chuck Colson if you like.

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SPOILER ALERT: If you’ve not read the book, and don’t know how the story ends, you may want to skip this post.

The Best Section Of All

One last bit of dialog that I dearly hope makes it into the movie. Susan and Lucy have watched the grisly scene as the White Queen and her minions have their way with Aslan. Stretching their legs after their moonlight vigil, they wander to the edge of the clearning, their backs to the Stone Table. Suddenly, they hear a loud crack, and race back to find Aslan’s body gone.

“Oh, it’s too bad,” sobbed Lucy; “they might have left the body alone.”

“Who’s done it?” cried Susan. “What does it mean? Is it more magic?”

“Yes!” said a great voice behind their backs. “It is more magic.” They looked around. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seeen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.

“Oh, Aslan!” cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad.

“Aren’t you dead then, dear Aslan?” said Lucy.

“Not now,” said Aslan.

“You’re not–not a–?” asked Susan in a shaky voice. She couldn’t bring herself to say the word ghost. Aslan stooped his golden head and licked her forehead. The warmth of his breath and a rich sort of smell that seemed to hang about his hair came all over her.

“Do I look it?” he said.

“Oh, you’re real, you’re real! Oh, Aslan!” cread Lucy, and both girls flung themselves upon him and covered him with kisses.

“But what does it all mean?” asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.

“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.”

(pp. 161-163)

Does this remind you of anything? How about 2 Corinthians 5:21:

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

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On God, Parenting Teens, and the Internet

Parents, I hope the message Saturday got you thinking about the intersection of your parenting and the internet, an arena in which many parents fear to tread. But your mandate for parenting includes your teen’s activity on the World Wide Web. J.C. Ryle calls parents to bold intervention in their teen’s lives in his book Duties of Parents:

“A true Christian must be no slave of fashion if he would train his children for heaven. He must not be content to do things merely because they are the custom of the world; to teach them and instruct them in certain ways, merely because it is usual; to allow them to read books of a questionable sort, merely because everybody else reads them; to let them form habits of a doubtful tendency, merely because they are the habits of the day. He must train with an eye to his children’s souls. He must not be ashamed to hear his training called singular and strange.” J.C. Ryle, Duties of Parents, 9.

Just before this passage, Mr. Ryle gives this decisive instruction:

“In every step you take about [your children], in every plan, and scheme, and arrangement that concerns them, do not leave out that mighty question, ‘How will this affect their souls?’”

Parents, how does the internet affect your teen’s soul? The most effective parents I know of don’t wonder about answers to questions like these. They find out. Here are some questions that may help you explore this topic with your teen:

• How much time do you spend online per day? What are you doing in that time?
• Whose blogs do you visit, read, or comment on?
• Do you have a blog? How do I find it?
• What appeals to you about doing what you do online?

If you didn’t get a copy, I encourage you to download and read Dr. Al Mohler’s commentary entitled “Courting Danger Online–Teenagers and the Internet.”

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Another Favorite

This scene is another of my favorites. Now Mr. Beaver has taken the children to his beaverdam home and fed them, and they are asking what they can do to rescue Mr. Tumnus the Fawn.

“It’s no good, Son of Adam,” said Mr. Beaver, “no good of your trying, of all people. But now that Aslan is on the move–”

“Oh yes! Tell us about Aslan!” said several voices at once; for once again that strange feeling–like the first signs of spring, like good news, had come over them.

“Who is Aslan?” asked Susan.

“Aslan?” said Mr. Beaver. “He’s the King. He’s the Lord of the whole wood, but not often here, you understand. Never in my time or my father’s time. But the word has reached us that he has come back. He is in Narnia at this moment. He’ll settle the White Queen all right. It is he, not you, that will save Mr. Tumnus.”

“She won’t turn him into stone too?” said Edmund.

“Lord love you, Son of Adam, what a simple thing to say!” answered Mr. Beaver with a great laugh. “Turn him into stone? If she can stand on her two feet and look him in the face it’ll be the most she can do and more than I expect of her. No, no. He’ll put all to rights as it says in an old rhyme in these parts:

Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we will have spring

again.

You’ll understand when you see him.”

“But shall we see him?” asked Susan.

“Why, Daughter of Eve, that’s what I brought you here for. I’m to lead you where you shall meet him,” said Mr. Beaver.

“Is–is he a man?” asked Lucy.

“Aslan a man!” said Mr. Beaver sternly. “Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-beyond-the-Sea. Don’t you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is not a lion–the Lion, the great Lion.”

“Ooh! said Susan, “I’d thought he was a man. Is he–quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”

“That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver; “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”

“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.

“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

(pp. 78-80)

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Ask your parents how this verse should affect your online habits:

“But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness…” 2 Timothy 2:16

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I Hope This Makes It In The Movie

There are several pages of my copy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe that are dog-eared, choice passages waiting to be re-read. Here is one of my favorites, that I hope makes it into the movie.

The setting is this: the Pevensie children have just stumbled into Narnia together (Lucy and Edmund have been there already), and they have spotted Mr. Beaver hiding in a thick stand of trees. Curious, they investigate, and Mr. Beaver tells them the sad story of Mr. Tumnus’ demise and the instructions given to him concerning the children:

“That’s right,” said the Beaver. “Poor fellow, he got wind of the arrest before it actually happened and handed this over to me. He said that if anything happened to him I must meet you here and take on to–” Here the Beaver’s voice sank into silence and it gave one or two mysterious nods. Then signaling to the children to stand as close around it as they possibly could, so that their faces were actually tickled by its whiskers, it added in a low whisper–

“They say Aslan is on the move–perhaps has already landed.”

And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don’t understand but in the dream it feel as if it had some enormous meaning–either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and are always wishing you could get into that dream again. It was like that now. At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in its inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain fo music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer.

(pp. 67-68)

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“He’s so quiet in person; I can’t believe how much he writes online.”
“I never see the two of them talking in person, but they IM all the time.”
“It seems like some people are different online than they are face-to-face.”

If I had a nickle for everytime I heard someone say something like this, I could buy a venti peppermint mocha at Starbucks. Ever wonder why people seem different online? Janie B. Cheaney provided a compelling answer on page 47 of the Nov. 12 issue of World Magazine:

“Internet posting satisfies two primal urges: “I wish I could say that,” and “I wish I had said that.” Welcome to the internet: freedom from retaliation plus all the time you need to compose that clever comeback… Why do people say things to each other online that they would never say face to face?

“Perhaps because faces communicate hurt, anger and sorrow—all difficult emotions we try to avoid. To deal with someone “in person” means dealing with the whole package—voice, expression, body language—a formidable presence that promotes a respectful distance, at least until we get to know the person better. By contrast, an on-line forum is bloodless, abstract thought. Or so it appears.

“Yet, it’s “out of the heart [that] the mouth speaks,” and freed from the restraints of personal contact it can speak too freely, showing itself at times a storehouse of anger and contempt.”

Remember: if Luke 6:45 is true, and it’s out of the abundance of the heart that the fingers type, then the online you is the real you.

Ask your parents to help you evaluate what your online communication reveals about your heart.

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Photo: Wikipedia.

So who was C.S. Lewis?

Clive Staples Lewis (known to friends and family as Jack) was born November 29, 1898 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His mother died when he was ten, and he and his brother were sent to boarding school. It was during this time, around 1913, that Lewis apparently abandoned the Christian faith of his childhood.

Lewis attended University College, Oxford from April to September, 1917, before enlisting in the army. He reached the front lines of World War I on his birthday, November 29, 1917. On April 15 of the following spring, Lewis was wounded and returned to England. Upon the war’s end, he resumed his studies at Oxford and graduated with degrees in Greek and Latin Literature, Philosophy and Ancient History, and English.

In 1925, Lewis began teaching at Oxford, where he taught for 29 years before moving to Cambridge.

Lewis is known for organizing the “Inklings,” a circle of friends who in 1933 began meeting a couple times a week to discuss their literary projects. A famous friend in this group was the great J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the majestic Lord of the Rings.

It wasn’t until 1931 that Lewis became a Christian when, after a long talk with friends J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, Lewis explained his conversion thus: “When we [Lewis and his brother, Warren] set out [by motorcycle to the Whipsnade Zoo] I did not believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.”

in 1956, Lewis married Joy Davidman Gresham, who had converted from Judaism to Christianity, influenced by Lewis’ writings. They had no children of their own. Joy died of cancer on July 13, 1960.

Lewis died on November 22, 1963, the same day as President John F. Kennedy and author Aldous Huxley.

C.S. Lewis wrote masterful fiction (The Pilgrim’s Regress, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Space Trilogy, The Screwtape Letters, and others), and penetrating non-fiction (Mere Christianity, The Great Divorce, Surprised by Joy, The Problem of Pain, and others).

I compiled this brief bio from these websites, where you can read more if you are interested:

• Into the Wardrobe (endorsed by Douglas Gresham, Lewis’ step-son)
• C.S. Lewis Foundation

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