They Dun It! And what a great time we all had!

What I want to know is, is she blogging from her honeymoon?!!!

We're having a wonderful time down here in Missouri for Christmas. Yesterday went so well that I remarked this morning to Martha that she has a wonderful family and things couldn't have gone more perfect for Christmas. All the little frets and what ifs were for naught. We'll be down here until the New Year. The weather is great today. Really sunny and pleasant. The kids all smell like outside. My son was out with his cousin standing on a huge burning brush pile roasting marshmellows. They had doffed their shirts and as they climbed and we watched from a distance we admitted a bit of fear. Noone knew of any aerosol or butane products in the area so it must be fine. The men closed their right eyes again to return to their afternoon naps. And I retired to the trailer to watch Son Volt's "Okemah and the Melody of Riot" DVD documentary. I bought myself a 512 mb sd card for Christmas and now use our cheap little DV camera/video/media player a lot more. I've got to rename all the music files to get them to play in order. Still cheaper than an IPod. Not being a walking billboard is priceless.

On Friday morning I was talking on the phone watching the street out in front of our office building when I noticed a Canada goose land in traffic in front of a parked car. I finished my conversation and it still hadn't moved from where it landed. I went to my desk and looked out again and saw that traffic (including a snow plow) were all passing around it. Its a two lane street that is often blocked in one lane so I knew this would be quite dangerous for the goose. I called a friend and we went out to see if we couldn't herd it out of traffic. When we got down there we blocked traffic and then my friend Hugo quickly doffed his sweater wrapped it around the goose and brought it back up to 2nd floor where we worked. When he picked it up we noticed that it's right leg was almost cleanly severed off. We called about ten different numbers until we finally found a Rehab that would take it. Three or four hours later they arrived from the suburbs, left a brochure and told us the likelihood was good it could be rereleased into the wild with a prosthetic leg. In all the time Cornerstone mag has been in these offices no one can remember ever seeing this kind of thing happen. Though Hugo did save a guy's life once. But that's another story.

Saving this goose was a wonderful experience and will long be a reminder to me of hope and sometimes a simple eagerness to save something wild from becoming roadkill. Apply that as you like.

hospitality in the face of fear

I came in to work this morning and was instantly hit with fear of financial insecurity and had to pray. Then an old friend called me and offered the use of their home this holiday and wanted to make sure we had everything we needed. They're having a rough time financially too. Thank you Jesus for showing your love that casts out all fear! 1 Jn. 4:18

Good morning. Here's another press release from Palestinian leaders in the West Bank.
It amazes me how these folks have so much more empathy for foreigners, more self-awareness, more love of real freedom and democracy than my own government! Dear God preserve these kidnapped peace warriors. Change the hearts of their captors and reveal to them their true needs.

Subject: RAMALLAH, WEST BANK: Palestinian leaders call for immediate release of four CPTers missing in Iraq

Date: December 6, 2005 2:57:15 PM CST

CPTnet

6 December 2005

RAMALLAH, WEST BANK: Palestinian leaders call for immediate release of four

CPTers missing in Iraq

Today in Ramallah, Ikram al-Sabri, the head Mufti of Palestine, along with

several other notable Palestinians called for the immediate release of all

civilian hostages in Iraq, mentioning in particular the four Christian

Peacemaker Teams (CPT) who went missing on 26 November 2005.

Ikram al-Sabri said that "there is a duty for all Palestinian people,

institutions and factions to commit to sending a call to release these

people who have been kidnaped. They are very important for us to help

continue our struggle, whether here in Palestine or in Iraq, to gain our

country's freedom. We repeat our call to release all the civilian people who

have been kidnapped all over the world, not only these four."

Dr. Wasif Abu-Yousef, a representative of the National and Islamic Forces in

Palestine (an umbrella group representing all Palestinian political parties)

described the four activists and other CPTers as "soldiers for peace" and

"real heros" and talked about the role of international activists: "--Some

of them were even martyrs, like our friends Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall.

Some were injured or denied entry, some of them have been deported. They

have suffered side by side with us. They have challenged the Israeli

occupation in Palestine and the settlers in Hebron-- From the heart of

Palestine, we condemn and are completely against the process of kidnapping

these four people in Iraq. This state of chaos, killings, and criminal acts

that have been happening in Iraq will not help the Iraqi people. On the

contrary, there are people who will make use of this. The occupation will

use this as an excuse to continue."

Fariel Abu-Heikel, the headmistress of Qurtuba school in Hebron talked about

the role of CPT in providing accompaniment for their children on their way

to school and helping Palestinians under curfew. "We still remember the

nice moments while we were under curfew with the CPT members who we have

known since 1995. They came and gave food to people under curfew and showed

their love and solidarity with our schools and our children. We will never

forget these moments, because the CPT were the only people standing with us

at that time. As a women who works with them, I send my call for the Iraqi

resistance to release these people because CPT are very important people for

us."

"To Bush I say that democracy is not imposed--democracy is given by people,

not given by armies," Abu-Heikel continued. "We are sending our call for

the faction that kidnapped these people in Iraq to release them immediately

because we need them here."

Kristin Anderson of CPT Hebron thanked the "hundreds of Palestinians who

have issued statements and supported us during this past week. " She

described CPT's work in Palestine and Iraq and appealed for the release of

the four. "We miss our friends and desire them to return to us . . . While

remembering them, let us remember the thousands of peaceful people being

detained by occupying forces throughout the world, and while we ask for a

release of our friends, we will continue to work to end the occupations in

Palestine and Iraq."

Previously, on the afternoon of 1 December, a group of some hundred

Palestinians, with a sprinkling of internationals, gathered in the center of

Ramallah to seek the release of the four CPTers. Mustafa Barghouti, of the

Palestine National Initiative, said that the people of Palestine know the

CPTers to be true workers for peace, who have stood against the Israeli

occupation of Palestine. He urged those holding them to return them to

their families who love them. Mansour Mansour, who coordinated the event,

called on the group holding the four to let them return. "The Palestinian

people need them for their struggle against occupation, and the Iraqi people

need them for their struggle against occupation," he said.

A local man told Maureen Jack and Cathy McLean that he had never before

known such intensity of feeling among Palestinian people about the situation

of those held by Iraqi groups. "I spoke to a man from Hebron, and he was

crying. And I spoke to a man from Jayyous and he was crying," he said.

AP photos:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/051205/481/jrl12112051314

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/051205/481/jrl12212051325

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/051205/ids_photos_wl/r3564300070.jpg

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/051205/ids_photos_wl/r3034176822.jpg

Christian Spirituality

I'm holding the 1988 Harper & Row title Christian Spirituality: The Essential Guide to the most influential spiritual writings of the Christian tradition. And peering through I behold many old friends, and mentors and some that I consider confused and outright fools. I've been disposed toward an interest in spirituality for years. I consider myself on a quest toward knowing God better. But its completely unnerving to hear a person detail their experience as an individual and then have it packaged as a normative rule, a study guide. I love it that the Bible is not a guide book to personal sanctification. What? Yes, the Bible is history, songs, stories and letters that detail human interaction with the same God over thousands of years. It is unified but not reflective of any one experience. Maybe in the Bible God is proving that we humans are broken, irrational specie, incapable of bearing his image in any one way or in one person. Maybe its His way of showing us it takes millenia for us to know Him completely, but even there that with all our tradition and writ we are so imperfect of living it out for any length of time.

in this together

I asked an older and wiser friend how he deals with financial woe and he
reminded me that we're in this thing together. Living in an intentional
community, we work for a common good. Sometimes we go in debt together.
I can't help but feel bummed about that. But we're all feeling bummed.
Sometimes I bear the weight of my job alone and I just have to call and
share it and recieve prayer. Its not fair really to bear the burden
alone. If I get under it I take it out on brothers and sisters in anger
or in a depressive slump, so yeah, prayer is always better than trying
to bear the weight alone. That's what faith is about. Pray, don't give
up, put one step in front of the other. Believe God will get me through
this again. Truthfully I most likely will forget in a while how bummed
I've been that last month.

Another thought, as an American I bear in the sufferings of a nation at
the moment. Even with all the triumphal talk from Washington its clear
that with thousands of displaced Hurricane Victims and thousands of
fallen sons and daughters to this Iraq Occupation we're all suffering.
In this Advent season we all await the Savior in a time of desperate need.
I keep thinking of this song:
"Lady Poverty" lyrics
Talbot Brothers Collection

Lady poverty love me tonight
dress me in sackcloth
where once i wore white
and disperse my fine linens
to the naked and the poor
lady poverty enter my door
give me the riches of my lord

let all suffering come to an end
embracing all hunger let me call it my friend
let my love be made perfect without seeking reward
lady poverty enter my door
give me the riches of my Lord

chorus
and if Jesus was a poor man
then like him i too must be
and if Jesus was a beggar than lift me up
to my knees

for if love never seeks out its own
if love always gives when theres no reward shown
let us be beggars and paupers and servants at best
laboring always so that others might rest
that the sweet name of jesus our tongues might confess

Tags: Lady Poverty, Talbot Brothers, lyrics, debt, sorrow, war

i just tucked my youngest daughter (age 3) into bed. She had her face buried in her pillow sobbing and I worked and worked to help her stop. Finally I turned her around and sang her silly songs until she started laughing. I pretended to eat her ears. Then when she covered her ears I pretended to eat her elbows and back and forth and so on until she was laughing. Then I told her about Christmas coming and that fun toys were on the way. She started sobbing and crying again. "I'm not getting any Christmas." I should have left well enough alone. She's like the weather in Chicago. If you like it now don't dare stay out another half hour. But unlike the weather she has a beautiful little face and a laugh that warms the coldest days.

a fascinating press release/statement

Ok, now here's an odd twist that reflects the nuance of Occupation. Iraqi kidnappers nabbed CPTers and ISMers who are working in behalf of Palestinians in the West Bank. In a Press Release Islam and National Forces there speak up on their behalf and witness to their work against Occupation. Now obviously CPT and ISM are against terrorism. Still it is puzzling who is good and bad here. Hamas and Fatah stand up and clarify that some Westerners should not be kidnapped. Note: the statement from the Islamic and National Forces in Hebron has some translation mistakes that could be misunderstood. In the first sentence they express sorrow for kidnapping hostages. They aren't the kidnappers.

Three Palestinian Solidarity Activists Amongst Four Peace Activist Hostages in Iraq
November 30th, 2005 | Posted in Press Releases,  ISM Media Alerts

CORRECTION: Three of the group of four have previously been in Palestine, not only two as previously stated. James Loney was in Palestine five years ago as an activist with CPT Hebron.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Two of the four Christian Peacemaker Team (CPT) hostages in Iraq of whom a video was released today have been in Palestine working as Palestinian Solidarity activists. Tom Fox (54) worked with CPT Hebron and participated in demonstrations against the apartheid Wall in Jayyous. Harmeet Sooden (32) a Canadian citizen who had been living in New Zealand, came to Palestine to join the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in December 2004 and stayed until January 2005. He worked in solidarity with local Palestinian people, mostly in Nablus and Jenin. While in Jenin, he worked with a group of ISM activists who planted Olive trees on the 'Swithart' farm outside Jenin, He was committed to come to Palestine for three months to join the ISM again at the beginning of December 2005 as a long term activist for the liberation of Palestine from Israeli occupation, but first decided to join a two week CPT delegation to Iraq.

Palestinians in Ramallah will hold a demonstration tomorrow at 3pm in solidarity with all four kidnapped peace activists and to appeal for their release. The demonstration will be attended by notable Palestinian religious and resistance figures.

Mustafa Jayyousi a local Palestinian activist in Jayyous who knew Tom said: "When he worked in Jayyous, Tom was part of a group who went down to the gates everyday with local farmers to help them access their lands made inaccessible by the wall. He also participated in demonstrations with the people of Jayyous against the apartheid Wall in Jayyous".

Mohammed Ayyesh a local Palestinian activist in Balata camp, Nablus said of Harmeet: "I was touch with Harmeet and was looking forward to him coming here to work next week. We must do everything we can to secure his release".

In an email to his friends Harmeet described the purpose of the four-person team's work in Iraq as: "providing humanitarian aid in the form of training and documentation of non-violent responses to lethal inter-group conflict. We will also record the current conditions in Iraq, meeting with representatives of NGOs, Christian and Muslim clerics, Iraqi human rights groups and others". He also recounted a story from Iraq: "A little 3-year old girl, Alaa, ran up to me and gave me a big hug me yesterday. She reminds me of my niece. She, however, does not see as my niece sees. She sustained severe shrapnel injuries to her abdomen and micro-fragments peppered her eyes, face and body during a US military attack in May on al Qaim, Iraq. Her mother lost an eye. She lost two brothers and several other relatives".

Some of his friends who worked with Harmeet in the ISM appealed to the kidnappers for his release:

Donna: "Since he was back in New Zealand, Harmeet formed a new Palestinian Solidarity Group on Auckland University campus and organised speakers and forums about Palestine. He is a very shy, quiet guy, but very committed and hoped to return to Palestine next month."

Asa: "Harmeet is a great person - we worked in solidarity with the Palestinian people together. He cares deeply about the plight of all oppressed people and is unequivocally against the occupation of Iraq and Palestine. He has also been involved in work around the conflict over Kashmir and in favour of the right of the people there for self determination. He would never act as a spy for any government. He is a sound peace activist."

Patrick Connors: "I know Harmeet from when he volunteered with ISM in Palestine last winter. Harmeet is a very good, serious, committed person. CPT is a solid organization, with serious training and procedures, that does great things."

For more information:
  ISM Media office: 02 297 1824
 
Statement from The Islamic & National  Forces in Hebron.
 
  In the name of Allah the Greatest the [Com]passionate.
 
The National and Islamic Forces in Hebron/Palestine express their deep sorrow for kidnapping four of the peace advocates from the CPT in Iraq.
 
The National and Islamic Forces in Hebron who has along experience in dealing with crimes and Israeli violations with the CPT from 1995 ,would like to confirm that the CPTers have a very strong role in facing the Israeli crimes and violations and in protecting the life and the belongings of the Palestinians. They put themselves in many situations in front of the Israeli tanks.
 
They confronted the Israeli bulldozers and the Israeli home demolition and escorted our children to and from their schools to protect them from settlers.
 
Because of all their activities ,the members of the team were followed, arrested and beaten by Israeli soldiers and settlers in many occasions.
 
The Israeli authorities have prevented some of them from entering Palestine .
 
We urge the brothers in the resistance and all the alert conscience in Iraq , whom we consider our selves together in the same tunnel against the American terrorism and  assault, to promptly release the four kidnapped (2 Canadian, one British ,and one American ) from CPT, for their role in supporting our Palestinian and Arab an Islamic nations.
 
Freedom for Iraqi and Palestinian people.
Shame for Zionist and American occupation.
 
 
The Islamic & National  Forces in Hebron.
Islamic  Resistance Movement (Hamas) .
Fateh Movement .
People's Party .
Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine .
Palestine Liberation Front .
Palestine Democratic Union . FIDA.
Palestinian Front for popular fighting   ( ? Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP))

"The Israeli Army has set up a checkpoint to prevent Palestinian children from getting to their school in al-Khalil/Hebron because of an illegal Jewish settlement in the area. The children have decided not to sit back and let this happen with no protest. These kids are brave!"

A friend sent me these photos and this caption. When I saw these all my little morning complaints just fizzled away. Remember: regardless of what you hear from the Prez, Occupation is always immoral. Iraq is not our new little democracy garden across the sea. Occupation hasn't worked for Israel since 1967 and it won't work for us in Iraq either. There is no victory or freedom in military occupation.Only more terror and innocent death.

GO SEE 'WALK THE LINE'

I spontaneously called a friend last night and said "let's go see Walk the Line." That's the new Johnny Cash movie now in theatres in case you hadn't heard. We're both Cash fans and we tried to keep our anticipation bated--expectations low. I mean how good could Jaucquine Pheonix and Reese Witherspoon be? By the end I can honestly say I haven't cried that much during a movie since I can remember. It had so many human glory moments that I just didn't want the movie to end. I've read Cash's books and the movie just made them that much more real. Its one thing to read the account of the death of a close brother, its another to experience it on the big screen. Its certainly much harder to watch Cash kill a marriage and trash himself than to read about it, and yet more exhilerating. I loved it. Go see it. If you ain't read Cash the Autobiography or The Man Called Cash by Steve Turner yet you'll want to before or after seeing the movie.

Playing the national icon Johnny Cash would have to be the most daunting job for an actor, short of playing Jesus Christ. Nobody can do it. But Pheonix successfully lets us forget about him and think about Cash. He'll make you a believer. After the Fulsom prison seen I had to go back and hear the real thing again. If you haven't heard the 1999 extended version its worth buying. And then of course you gotta move on to San Quentin. . . .

physician heal thyself

I know a woman who lives here in my building who has had lots of little maladies over the years. Lots of breathing problems. Over time she's developed a keen interest in medicine and spends a lot of time reading health books and online medical journals. Would I consult her instead of a medical doctor? Of course not. But if she's got a little home remedy that I don't fear will interfere with something I'm doing I might try it.

I guess I see myself the same way with the search I'm on and subjects I care about. As a teen I started on this search to understand myself, God, and the world I live in. I've found Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Karl Barth, and many others extremely helpful. Each year I'm reading more "intellectual books" than the year before. Does that make me an intellectual or a trusted source? Probably not. I would hope that somehow what I'm reading could benefit others. I hope its not just intellectual masturbation. Anyway, I've got friends who started on the same path with me in Bible college and now in pursuit of their graduate educations are on a different path altogether. I've got other friends now who don't share my faith but who are very important to my faith. They speak thousands of pages worth of material to me in their simple desire to be sober, faithful, and close to God as they understand him all the while equally eager to say they don't. In my experience Francis Schaeffer is wrong: Right belief does not necessarily lead to right action. Bonhoeffer said in Nachfolge: Belief and Obedience is not either or. You can't have one without the other. (Of course that's not a quote.)

I want to believe. I want to obey. If I've got to be an intellectual to do that than consider me guilty as charged. The end of the whole matter is that I'm sick and I'll do anything to get better and if I've got some little remedies I'll pass them along. If it doesn't help you I hope it at least doesn't hurt.

Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom

I've been reading Jacques Ellul's The Presence of the Kingdom
http://www.jesusradicals.com/library/ellul/presence/presence.html
and here are some thoughts:
Chapter One: The Christianity in the World lays out the predicament for the Christian layperson in the world. Very inciteful. Barth's influence really comes out in this chapter and the next (at least I think so, I'm still an Ellul neophyte). He uses a parable of Jesus to illustrate the Christian's function as salt of the earth, light of the world, sheep in the midst of wolves. He riffs on how the laity can't seperate themselves from the world and here I take issue, he seems to think that clerics can't possibly speak to the world and or that the world just won't really listen. I would argue that both laity and clerics are in the same boat now. The American situation illustrates that anyone speaking of faith faces the same doubts, derision, and general image of ambivalence and mistrust. His clear ideas in this chapter are worth a read by anyone. Christians can't seperate themselves from the world or their own sin. His examples of ways we try to do this are brilliant! After this he gets to his discription of the agonistic way of life. "the presence in our hearts of judgment and grace with insures our liberty. Free because we're judged and pardoned." Very Barthian indeed.
Chapter 2: Revolutionary Christianity: How the Christian understanding of the material world is apocalyptic rather than historic. Human meaning is apocalyptic rather than material.
Chapter 3: The End and the Means: The Christian understanding of Person is Revolutionary in the face of the world's interest in Technic. This has to be the best chapter thus far. He successfully demonstrates the triumph of means in society.

He has sweeping general statements that make him sound like a pariah or demagogue such as:

WE ARE CAUGHT IN a trap. It is no use pretending to be "deep," and to talk loftily about the possession of inward liberty. If liberty cannot be expressed in my life it is an illusion. For a Christian this situation is appalling, for what we have been describing actually proves that at the present time it is impossible to live one's faith, to bear a genuine witness. Of course, it is obvious that it has always been impossible to live one's faith, and we easily comfort ourselves by saying that "our day is no worse than any other," and that "our difficulties are just the same." Well, that is just not true! It may have always been impossible to live one's faith, but that was due to inward causes: "Woe unto me! for the good which I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I practice!" But today this difficulty is increased still further by external causes. In no other civilization has man been so totally repressed. He may have been the slave of hunger, of natural circumstances, or of another man: but he always managed to preserve a margin of freedom, sufficient to remain master of the greater part of his time, and to choose his own line, out of several possibilities. All civilizations have imposed a certain amount of restriction, but they left man a large field for free and individual action. The Roman slave, the medieval serf, was freer, more personal, more socially human (I do not say "happier," from the material point of view) than the modern industrial worker or the Soviet Union official. Our civilization, which claims to exert no restraint, tries to dominate man as a whole, and to confine him within narrow limits, where all his gestures, and his secret thoughts, will be controlled by the social machine. This represents the triumph of means. It is this new fact that hinders men from living the Christian faith.

Thus Christians ought to be fully aware of the fact that the witness and the action of the Christian have also become impossible, owing to these circumstances; he ought to know that unless he can break down this supremacy of means, it is "all up" with the social aspect of Christianity, unless a miracle happens, and it will not be long before the personal aspect also will be attacked, for faith in Jesus Christ cannot live long in this rarefied air. We must break this dictatorship. Christians must enter into a conflict "not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world‑rulers of this darkness" (Eph. 6:12). And they ought to know that this conflict, which is primarily spiritual, at least at first, is a life and death struggle. Rimbaud's phrase is more applicable than ever‑"The spiritual conflict is as brutal as any battle in time of war!"

But then the more I think about it the more I agree. I don't feel as much a slave to means because of the way I live. Compared to many I don't live a rat race. I am very into computers and I worry that means there has taken more than I should be giving.

Chapter Four The Problem of Communication:
This one is beautiful but I'm uncomfortable with his talk of the intellectual. He should define what it is to be intellectual. Why is the issue of communication only for intellectuals? That tone seems rather elitist. In this postmodern age hopefully the concept of intellectualism is more fragmented and less elitist. Though I fear postmodernism is more not less elitist than modernism.
At any rate communication it is true has become swallowed by means and its evident that it is no longer for the person. As Christians we must struggle to communicate with people, not abstracts. That conversation is beautiful.

Well honestly I'll end now as this is as far as I've read. I may pick it up again later.

Cornerstone Fest Forums

Hey there! Cornerstone Fest Forums are now live! Get to posting. Film/Music/Seminar topics/Books. Go.

Its sweet to read Houston fan's newspaper this morning!
Astros face tough odds after loss

Justice: Long night's work yields nothing

Yes I'm done gloating.

GO WHITE SOX!! SWEEP THEM ASTROS!!

While its true I haven't been posting about it, for at least four years now I've been enjoying the Chicago White Sox with partial season tickets. I've been following all the playoff and series games ardently and they've given more reason to believe last night than ever before! With my wife and youngest daughter sick I elected to watch the game in my own room rather than down on third floor with the Sox rally.
(Down in the rally room during game two my glasses were knocked off and scratched up by the beautiful malaise of Konerko's Grand Slam. I'll always cherish the crazy surprising embarrassing hug I shared with an officemate of mine. And the scratches at eye level I'm forced to look through are a better personal testament of my devotion than any White Sox hat I wish I owned.)
By 10:30pm Martha and I were fading fast and with the words "I still believe my Sox can take this game" falling from my lips we went to bed. The next morning sure enough they had come through!

Now what could be sweeter than a Sweep tonight in Houston? George W. Bush throwing out the first pitch. I saw Barbara in the audience last night rooting for Houston. Couldn't the prez come out to root for his home state team? I would relish the thought of a Democratic town's working class southpaw team sticking it to the man! Well I'm dreaming such hostile fantasies anyway.

Wendell Berry's essay "The Burden of the Gospels: an Unconfident Reader" is available on the Christian Century's website. This quote seems to say with much more elequence what I was trying to get at earlier (on humanization):

As every reader knows, the Gospels are overwhelmingly concerned with the conduct of human life, of life in the human commonwealth. In the Sermon on the Mount and in other places Jesus is asking his followers to see that the way to more abundant life is the way of love. We are to love one another, and this love is to be more comprehensive than our love for family and friends and tribe and nation. We are to love our neighbors though they may be strangers to us. We are to love our enemies. And this is to be a practical love; it is to be practiced, here and now. Love evidently is not just a feeling but is indistinguishable from the willingness to help, to be useful to one another. The way of love is indistinguishable, moreover, from the way of freedom. We don't need much imagination to imagine that to be free of hatred, of enmity, of the endless and hopeless effort to oppose violence with violence, would be to have life more abundantly. To be free of indifference would be to have life more abundantly. To be free of the insane rationalizations for our urge to kill one another—that surely would be to have life more abundantly.

I was wrong. Martha left Swimmer in his fishbowl instead of flushing him when I suggested. Thank God that she didn't listen to me then. My son was beside himself with sorrow when he got home from school. He and Martha went down and buried him in the garden and then Chris Aaron made a little place card with his name on it and took it and laid it on his grave. Later he brought a friend down to view the gravesite with him. All the while he was asking when we can get another fish. As soon as possible I assure him. I kept telling him that he did a great job taking care of Swimmer and that the fish just lived out his time. Betas only live so long. He wants a goldfish now.

"Swimmer" died today

Our Beta fish "Swimmer" died today of old age. We had him three or four years. My son doesn't know yet. We flushed it down the toilet. I hope that doesn't create a problem when he gets home from school. In retrospect maybe we should have let him see it go.

Central Faith Questions: Humanization

Central Faith Questions

We were walking into Borders across from the Water Tower Place along Michigan Avenue here in Chicago. Martha and I had just seen "The Constant Gardener" together over at the Esquire theatre on Oak and I sort of offhandedly share a thought as it came to me. What are the central faith questions that voices of Christ should be speaking? What is the Evangel that the world has yet to hear? Are the Five Spiritual Laws really such a threat to the devil in America? I came to this conclusion: The central questions of faith that are pertinent to disciples of Jesus surround whether what we claim to be true, [namely that 1.) every human being is truly made in God's image, 2.) God desires a relationship with every human,  3.) that he intends to make humans truly whole and truly human and 4.) place us in loving relation to every other human] is what we intend to live by and share with ALL humanity.

I've heard the term humanization thrown around a fair bit, usually only by academics. And I'm sure it means different things to different people. When Walter Wink writes about becoming truly Human in his "biblical study" of the term son of man and its implication for a new humanity [The Human Being: Jesus and the Enigma of the Son of Man] it is clear he means something different than say Dietrich Bonhoeffer's reference to "being conformed to the Risen One. . .a new man before God" in his Ethics. These men are of two entirely different species of thought, and I fear Wink has something wholly other in mind when he refers to Christ. As hard as I try the more I read of Barth the more I can't understand any relevance for American liberalism. But then again reading Barth clearly shoots holes in American conservativism as well.

I'm reading Bonhoeffer's Ethics as Formation again (from Ethics) and also have in hand Jean Vanier's Becoming Human and also Humanization and the Politics of God by Nancy Duff, which by my reading is the closest thing to Bonhoeffer that an American Theological Ethic has ever produced. Do I need to go into Lehmann and Bonhoeffer's connection?

In searching for a practical historic and political application I heartily recommend Andrew Bacevich's American Empire and Jonathan Glover's Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century. Robert F. Drinan has written a wonderful book on his work in the UN titled The Mobilization of Shame: A World View of Human Rights. These are not happy books (though Drinan offers a lot more hope in his book). America has been living with a lot of guilt for a long time and its fool hardy to think that as Christians we don't share in that guilt. In our preaching do we as Christians share in our nations guilt and then confess our sins and seek forgiveness and healing? Or do we think that the gospel has very little to say to our national and international history?

This year Baker Academic released a book edited by Ronald Sider and Diane Knippers titled: Toward an Evangelical Public Policy: Political Strategies for the Health of the Nation. It was a huge leap forward for naming what Evangelical public policy will involve. With articles from a very diverse church and politick background the book reveals the Evangelical landscape of thought for all its flaws and strengths. My personal impression was that there were many more flaws, weaknesses, and embarrassments than strengths and that many writers were far too generous in their assessments of our contributions. Richard Cizik's glowing hagiography of the NAE was the case in point. He spoke so lovingly of his organizations long history of keeping the faithful white, right, and in the light. As I read it I was red with rage toward how the organization was so blatantly racist, anti-Catholic, and almost singly responsible for allowing televangelists the free reign they have on the airwaves now to take money from whomever they want without restriction. That's our heritage to glory in?

Gushee and Hollinger's chapter on Ethics revealed nothing of substance or interest to me. They survey all the different denominational expressions of Ethical study but the study in and of itself was typified as very dry and unengaging. Show me how an Evangelical Ethic speaks to the world situation!  In all honesty I've picked this book up and laid it down repeatedly since it came out in the spring. The voices it represents bring more pain than interest at this point. I know the book is important, but I find much more help outside the Evangelical community than in it. I'm sorry to have to say that.

Well I still have a lot of reading to do. I wish I had more folks to dialogue with on this.

fathering a little girl

How does one father a little girl?
So fragile and frail one moment
so beligerant and stubborn the next

Her very birth six years ago
was a sign of her autonomy
She would not be born
all that month
Late night hospital visits
trying all night
and then one day
mom could not get to the hospital fast enough

Now she's full of refusals
I won't get changed for bed!
I won't go to school today!
I don't want you to tuck me in!
I don't want you to kiss me!
You won't make me laugh!
The litany drags on for what seems an eternity.

Fathers. You can't live with them and you can't live
without them. They're never there fast enough. . .
and they just don't know when they're not wanted.

Little girls. It takes a while.
For them to know what they want.

Maybe my last post sounded a little erratic and unbending. I just found this quote in The Great Passion by Eberhard Busch from Barth's Church Dogmatics which states far better what I was trying to say about finances:

“If Christians are to be free in society they must be really free. They have to go their own way in great and little things alike, and therefore in their thought and speech and attitude they are always at bottom. . . aliens and strangers who will give plenty of cause for offense in different directions. To some they will appear to be far to ascetic. To others they will appear to affirm life far too unconcernedly. . . . On the one hand they will be accused as authoritarian, on the other as free thinkers. . . on the one hand as bourgeois, on the other as anarchists. They will seldom find themselves in the majority. . . . Things generally accepted as self-evident will never claim their absolute allegiance. . . . Nor will they command their complete negation, so they can hardly count on the applause of the revolutionaries of their day. Nor will their freedom. . . be exercised by them in secret, but revealed openly in free acts and attitudes which will never be right in the world.” (IV/2 690=610) pg. 120-121 The Great Passion: An Introduction to Karl Barth by Eberhard Busch, Eerdmans, 2004.

Financial freedom

I confess I am one of those tragically uninsured you read about all the time in the magazines and in newspapers. I'm a financial bottom feeder. I buy clothes from the thrift store. When I have money I buy guitar strings, books, CDs, shoes, underwear, socks, and lots of cheap food. I ride the el train. I've never financed a car. Never financed a house. I had a personal bank account once. I deposited my paychecks and I payed rent. Other then that there wasn't much activity.  I've held my personal medical records from childhood and you know what? They're all of immunizations from a homeless free clinic. Don't pity me. I'm proud in a way that I've never been part of the rat race. Its damn UNAmerican not to be in debt. Think about that. When the Census rolled around back in 1990 I realized that my family were UNpeople. And when the 2000 census rolled around my whole intentional community was probably registered as a homeless shelter in Chicago. But then think of all the thousands who've recieved food, shelter, medical aid and ministry because of my heritage.
    I define myself financially free. [I love that song "Country Boy" by Johnny Cash] Many folks would call me creditless, uninteresting, unhelpful, not a team player, maybe even hurtful and rebellious. And I say that's just plain sick. Why should my credit information or lack of it make me a nonperson? How many billions are in the world? How many of those are Americans? A handful. How many world citizens have credit? Only a portion. Call me a rebel but I'm a Christian first, a human on the planet second, and an American by circumstance. I didn't ask to win a genetic lottery by being male, white, and American. And the responsibility I have because of these I'll spend for Jesus not for America (and not for America's version of Jesus). I see America at odds with the world's financial freedom. Humans are entitled to the subsistent life I maintain (food, clothes, shelter, debt freedom) and they don't have it. Instead of cherishing some part of the credit system and indulging in it I'd rather ask how my time and resources can be spent in community with anyone that needs it. That's an insecure and messy way to live for a lot of folks. They look at you like you're crazy or a patron saint. They throw money at you or just pity you. Oh well.

A Personal History of the Birth of a Book

Realizing that we were running out of money without much chance of more coming in soon, and running out of our most precious asset namely staff people, I spent a good chunk of the remaining money in the bank to buy a nice computer. We had a layout program that no one really knew how to use and I reasoned that if I had a fast computer and a good program that could interface between writers and layout well, then I could handle everything else but editing and proofing myself. Well, a year later I want to tell you that I will never attempt that again. Call it "A slow painful way to brainwash yourself with work." Now that its all done I'm still trying to deal with not feeling like I'm developing an ulcer all the time. That constant knot in my stomach couldn't have been healthy and I don't recommend living with it. The book involved 500 pages of type and photos, photo captions, a full color cover (not done by me), running folios top and bottom, seperate photo sections on Current events which were at first bled off the page and then changed throughout, and front and back matter. An index was attempted and then scrapped when time ran out. Printing three proofs at Kinkos cost over $96.00. I stood there trembling as I wrote the check. My mind kept blanking out. Could this really be that big a book? My thanks to Jon and Curt and Dawn who bailed me out of an impossible solo task and also doubled as marriage counselors and priests for the week of nonstop madness we call "the Burn." I look forward this week to many more hours spent kissing up to Martha and the kids for my absence in spirit and body over the last year.

weekend with family

From last Wednesday until Monday, Martha and I took the kids and an
Amtrak train down to the Jeff City MO area for my parent's wedding vow
renewal. It was such a beautiful time. I'll have to post pics soon. But
the story I want to tell is on a little misunderstanding I perpetuated.
My sister found this little beautiful bed and breakfast for my folks as
a little second honeymoon retreat. The next day we all planned to meet
somewhere and have a picnic. Well Steph wasn't quite sure how the picnic
would all work out. We're all kind of on the poor side with not so much
cash flow. Anyway, we decide on this little winery nestled away
somewhere near Hermann. We all pull into this little place in a valley
and pile out. Four cars of us. Dad and my three kids situate themselves
under a tree and the rest of us go inside to watch people taste wine.
What else do you do at a winery? There was an all you can eat labor day
picnic going on there but we didn't know what it would cost and then
decided we couldn't afford it. The kids are filing in every few minutes
to use the bathroom. So after a few of us tasted the wine (not me) we
all filed out under the tree. I have my Martin out and I'm trying to
remember songs for us to sing. We chatted and munched on food dad saved
from the night before. Steak and cake and a bake potato wrapped in
aluminum foil. There were water bottles and Cokes. The owner came out
and saw us there and smiled. Somewhere in that time I started singing
"Whiskey River" by Willie Nelson. The owner must have heard me when
heading back in and saw us drinking from the water bottles. On my next
kid bathroom break he cornered me with "I don't know what you all are
drinking out there but we're not into that here. This is a family place.
We don't allow alcohol other than the wine we provide. What's in those
water bottles?" Boy was I embarassed. I forgot I'd been singing that
song until I got back to Chicago. I assured him we weren't drinking and
didn't drink. But shortly thereafter we all lit out of there feeling
like the freeloaders we undoubtedly were. It was a great hour and a
half. I'm blessed with a great family. Blessings on Jen and Nate as they
ready to wed. And on my folks on their new life together again.

Been Readin. . .

On the train back from MO I had some time to read John Steele Gordan's History of American Economic Power (or something like that, sorry). Also been poking through Karl Barth's Preaching Through the Christian Year, his section on "Man and Woman"--the exegesis of one flesh. Also Bonhoeffer's new DBW Edition of Ethics . I've read the Intro and Afterword and earlier and then poked through "Heritage and Decay" last night. Much less troublesome for me than "Ethics as Formation." Also poking through Cardinal's manager Whitey Herzog's White Rat. How's that for a changeup?!! Go Sox and Cards. Please let it be in 2005. Not that I'm really even watching baseball much. I'm such a fairweather fan. Also reading Karl Barth's Theological Exegesis. I want to prepare a huge review bonanza on Barth for Cornerstonemag.com like I did for Bonhoeffer earlier this year. I could do it in December when he died or for the 120th anniversary of his birth in May '06. Either way I really need to know my stuff for this review and do it carefully and attentively as a layman with his cards clearly on the table.
The print deadline for the book we're publishing Season of Joy by Jim Benes is due Tuesday! Pray for me as I work my tail off this weekend. Hopefully a gang of us will be working. . . but we'll see.

On play is John Prine's song "Other Side of Town" from his album "Fair and Square." The thrill of his song "Some Humans Ain't Human" has long worn off now. It only serves to remind me to pray for humans I'm so quick to criticize and I'm startin to see those other five fingers pointing back at me. The song goes:

"Some humans ain't human/some people ain't kind/you open up their hearts /and here's what you find/a few frozen pizzas/some icecubes with hair/a broken popcicle/you don't wanna go there"

and then it goes on basically comiserating over the resentments us liberals no doubt feel all the time toward folks in power, our neighbors, and other folks in church. While I sympathize with the sentiment I pity the singer if he's unable to see his own judgemental attitude in the song.

The Twelve Steps teach that when I'm not at peace something's wrong with me. Socially and politically there's constant unrest with me and I'm sure all Americans with their eyes open. May I reach out for prayer for my government and myself during these fearful times. Its so easy to accuse, and sink into insanity and resentment. God help me to pray.

I just got the latest issue of No Depression magazine. Its the ten year anniversary issue. It has Nickel Creek on the cover and interviews with Rodney Crowell, Son Volt, Marty Stuart, and of course Nickel Creek (never cared much for them, my wife luuuuuuuuuuuvs them though). Anyway, much is changing with this issue. They're officially dropping the moniker Alt. Country. They promise a new website soon with a blog. Oh and did I mention this issue includes a ten year retrospective on every previous mag they've done. And a top 25 list of albums over the last 10 years. If you don't subscribe get down to your local Borders/B&N/franchise--originality killing--chain bookstore and pick up a copy!! I'm sure I'll find plenty in this issue for use in my writing whenever the book deadline is past. (Lord haste the day!)

Can we agree to disagree pt. II

I just gave examples that no doubt are easily named among political
rightists. But leftist examples are also clear:
turning a blind eye to sexual immorality, calling same sex marriage God
ordained, backing equally selfish leftist demagogues in their bid for
power, scripture twisting (just like the rightists) until it clearly
fits an agenda, demonizing and lying about the opposition, and finally
the idolatry of making God useful for their purposes.

God is of no use to either rightists or leftists. We all stand under his
judgement.

Now back to the agree to disagree, we should ask not for what we can
agree on but whether our only final option is separation. The truth is
the Evangelical landscape is so all encompassing that various works have
been in opposition to one another for years. The media spotlight now
aggravates it to be sure. I am personally amazed by groups like the
National Association of Evangelicals who have rightists at the helm and
many leftist and progressive thinkers helping to frame policy now who
are surely in large disagreement.

Can we agree to disagree?

Is it possible for Christians to agree on essentials, namely Christ's
person and work, and vehemently disagree on matters of social,
political, and public relations? That's a question that's been really
bugging me lately. Did Jesus come to bring peace and harmony and are
disagreements like these only getting in the way? I'm not so sure its so
cut and dry. The book of First John addresses both of these issues and
more. First he warns against those who deny Christ as the Son but he
equally warns that true Christians are known by their deeds. But for
those asking the question he admonishes to Love our brothers and
sisters. There is a lot packed into this little book! There is a time
to overlook one another's faults and bear with weaker members. But out
of love for Christ the work of exposing harmful directives (such as the
suggestion to assassinate leaders, to amass wealth even in shady deals,
to teach women they are naturally weaker and subservient to men, or that
one nation is God-ordained to commit crimes against another) for what
they are: sinful and against Christ's work.

I just posted my comment on Pat Robertson's "Clarification" onto the comments on Blue Christian. It was too inflammatory for my own site here. I'd rather include such skullduggery where it belongs in Jon's corner. Anyway, to comment on my comment, I got heated because Pat appealed to Bonhoeffer. I've spent the last ten years gleaning from Bonhoeffer and to have Robertson misuse him is just plain hurtful.

Amira Haas article

I haven't blogged in a while about the Palestinian situation. Truthfully I feel shame for the distance time and circumstance have brought me from my solidarity with Christians in the Middle East. I still get all the email reports. I'm so bogged down with work and family that I have had no time for anything else. But my heart still beats in time--and breaks over my experiences in Israel/Palestine in 2002. I pray I'll get back there some day, and that the Christians in the West Bank and Gaza will have not all been forced out by the violence. A friend sent me this recent article from Amira Haas, a jewish reporter for Haaretz who has written extensively on life in Gaza.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/616309.html

on a-bomb day i had nothing to say

I was struck dumb on the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Look up Hiroshima on Wiikipedia and read all the pros and cons, that's what i did. I wanted to blog but my emotion struck me dumb. Brian Walsh gave a lecture at Cornerstone Festival in 2003 on Postmodernity and Empire. He said that being postmodern is never being able to get over the Bomb. That historical event overshadows every other action postmodern Americans take. I read this quote from the new 'Ethics," volume 6 in the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works project: pg. 77, second paragraph:

"That evil appears in the form of light, of beneficence, of faithfulness, of renewal, that it appears in the form of historical necessity, of social justices, is for the commonsense observer a clear confirmation of its profound evilness."

I read that and I think of the use of the bomb on Nagasaki. Hiroshima was not enough. Somehow Japan wouldn't have surrendered with Hiroshima. We had to drop it again. And what of it all now? Is it even an issue anymore?
I think it should be.

cracklin moth at the hideout

Last night I pretended to be a much younger adult and snuck out to see Cracklin Moth at the Hideout. The Hideout is a notorious bastion of alt.country in Chicago. My friend and I walked west on Armitage and crossed the river bridge by that old steel factory and then walked south on elston to wabansia. What a cool neighborhood! Walking it really adds to the vibe. Toward wabansia all along this old warehouse someone screwed nsync photo frames up with black and white xeroxes of their face. How odd. Anyway once we got to the Hideout I found that it really is that---a tiny hideout. There's barely room to move around in there. The concert started at 10:15 instead of 9:30 and I kept asking "Is there another room here where the show is playing?" Nope. And they have all day concert tributes in this place!
Cracklin' moth was really great. The crowd was groovin and dancing and seemed to really enjoy themselves. The band is tight and Matt's voice really works. Maybe they're the funnest little Chicago alt. country band you'll have heard in a while. Give 'em a listen. cracklinmoth.com There's free songs to download on their site.
Well we got home at midnight and I showered up and discarded my second-hand-smoke wreaked clothes. I was scared Martha would wake up and say "You smell." But she never noticed.
Michael and I would like to sneek out to the Hideout again some night. All right I'm not fooling anybody. I don't sneek anywhere anymore. Anyway, it was fun.

waiting

Limbo. Expecting messages back from more people than I can remember. By
email. The Inbox bolds up. Maybe just maybe this is important. Spam.
#%*@!!!! Its lonely here that's the bottom line. Wilco makes it all better.

be watching

I heard today that all the plenaries and sermons from this year's
Ekklesia Project gathering will be posted in audio for download to the
website soon. Be watching: ekklesiaproject.org

Yesterday and this morning I've been attending the Ekklesia project's conference at Depaul University here in Chicago. The theme this year is "No Other Gods." I've caught two lectures so far on the Decalogue and Empire and sat in on a group discussion in the late morning. I was so nervous yesterday about this thing because I don't have a post-graduate education. Many folks speaking and in attendance are quite notable in their fields and so I had reason to be nervous in their presence. But the whole spirit of the meeting has been so welcoming and open, so down-to-earth and accessible. Let me recommend Ekklesiaproject.org. I'm finding many new friends for the journey and many older brothers and sisters in the struggle who are much more well read and experienced than I!
Bill Cavanaugh gave an Amazing plenary on "The Empire of the Empty Shrine." Here are my notes from his lecture:

William Cavanaugh

The Empire of the Empty Shrine

The first commandment is a flight from the Empire of Egypt. Israel/Babylon. Early Christians/Rome. Correct past mistakes by offering no gods to worship. Novak: respect for the freedom of human conscience. Empty shrine. Democratic capitalism should sweep the shrine clean. Founding fathers would agree with this. Empty openness at heart of DC lends itself to expansion and empire.
Emptiness and openness leads to idolatry. Liberalism in US has been wed with perfect consistency to consumerism.

In order for the US to have an empire we must deny we have one. Central organizing myth is that "we had greatness thrust upon us."
"American Empire" Andrew Basavich
After WWII all we wanted to do was come home. Bush: rid world of evil typical of that myth. Our preferred way of telling the story. Preserves our sense of virtue. Our modesty is preserved in our reluctance to use our awesome power. We didn't choose it it just happened. There must be a strong element of providence (which we can't second guess) to maintain this. Our modesty and reluctance prove our greatness. Main problem with this is that it's false.

Not historically true to believe we've taken stage in response. Teddy Roosevelt "our whole national history has been one of expansion." Under Clinton mantra was openness. This policy is not new.

2 ironies
1. universalism is flag waving nationalism. Because we understand history we are the exception to history. Nation/state becomes the one agreed upon end. That system alone unites all nations. Patriotism lets us ignore class divisions.

2. oscillates between idealism and selfishness. We expect no limits to our conumptive way of life. Jimmy Carter "respond to the crisis with lower expectations."

Ideology of openness. Capitalism is about growth and expansion. The only thing uniting us is our freedom to disagree. Votaire: I may not agree with what you say but I'll defend with the death your right to say it. "Of course that's not my death someone elses."

Our way has a missionary impulse. Give up the idea of the end of history for capitalism. We are on the right side of history. Madeleine Albright, "We have our duty to write history."


With openness comes peace. Now openness brings lack of security. National defense dropped for national security. Now openness itself is a threat to peace from those who would keep us from writing history.

Full spectrum dominance. By some estimates our military spending rivals all other nation's combined. "Those ambiguous situations residing between peace and war."

Technology lets us see through the fog of war. Omniscience and omnipotence are within our grasp. Infinite reach. Infinite justice.
The kind of olympian perspective Homer had given his gods.--Gen. Tommy Franks.

Ascend beyond the particularities of humans. Empty all particular creeds to keep from claiming any particular God.
Fill shrine with National God who sees resistence to Openness.

Part II

Theological critique of Empire.

Ex. 19:5-6 "But you shall be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." Chooses to save world through particular history of one people.
Shrine is never truly empty. God is not generic he is of a particular people.

Influential exceptionalism: US is new Israel. Providential fulfillment through one nation. New Testament Israel is the church. Rom. 9-11
1 Peter 2:9, The church is a holy nation. Ekklesia is the parculiar political stance of the church. The Day of the Assembly--Dueteronomic. The idea refers to the whole. Saw themselves as the eschatological fulfillment of Israel. The church is not polis and yet it used the language of citizenship. Christians are questionable citizens of any empire. Loyalty to church is primary.

In America there is no single visible idol. Openness is not a good candidate for idolatry. Its the ineffability of the national god that makes it so powerful. By denying its power we give it more power. That god may not be refused when sacrifice is required. US acts as substitute for church and God. All religion is civil religion to Durkheim. Empty shrine threatens to make a deity not out of God but our freedom to worship God. Worship becomes worship of our collective self. Freedom becomes the one thing we will die and kill for.

You shall not kill.

Godlikeness comes in where State alone can kill. Confess any God you want provided you're willing to kill for America. Kill is in subject not verb. Divide between God and humans. God alone decides. [You] is the command. God is particular so that his work can spread. All have chance to behold and test this new thing. They are not forced. Lofink "Does God need the church?" Ex. 14:14 The Lord will fight for you you have only to keep still. Their victory is through the intervention of the Lord.

Every army thinks it has divine favor. In OT emphasis is on lack of military strength. "Two little flocks of goats." Huge army of Arimeans. Contrast is in the strength of other nation's militaries. OT served as paradigm for early church. Martyrdom becomes the way of victory for early church. Discern God's activity in persecution and weakness. Church imitates Christ by absorbing the violence of the world. If Jesus is the point of history then Christians read history from the point of his life, death, and ress. Find true life by refusing to fear death.

The church is our primary political community. Not triumph of church but repentence. American empire has taken over many of the functions of the church. Missions, catholicity, universalism, all coopted by US empire.

Obedience as liberation.
Liberation as absorbing violence.

Questions:

What about church as leaven in the world?
Reservation: if the church is leaven and something else is bread. Nation is a given, church helps to make it a bit better. Avoid that.
Bread must be the body of Christ. Proclaim the different kind of community with is a political reality.

Economics of church vs. empire.
Part of our task is to create difference economic spaces. Not necessarily withdrawal or seperation. But structures have to be transformed. Create a different economic space not determined by profit but by whats best for all in community.

Church's role: Its not as if the stage is the nation. The tragedy is the nation and the comedy is the church. We work together for a good solution. The church-sect dichotomy is not the only option (Join the Amish or write your congressman.)

Andrew Basavich "American Empire"

There's nothing about divine sanction that can't be used for violence. Yes Xianity has produced violence but the greater problem is in secular ideologies that do violence for the empty shrine. Our secular violence is rational, secular, muniative. "Regrettably, we need to bomb them into the higher rationality."

The nation is the truly sectarian body that divides the world's body. The church unites members or potential members of Christ's body.


--------------------------

Much of this is no doubt cryptic but maybe you'll like it.

some things i just can't blog about

Some things are too personal to blog about. When mom gets cancer. Mom and Dad separating and reuniting. A kid in therapy. Addiction and recovery. More has been happening in my life lately than I can possibly cipher for the future. Just know that life in your thirties makes you more adult than you really want to be. And older friends assure me it only gets thicker over time. One friend told me I'd probably reinvent myself (I guess that means vocations) three times before I'm fifty. Inside I still feel in many ways like that kid I was coming of age at sixteen. I'd spend hours upon hours in this recliner writing down all my feelings and listening to music. That was the only way I knew to cope. That should say something to me about the way I feel people perceive me. The ones I know love me I don't worry about. The ones I feel I piss off I just try to ignore and hope they don't come around. Either way I'll just be about my business.  How the last three sentences fit with the one prior I don't know. I just write what I feel.

I finished Flannery O'Connor's "The Violent Bear It Away" recently. What a weird ending! I can't quite decide what's happening. Is Tarwater a ghost? Is it all a vision? I looked it up in Jill Baumgaertner's book but see nothing about the ending. She mentions Tarwater being raped though. When did that happen?

At old town folk fest

At old town folk fest watching Alejandro Escovedo do his craft. Amazing

Peanut Butter, aka Raggitt as we sometimes call her, is so much bigger now two months later. This is her on the day we brought her home. Martha says she's at least twice this size now. I think three times!

With God On Our Side

"Barbaric" screamed the headline of the Chicago Sun Times this morning.
A mimic I suppose of the Governor's words of comfort after the subway
killings in London yesterday. Condi signed a condolence book. Blair and
Bush said our resolve is strong. We all feel better. Buddy Miller is
singing "With God On Our Side" on my Itunes. A few lines struck me a
different way just now. WWI: the singer doesn't know why we're fighting.
After WWII the Germans are forgiven, though six million Jews are dead,
but yes, they now have God on their side. Then its the Russians. The
question is where does it stop? Yesterday innocent die from "Barbaric"
acts and our leaders offer comfort by saying "This is what we're
fighting for." And as long as we're fighting we have God on our side.
This tangled weave of violence, assurance, war, and now more terrorism
beg the questions: Why Me, Why Us? Why Death? Who will protect us from
ourselves? Its easiest not to think about it at all. Personally I'm
irritated by our leaders. They offer assurances because that's their job
but do any of us really feel safer? I hate the spectacle of the news
after such acts. I hate the helpless passive gaze forced upon me. Christ
be between me and all this news. Christ be with all the victims and yes
with the perpetrators. Christ give me strength to feel. Christ give us
hands and feet to do something. Give me just one thing to do today to
counter that abhorrent act. And every recent abhorrent act between
humans that is far less than human be it in conscious warring or
otherwise. One simple thing please.

my fest experience

Its the last day of the week in which I retreated to Chicago from a week and a half of tent living in Bushnell Illinois. I suppose I am that much richer, more patient, and more eager for Parousia because of the experience. I'm glad I will not be loading and unloading trucks and minivans for another year. Trucks bearing all the wares of my trade and that of everyone else who works in this building. All the writers and artists I see year round in passing on their ways to the delapidated bathrooms here on second floor. Some emerge from their windowless offices from hours of staring into their 15" monitors just to stand where there are windows and remember that they still speak with human voices and see daylight. [If they ever read this we'll have more to talk about. Or maybe they won't want to talk anymore at all for fear you'll hear about it!]

Its a wonder that I and these pretend to be outside dwellers for over a week once a year. Its a wonder that we inhale the dust of Illinois cornfields and burn our skin with the sun and then freeze ourselves upon nightfall inside temporary dwellings of vinyl and barely metal zippers. Maybe we do it because it makes us feel like anything is possible with a truckload of ice and water and per diem enough to make us smile. Some of us spend the entire year in preparation for that one week (or four days for others). This year I fell into the week with 1000 and 1 other things pressing.

On the other hand, the Fest is about conversations otherwise not had with folks from all over the world. This year I'll mark in my memory one lengthy conversation with a young man about Existence, Evil, Spiritual Encounter, and the Effect faith has on a person. His questions and my poke at answers changed me. Bolstered my faith. The reality of an all powerful God who loves me and desires a relationship with me never ceases to be a tender and moving subject. The fact that I grew up a believer and that faith has always been my life theme has not kept me from utter failure, addiction, and betrayal of all I love. That part of my narrative makes my testimony a tricky delivery, but a bittersweet joy nonetheless.

I mark this fest as a victory in the resistance of temptation. I kept the personal conversation going, did not withdraw and isolate from my fellows, and I am stronger for it. Lust, despair, anger, and discouragement plagued me as usual but I can honestly say I reached out to God and my brothers and with their help stayed faithful. Yeh, desperately faithful.

We brought our house rabbit down with us. She (Peanut Butter) managed to stay cool and get exercise and be lots of fun. Martha and I took the kids to the beach at the man-made lake down the hill. I got in at least twice and splashed around. Back at the campsite for at least two days I got some quality reading in. I read "I Knew Dietrich Bonhoeffer" which I got on inter-library loan, and "Karl Barth's Theological Exegesis" by Richard E. Burnett which I still hope to review later this year. Later I purchased from my own store "3 by Flannery O'Connor" and began "The Violent Bear It Away." Somebody tell me if that's OK to read first. Though I don't really care. The byline about devoted prophets killing folks out of love for God was enough to make me pick it up. Though that must happen at the end. Anyway. . . .

Martha is amazing in her tenacity and patience for camping. Everything was carefully packed in bins and she managed to remember everything our family of five needed and pull off providing tents for the rest of JPUSA as well. We couldn't have managed without my good friend Michael. He was a real trooper in the back seat with the kids on the way home. My three year old was so much trouble! I often asked how could something so cute and tiny be such a royal pain!?! Darling--rascal--darling--rascal. I was stopping the van so much to deal with her on the way home that it felt as if we'd never arrive.

Well there it is. And I've relived it all just for you. Feel special.

a little theological reflection

All right, I'm gonna stick my neck out here and offer a little of what I've been reading again this morning. By way of explanation the thoughts in the following paragraph were part of a spiritual search I was on a number of years ago. As a teen I began reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth's name kept popping up. When my wife and I moved to Chicago I had more study time on my hands and I began mining our huge library downtown of its Bonhoeffer collection. One day I stumbled on this book After Fundamentalism by Bernard Ramm and it was like finding a key to the prison of so many of my doubts about what I believed, the chief issue being Apologetics. My spiritual awakening took place in the late 1980s and at the time Apologetics and Evangelism were joined at the hip. I may be wrong but I suspect that the vast majority of Evangelicals are still so situated. But when I read Hume, Voltaire and Neitzche, and took their positions seriously, I realized that Apologetics so situated with Evangelism just doesn't work. Its an obfuscation of the Enlightenment. Ramm calls it obscurantism. Now this is not to try to shatter Thomas Aquinas or the classic arguments for God's existence. Its simply to say that to think that reason forms the basis for Evangelism is to not see the big picture. America has nearly 230 years of experience with Evangelicalism. To say that Christianity is the only reasonable choice is to claim that all rational arguments in opposition are denying the obvious. To me that is not a conversation starter. Well my lead-in is now longer than the quote:

"One of Barth's basic presuppositions with reference to the truth of the Christian faith is that if something external to the Word of God is necessary to establish the Word of God as true, then it is greater than the Word of God. He states this in many ways and in many contexts. Or, one could say that it is a very weak Word of God that needs external supports. Barth's maxim is that what establishes is greater than what is established. But there can be nothing greater than the Word of God. Therefore the Word of God establishes itself. If the lion needs gophers and rabbits to announce his kingship, then the lion is no longer king of the beasts. Barth takes as axiomatic that it would be very strange if Christian could believe the faith only if there were external assurances for it. If Christianity is tested for truth, then the test is greater than Christianity."
[from Bernard Ramm, After Fundamentalism: The Future of Evangelicalism, Harper & Row, 1983., pg. 61.]

To me Lee Strobel is the case in point here. His maxim (with his books The Case for Christ, The Case for a Creator, and his TV show on Pax ) all claim to want to dialogue with Mainstream America. Instead what he does is misrepresent all opposing views, tell the reader or viewer what he believes they want to hear (his opinion) and then draw a straight line from his point of view to Jesus. His testimony is that of having been a liberal radical atheist who wanted to attack Christ to becoming a far right wing conservative because of the facts. I surmise there's more to his story. This is the essence of Apologetics and Evangelism gone wrong. To me what is really being said is: "If Christianity can't be made to suit an agenda (mine) then it can't be true." I say that any real survey of worldwide Christianity shows that Jesus is much too colorful and influential for different reasons than to be fit into any one person's box.

Ok, with all of that said, there are many good and honest folks involved in Apologetics and Evangelism. And Karl Barth's deemphasis of Apologetics was quite honestly his own form of bias due to his background.  Political conservatives coopting the Apologetic conversation form no final reason to completely disregard a place for Apologetics. CS Lewis is a great example of a Lay apologist as is Josef Pieper. Various contemporary Christian philosophers all do a good job. But I think even these would shy away from claiming an epistemology (how we come to faith) that is all encompassing.

Choosing Not to Cuss

On Choosing not to Cuss:

Does it really offend you Holy Spirit when four letter words fall off my
lips? Why? Is it because you're so easily offended and moralistic? Is it
because you're too good for me? Does the music I listen to offend you
because it is not Praise? Is your favorite station WMBI? Are you
offended by all the rest? Holy Spirit are you too holy for all of us
here in Chicago? Is Benny Hinn really your kind of man? Why are you not
offended by his greeting every morning? ("Good Morning, Holy Spirit" was
an old book by him.)

These questions reveal a bit of bitterness in me, its true. Why this
rash of interrogation? Because I've been wrestling lately with the
question of profanity. I don't cuss because it doesn't suit me. But
profanity reveals a deep anger and bitterness in me that is very close
to my heart. That's scary to be sure. But how else can the fear and the
rage be pronounced? Its how my neighbors express themselves and I find
it tempting. Less sinful than smoking or drinking or whoring to be sure.
Its only tempting deep inside me.

Holy Spirit I know you're not too dainty for my world. Not too quaint,
not too small. I offend you because you love me. My faith I fear is
quaint, dainty, small, maybe even handicapped. You are strong and bold.
You cut through all the crap to the real me. You are no doubt offended
not by the language but by the force inherent in the ribold rejection of
your Ways. The language reveals the bitterness. And so, as I do every
day. I surrender my emotions Father God, Jesus Lover of my soul, Sweet
Holy Spirit. I am broken. You are the cure. Have your way with me. I
choose not to cuss. I surrender. Because you are strong. I am the weak
one. Cussing is a false armor for my conceit. A false armor for the fear
and rage. It makes me sound big, creates a front which does not suit me.
Christ be between me and all others this day. Between me and the words I
speak. Christ you are the only Significance.

gonna tell stories

I'm burning a disc of my favorites from "Down to the Promised Land," an
old compilation of artists on Blood Shot Records here in Chicago.

Just to demonstrate how weird I am, I'm also peering at "Myth and
Christianity" a paperback copy dated 1958, by Karl Jaspers and Rudolf
Bultmann. I collect these kind of books and surround my writing space
with them.

Now I forgot what I was gonna say. Somebody just called me and I can't
return to what I was gonna right about. I hate it when that happens.
Thanks a lot Michael. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Oh yeah:

I'm in a place of limbo in my life right now. But I've always been in
limbo and that's what I want to write about. I'm 31 at this writing. I'm
ten years married with three little kids. I've got work that really
interests me and friends (and a lover in my wife) like I've never had in
my life. That's a lot to be thankful for and as good a place to
recollect as any. Edward Siad wrote a book called "Out of Place" during
a time in his life when he thought he'd be dying soon. The book is
wonderfully mundane to me in many ways. As a professor of English and
Comparative Lit at Columbia University and as perhaps this generation's
most well know and vocal American Palestinian or Palestinian Expatriate
you'd think his memoir would surround his political coming of age. But
in a beautiful way he just told the truth about his boring childhood.
Well I'm not near as interesting as Edward Said to so many people. But
someday I'm gonna lasso my story (lasso?, yes country music does that!)
and tell it.

It'll be full of crazy stories about a guy a knew trying to kill a roach
that crawled into his ear with a Qtip.

Another about a guy taking a big swig of piss that had mysteriously
found its way into the refrigerator. Now that's a story. I can imagine
my six year old girl's reaction to that one. I'd never live that down.

Calling my dad out off of a construction site to tell him if he's gonna
vent on my wife-to-be he's gotta go through me. Then telling him he is
downright evil.

Picking up a sledge hammer and smashing a watermelon off of my friend's
head because I think he's acting too stupid. Getting angry at him the
same way my dad did at me that month previous.

The shock of learning the following week that that friend died in a car
accident. The shame of never being able to say sorry.

Lots of stories. Too little time to tell them now.

Been readin' lately

Well Alright I've been book tagged by Blue Christian Jon and now with an obnoxious glare I'm going to admit to what I've been reading lately. Now I read for different reasons. Some books like The Man Called Cash by Steve Turner I read for sheer pleasure. Then I walk around boring everybody with my knowledge of the odd doings of a personal hero and legend but nevertheless old and now dead guy, Johnny Cash. If I were my son I'd think I was strange, but that's another story.

I recently prided myself in finishing On Love from Faith, Hope, Love by Josef Pieper. It makes up more than half the book. Faith and Hope take up like 40 pages each but Love must be closer to 140 pages. I counted the other night but now I can't remember. Anyway, there's reading and then there's READING and Pieper makes you feel every page. If you don't know Josef Pieper I'll just say he's a classically trained Thomist whom I really enjoy. I began with his book Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power which a Catholic friend gave me years ago. Well it was so timely and well put that I asked Jon about Pieper's book on Eros that he'd mentioned was so good. [The first self-proclaimed Thomist I encountered scared me to death. I was studying in the St. Louis public library on Locust and this Aquinas student just kept bringing photocopies of books and laying them beside me telling me to read. And I kept going from floor to floor trying to hide until he'd find me and say "check this out" until I finally said "I'm not interested please stop!" But I digress. ] Pieper's fresh introduction to Aquinas and Classical thought makes me want more and more. Though I'm full for a while with On Love thank you very much. I ordered Pieper's The Four Cardinal Virtues to sell at the Fest on the advice of a trusted friend here. I've got to buy a copy of Faith Hope and Love soon so I can mark up my copy of On Love and use it in some memoirs someday. There's a lot of clarification of what Love is and isn't that I've never seen hashed out anywhere else. I did read Lewis' The Four Loves and Pieper quotes him a lot. But Pieper quotes all the important writers, philosophers, theologians, and pundits of love from the 20th century and then sits back and profoundly lets it all make sense, or sometimes make questions. Either way I really had fun. There should be a quote somewhere about how some folks like me can't really understand things unless they're explained in little forty page philosopho-speaks by guys with German names. Then after sheepishly agreeing with whoever gave the quote I'd swear never to be like that in real life.

I've been skipping around through The Secular City by Harvey Cox. The chapter on sex was very good for the most part. Boy that sounds weird. Just picked up The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul two days ago and I'm heading into chapter two. Its one of those books I just start nibbling into thinking "there's no way I'm really gonna finish this." And then I just keep reading and reading cuz its good.

The book that has become my life lately is titled (today):
From Tannenbaums to Handel's Messiah: A Chicago Christmas by Jim Benes (to be released in the fall of 2005). If you've seen Chicago Christmas, this is the revised and expanded version. I told Jim a few months back while peering over the stacks of papers and photos that filled the 4x10' table "Man, I feel like I'm entrusted with your life's work." To which he replied "Oh please, its just a hobby gone awry." I laughed. Then I hung up and cried over the work to be done.

books I'm not reading: The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren, The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel, The Left Behind Series by Lahaye and Jenkins, Your Best Life Now by Joel Osteen.

That's what you get for book-tagging me.

Here's the List of Books I'm bringing down to Cornerstone Festival this year. In addition to money for CDs and Tshirts please bring money for lots of good books! By buying these books and used books you'll be supporting the good work of this good-little-nonprofit-that-could. Shameless merchandising. Shameless. I'm shameless. Cuz I still wouldn't mind working here next year. One foot in front of the other.

Asterisks are next to books you get 15% off for if you say you are attending that seminar.

Speaker Books, Course Related Material, Generally Good Reading

A Long Obedience in the Same Direction - Petersen, Eugene
Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on - Miller, Donald
*Bravehearts: Unlocking the Courage to Lo - Hersh, Sharon A.
Breaking Free: Understanding Sexual Addiction and the healing power of Jesus - Willingham, Russell
*Death Comes for the Archbishop - Cather, Willa
*Denial of Death - Becker, Ernest
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Spoke in the Wheel - Wind, Renate
Field Guide to Narnia - Duriez, Colin
Four Cardinal Virtues - Pieper, Josef
Four Loves - Lewis, C. S.
*Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a Missional etc. - McLaren, Brian D.
God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It - Wallis, Jim
Gospel According to America: A Meditatio - Dark, David
Into the Region of Awe - Downing, David C.
*Last Word and the Word After That: A Tal - McLaren, Brian D.
Life You Save May Be Your Own: An Americ - Elie, Paul
Long Loneliness - Day, Dorothy
Mere Christianity (HarperCollins) - Lewis, C. S.
*Mom, I Hate My Life!: Becoming Your Daug - Hersh, Sharon A.
Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose - O'Connor, Flannery
*New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Fri - McLaren, Brian D.
*Pensees (Revised) - Pascal, Blaise
*Propaganda - Ellul, Jacques
Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity - Winner, Lauren F.
*Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of H - Nouwen, Henri J. M.
Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience: W - Sider, Ronald J.
Screwtape Letters - Lewis, C. S.
Searching for God Knows What - Miller, Donald
*Story We Find Ourselves in: Further Adve - McLaren, Brian D.
Subversive Orthodoxy: Outlaws, Revolutio - Inchausti, Robert
Under the Overpass: A Journey of Faith o - Yankoski, Mike
*Anarchy and Christianity - Ellul, Jacques
Christian Wisdom of the Jedi Masters - Staub, Dick
Girl Meets God: On the Path to a Spiritu - Winner, Lauren F.
I Loved a Girl: A Private Correspondence - Trobisch, Walter
Living Like Jesus: Eleven Essentials for - Sider, Ronald J.
*Singleness of Heart: Restoring the Divid - Williams, Clifford
Subversion of Christianity - Ellul, Jacques
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe- CS Lewis
Three by Flannery O'Connor: Wise Blood/T - O'Connor, Flannery
Tolkien Reader - Tolkien, J. R. R.
*Works of Love - Kierkegaard, Soren
*Life of the Mind: A Christian Perspectiv - Williams, Clifford
*Purity of Heart: Is to Will One Thing - Kierkegaard, Soren
Signposts in a Strange Land: Essays - Percy, Walker

Cornerstone Press Titles

Growing With My Garden: Thoughts on Tending the Soil and the Soul - Rolland Hein
Hammers & Nails: The Life and Music of Mark Heard - Matthew Dickerson
C.S. Lewis: Mere Christian - Kathryn Lindskoog
The Harmony Within: The Spiritual Vision of George MacDonald - Rolland Hein
Christian Mythmakers, 2nd Edition- Rolland Hein
Flannery O'Connor: A Proper Scaring - Jill Peláez Baumgaertner
Finding The Landlord: A Guidebook to C.S. Lewis's Pilgrim's Regress - Kathryn Lindskoog
Wind of the Journey: Poems - Irina Ratushinskaya
*The Responsibility of the Christian Musician - Glenn Kaiser
More Like the Master: A Christian Musician's Reader - Kaiser, Card, Peacock, et al
Selah: A Guide to Music in the Bible - Donald Thiessen
The Double Vision of Star Trek: Half-Humans, Evil Twins, and Science Fiction - Mike Hertenstein
Selling Satan: The Evangelical Media and the Mike Warnke Scandal - Mike Hertenstein and Jon Trott
Orphan Girl: The Memoir of a Chicago Bag Lady - Marie James, as told to Jane Hertenstein
Home is Where We Live: Life at a Shelter Through a Young Girl's Eyes
Organic Faith: A Call to Authentic Christianity - Ron Mitchell
Dinosaur Journal: Making Sense of a Young Son's Death - Curtiss Mortimer
My Son, My Brother, My Friend: A Novel Letters - Dale C. Willard
Beyond Belief: Cartoon Confessions of Faith - Roger Judd