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.