Heresy
Jul 31st, 2007 by Sonja

Aspen Chaple

For those of you who don’t recognize the artist, that’s a Thomas Kinkade.  Just a random Kinkade that I pulled off of his website.

I hate Thomas Kinkade.  Well, I don’t hate the man.  That would be ludicrous, since I’ve never met him and don’t even know what he looks like, never mind have any idea of what his character is like.

I hate his art.  His paintings.  They are ugly.  They look like paint-by-number sets to me.  I can’t understand why they are so popular.  Why do so many people flock after them?  Why are there shrines and altars built in his honor in Christian bookstores?  He has been dubbed the “Painter of Light.”  But, honestly, his use of light is pedestrian and weird.  There is nothing wonderful about it.

Just for the record, I’ve always thought this about his paintings.  I thought this from the first painting I saw of his … way before he got so wildly popular.  I thought it was a cheap knock off of a “real” artist.  Or a paint-by-number kit.

Is it our culture?  I wondered that anew this morning as BlazingEwe and I looked at checks.  She needs to reorder checks.  I think she’s going to get frogs because they are fun and cute.  We were aghast at all the organizations seeking to raise conciousness with checks.  Even NORML has a check now.  But I thought, as we looked, how many articles have I read decrying the lack of reading these days and people think they are going to raise conciousness with a check?  No one will read it.  It’s an idea who’s time came and went back in the ’70s.  So we settle for cheap knock offs and raising conciousness by writing checks.  God knows we wouldn’t want to talk to anyone … we’ll just write a check and let it speak for us.  While we buy ugly art that we know is ugly, but since everyone else is gushing over it, it must be good … right?

Awe
Jul 31st, 2007 by Sonja

This is what we had for dinner the other night:

Rainbow Awe

Literally …
Jul 30th, 2007 by Sonja

… the coolest thing since sliced bread.

Losing My Religion
Jul 29th, 2007 by Sonja

I remember when this came out. It was one of R.E.M.’s biggest hits. I wasn’t listening to very much R.E.M. at the time, but I’d really liked them at an earlier time in my life. When this song came out, I was firmly entrenched in conservative evangelicalism, and R.E.M. was definitely on the “do not listen to” list. I know I heard the song because I still secretly liked them and couldn’t quite figure out what was wrong with them. I understood the ban on groups like Red Hot Chili Peppers (even though I still liked them too), but R.E.M.? I didn’t get why adults were getting their panties in a wad over this. I got it in terms of that verse about only contemplating things that are holy, good, pure, true, etc. But … still … wtf? I didnt get it.

So I heard the song and loved it … but it scared me. Losing my religion. What would happen to me if I ever lost my religion? Where would my underpinings go? What would it look like to not have religion? It was a frightening thought. I was comfortable with my religion at the time … comfortable enough, that is. Comfortable, if I didn’t think to carefully or deeply.

In 1998, LightHusband had a back injury that threw him into a downward spiral of pain and suffering that would not end. It was a seemingly intractable injury that had no cause and for all intents and purposes, no cure. He ended up leaving the Army because of the injury after three years of doctor’s visits, two years on narcotics to control the pain, and several experimental courses of treatment that further aggravated his injury. At the very end of the journey we finally got a diagnosis … he is hypermobile and his ligaments had not held his sacro-iliac joint stable. The injury he had sustained is normally only seen in pregnant women and people who have been in front-end automobile collisions. In his case, it had been a repetitive use injury from wearing his drum for 18 years.

To say that I prayed during those three years would be an understatement. And yet, it would also be a lie. I prayed at first. I prayed as though my life depended on it … because in some ways it did. But my prayers did no good. They did nothing. They did not change our situation. They did not change me. They did not change God. They did nothing. Except create a very bitter knot in my heart. I finally gave up praying. I told my friends that they could pray if they wanted, but I was done. I left off the last part of that sentence, because it’s heresy in the conservative evangelical church. But I was done. I was too angry to pray. I just wanted to leave town.

I wanted to leave town. Leave the church. Leave this stupid God who does stupid horrid things like this. Or if he doesn’t do them, He allows them and doesn’t give us any answers. He allows huge tsunamis to rise up and kill thousands on a holiday. He allows hurricanes like Katrina. He allows babies to snatch our hearts and then they die without warning in the midst of the night.

John Smulo wrote a post several days ago asking about how do we defend God to our well-meaning friends and relatives who ask about this. Who ask how we can still have faith in a God who either does such things or allows such things and does nothing to repair them? As I tried to answer that question, I found I have none. There is no explaining why I still have faith.

I believe that I have lost my religion. But I still have my faith. Somewhere in the midst of it all … between then and now … I lost my religion. It’s in tatters. That has been a frightening thing. It’s also been sad. But I still have my faith in God, in Jesus, in the Holy Spirit.

Truthfully, what little I know of God does not give me the evidence to defend Him in the face of all the evil in the world. I have no “blessed assurance” that I’m going to some pearly gates when I die. I have none of that anymore. What I do have is this … the knowledge that there is a God and that S/He loves me and desires some sort of communion with me; indeed with all of us. I’m not certain what that communion looks like, but I’m damn sure it’s more than a cracker crumb and a dribble of grape juice. I do know that whatever S/He is, S/He is much, much, much larger than anything anyone of us can imagine. And Her vision of how justice will be played out is likely to be much, much different from mine … which is probably a good thing too.

I don’t defend God anymore. The way I figure it, if God really did create the universe She can defend herself. There’s not much I can say in his defense. Most people have made up their minds and legal arguments aren’t going to change them … hell … legal arguments rarely sway people in a court room, why should they work in a space as delicate as our beliefs about our origins. The thought is sort of silly.

Losing my religion … I’m slowly but surely turning my back on church as I know it. The church as described by Jesus in the Gospels is a beautiful place … a place I’d like to be part of. So is the church that Paul describes in his epistles. But once Constantine got his grubby hands on religion and the state took hold of things … well … I want to say, I never knew you. It’s not a place that has any room left for God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit. It’s a place that tears people apart, chews them up, leaders use their followers and followers use their leaders — all to their own ends.

I read the gut-wrenching article by William Lobdell from the LATimes and thought, “I get it. I understand what he thinks.” I’m not where he is, I don’t think I’d make the decisions he made. But I understand them. I understand that eventually you cannot maintain that level of cognitive dissonance between what Jesus teaches and what the church teaches and call yourself a Christ follower.

I have no idea where my journey will take me next. I am in the waiting place. I am waiting to hear from God about what to do and where to go next.

Book Review – Organic Community
Jul 28th, 2007 by Sonja

I’ve read two books this month. Well … I’ve completed two books this month. One was HP and the Deathly Hallows and I’m re-reading parts of that and talking about it and absorbing it. What a fabulous book. As Julie Clawson says, it belongs on the shelf next to Middle Earth and Narnia. And all the conservative Christians out there tarring and feathering Rowling for magic and the occult, owe her a very large apology. If you want more than that, you’ll have to read the book. Or trust me.

Organic CommunityThe other other book I completed this month is titled, Organic Community: Creating a Place Where People Naturally Connect by Joseph R. Myers. I read it while on vacation in Vermont. I approached it sideways at first because I’m tempted to be very critical of the notion that one can artificially “create” a place where people can “naturally” connect. The notion seems disingenuous at worst and contrived at best. So, the kindest thing I can say about myself is that my mind was not terribly open as I opened the book. I did not approach this book expecting great things.

I was surprised.

It is a treasure of a little book. Myers writes in a very unassuming style and is very understated. In so doing he allows the reader plenty of time and space to imagine for themselves how they might use this information in their own lives. He gives them gift of place. Instead of giving the reader a paint-by-number kit at the end, throughout the book he points you to the brushes, paint pots and easel in the room and encourages you to pick them up yourself. It’s as if he said, “Here, all of us have been given this gift. Now you paint too. Create a painting that will bless your place.”

If I had a quibble with the author it would be that I think his thinking is perhaps too binary. He sets out his argument in terms of either/or. There is “master plan” thinking OR “organic order” thinking. One must be one OR the other and behavior falls into one category or the other. My feeling is that most behavior in human groups probably falls in a spectrum with master plan thinking on one end and organic order on the other. And behavior can be classified on that spectrum as being more or less in one direction or another. My guess is that if I were to meet him and have a cup of coffee with him, I would discover that he feels this way too, but expressed his views in this binary manner in order to make his point.

A secondary quibble, pointed out by Alan Hirsch in his review here, is that Myers does not specifically address missional issues. I’d agree with Alan, but for the fact that my guess is that Myers might say that missional issues are larger than this book. I think that people who engage in community within the organic order and a Christian viewpoint will also, organically, follow a missional lifestyle. It will be a part of who they are, rather than a part of their plan for living.

Myers defines “master plan” thinking as that which we see all around us everyday in the military, in business, in government. It is that zero-sum game which demands that we all compete for resources, power, time, etc., that we “learn the ropes,” that we paint-by-someone-else’s-numbers that will guarantee a successful outcome, that we measure success in numbers. He begins defining “organic order” thinking by defining an artist as “… someone who enables art to emerge from a canvas …” and then goes on to say this:

“Shaping an environment where people naturally connect is more like creating art than manufacturing a product. It marks a major shift: from programming a community (i.e., following a master plan) to using principals of organic order to develop an environment where community can emerge.” pp. 26-27 italics in the original

Perhaps my favorite principal in this book is the idea that organic may be equated to order. In this post-industrial, fully mechanical age we have a strong tendency to view those things that are organic and natural as being chaotic and out of control. Organic, natural things have a definite order and system to them. While that order is not always under our control, we may be able to embrace it and dance with it to live a healthy life. So I was very grateful to read a book that encouraged us to consider that organic and order are not mutually exclusive terms.

Scot McKnight did a review on Jesus Creed last month and summarized the two models nicely as follows:

If you are seeking to avoid the Master Plan programming model and, instead, want to create an organic environment, this is a good book for lots of ideas. Here’s a summary of the Master Plan programming model and the Organic Order model:

Patterns: prescriptive vs. descriptive.
Participation: representative vs. individual.
Coordination: cooperation vs. collaboration.
Growth: bankruptcy vs. sustainability
Measurement: bottom line vs. story.
Power: positional vs. revolving.
Partners: accountability vs. edit-ability.
Language: noun-centric vs. verb-centric.
Resources: scarcity vs. abundancy.

Myers devoted a chapter to each subject above and does a fairly thorough job of comparing and contrasting with examples the differences in each. He draws on from many different disciplines and across many fields of study for his examples. He also draws on his direct personal experience with the company that he and his wife started some years ago. It is fairly successful even by so-called master plan standards and is thriving. But they operate using organic order principals and it sounds like a wonderful place to work.

It struck me, as I read through the book, that I recently had the privilege of working in a group that operated with organic order principals for a short time. It was a joy to work in that group and we did some marvelous things. We had a difficult time explaining how we operated and I found myself wishing I’d had this book “back then” so I could have explained us better to those who were wondering how we managed to “get things done.”

For instance, I loved this definition of decision making (it’s from the chapter on participation):

People want their contribution to be part of the contribution of the entire group. They want to know that their individual participation will accumulated with all the other members’ contributions to provide something more robust than they could give by themselves. Is there some organic mechanism–a person or a descriptive system–that turns individuals’ thoughts and judgments into a collective thought, decision or action?

Finding the aggregate is the taking of everyone’s stories and using them to build a whole new story–one that makes sense to the whole group. This takes considerable wisdom. It allows groups to move forward. Finding the aggregate is not the same as reaching consensus. Consensus, when achieved, is little more than taking raw data and totaling it. Consensus, when not reached, translates to frustration and inaction.

Finding the aggregate … I loved reading that. It takes into account everyone in a group and mixes it up and creates a new story that is somehow larger than the sum of all the parts. Like when you’re cooking and you have to use 50 year old curry powder … or something. Or just cooking in general. The final product of any recipe is the aggregate of all the bits the cook has put in.

Then there was this from the chapter on power:

We concluded that power was not something that the three of us would possess just because we held the position of “owner.” We recognized that each of us would carry different roles and responsibilities, but these roles and responsibilities were not assigned because of position. Rather, they were matched to our strengths. No position anywhere in the company would hold power merely because of the post itself.

As our company has grown, “the project holds the power” has become one of our guiding phrases. When new employees are added, they are amazed at being given power by the project and that we, the owners, don’t stand in the way.

Does this mean that we are a “flat” organization, where everyone has the same degree of power at the same time? I’m not sure that a flat organization can truly exist and move foward. A project is always inviting a person to step forward and steward the power. And just as no one person holds positional power, neither do projects hold positional power. … Among people and among projects, the spirit is “revolving,” not “flat.”

As we discovered in my group, this requires both humility and trust on the part of the participants. It also requires buy in from everyone. But … if everyone will concede, leave their ego at the door and throw in with this, your group is then able to do remarkable things that no one would be able to do on their own … or even as a group with traditional positional power structures in place.

I think the finest chapter in the book is the chapter on Partners. Myers hits on the desire in the secular and faith cultures for holding each other accountable and shows how we so often miss the mark by driving people away instead of creating intimate atmospheres where vulnerability and encouragement are developed. He does this by developing the picture of accountants (accountability) vs. editors (edit-ability) and sums it up by saying this: “Accountants keep records. Editors wipe away errors while keeping the voice of the author.” (p. 140) Which would you want helping you follow Christ more closely? An accountant or an editor? Which kind of friend would you like helping you mirror Jesus more clearly … an accountant or an editor? Based on the scripture which tells us how he views our sin after Christ’s death and resurrection, which do we think God is?

In all, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is engaging with other people in thinking of new ways of “doing” church. It is extremely helpful for for verbalizing some of the ideas that don’t have form yet. Or giving the right words to the things that are working, but perhaps you’re using the wrong words over and over again. Or maybe you just want to see a new way of doing things because the old ways just aren’t working anymore.

Friday Five – Floods and Droughts
Jul 27th, 2007 by Sonja

Here in the UK we are struggling with floods, other parts of the world have similar problems without the infrastructure to cope with it, still others are badly affected by drought…. My son Jon is in Melbourne Australia where apparently it has been snowing ( yes it is winter but still!)…. With crazy weather in mind I bring you this weeks Friday 5…

1. Have you experienced living through an extreme weather event- what was it and how did you cope?

My parents moved to Kansas when I was six months old and we lived there until I was 6 years old. Many times during each summer the air raid siren would go off indicating that tornadoes had been spotted in the vicinity. So we had to go the basement. Ugh. Several times tornadoes did go through our community. It was soooo boring in the basement. When I was six I had a broken leg with a cast on and one time when we were confined to the basement, I took a blue crayon with me … so I colored the whole cast blue – hip to ankle. My mother was not pleased, but it did keep me quiet.

Tornado Watch

2. How important is it that we wake up to issues such as global warming?Uhhh … how important is it that we keep breathing?  or keeping drinking water?  I guess if we don’t mind breathing polluted air and drinking polluted water, then we can ignore global warming.  The earth is our home and just as we keep our individual home’s clean and livable, we need to keep the earth clean and livable … not too hot and not too cold.

3. The Christian message needs to include stewardship of the earths resources agree/ disagree?

I never understood how the Christian message could EXclude stewardship of the earth’s resources.  That just never made any sense to me whatsoever.  It makes more sense to me that Christians would be on the cutting edge of being green than anything else.  But maybe I shouldn’t use logic with faith so much.

And because it is summer- on a brighter note….

4. What is your favourite season and why?

Spring … because that’s when all the flowers come back and the world is all new and all.  Just say the word and it makes you happy.  Go on … say it, Spring!  See … you’re smiling now.


5. Describe your perfect vacation weather….

70 degrees, blue skies … for about 3 days, then a day of rain and 55 degrees, so I can stay inside and sleep in and read a good book next to a fire.

A Good Afternoon
Jul 26th, 2007 by Sonja

After interminable waiting for an MRI and then for the reading of the MRI, we got the news yesterday that LightGirl does indeed have a tear on the anterior horn of the tibial surface of the left meniscus.  Uhhhh … okay.  So, now we go see an orthopedist, right?  Right.  Her doctor gave me the names of three practices to call and the advice to call all of them and take the first available appointment.  Okay.  Where do I find the phone numbers?  In the phone book.  Huh?  The phone book?  That antique?

As chance would have it the first office had a cancellation for 1 p.m. this afternoon.  Alrighty then.  Dr. Gabriel Gluck.  I recognized the name because I see his office sign every time I leave my place of exercise and think that his name is unfortunate.  He has had a practice next to the hospital for as long as I can remember, because I’ve always wondered about his name.

When we appeared for her appointment the waiting room was empty.  She was wearing one of her many hockey t-shirts … this one happened to have the 2006 Stanley Cup champions on it.  Some minutes later another patient arrived; a 20’s-ish man and his tiny daughter … who was adorable and outgoing with her tiny pink Crocs on and carrying a bright orange balloon.  She started charming everyone in the place including LightGirl and I.  Her dad mentioned that he wouldn’t hold it against LightGirl for liking the ‘Canes, but he was a Canadiens fan as he was from Canada.  And so we began chatting about hockey and why LightGirl was even here, etc.  We were happy to discover that Dr. Gluck was originally Canadian!  Originally a hockey player!  And loves to treat hockey players.  Hah!!!  What serendipity.  Upon further conversation we also discovered that TinyCrockCharmer had been named for a hockey player and her father is a youth pastor at a local church.  It was a lovely visit to the doctor’s office and we hadn’t even seen the doctor yet.

Upon a thorough examination which included more x-rays done right there at the office, we were pleased to discover that LightGirl will NOT need surgery for this.  In fact, as it turns out, the meniscus tear is not the culprit at all.  She has hyper-mobile ligaments and her knee cap (patella) had become unstable because of all the activity during her hockey camp.  This caused a downward cycle of pain and instability between her quadricep and patella that continued until she couldn’t use her knee because her quad became increasingly weak which caused further instability, etc.  So, she needs physical therapy to rebuild the quad and stabilize the patella.  With some patience and persistence she should be back on the ice in about six weeks.  Yay for a good sports med doctor … from Canada who likes hockey players 😀

It was … all in all … a good afternoon.

A LightGirl Funny
Jul 26th, 2007 by Sonja

I got a joke in my inbox today from LightGirl … this is pretty funny.

A friend was in front of me coming out of church one day, and the preacher was standing at the door as he always is to shake hands. He grabbed my friend by the hand and pulled him aside.
Pastor said, “You need to join the Army of the Lord!”
My friend said, “I’m already in the Army of the Lord, Pastor.”
Pastor questioned, “How come I don’t see you except at Christmas and Easter?”
My friend *whispered* back, “I’m in the secret service.”

I laughed out loud when I read this. I can see the scene perfectly in my mind’s eye. Pastor, proud of his church and wanting lots of people to come and receive the benefits of being in relationship with God, and a community of faith. He sees a great opportunity for this man who visits but twice a year and wants good things for him. The man, on the other hand, feels pressure, to behave in certain ways, befriend certain people, belong to a certain club. Two perspectives … same end.

What if God did have a secret service though? How would a run of the mill pastor respond to that? Would we regular humans be able to put enough of our ego aside to allow for people coming and going in our midst, with no apparent loyalty to one church or another? Can a person belong to more than one church? Can a man obey more than one master? Oh … hey … what’s that question doing in there?

I’ve been thinking about the concept of church and community lately. It started with with this quote from Deitrich Bonhoeffer that Hamo posted about a week ago about vision:

God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man [or woman] who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly. He stands adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of brethren. He acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first an accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.” (Life Together)

In turn Hamo found it here.

For the last, I don’t know, 10 years? 15 years? there has been a real focus in western Christianity on “community.” Having community. Live in community. Let’s fellowship. I hate that sentence. First of all “fellowship” is not a verb, it’s a noun. It’s not something you do, it’s something you have, something you gain out of entirely different actions that require a sense of responsibility on your part.

That said, there’s been a focus on community within the western Church. This has probably been a reaction to the increased sense of isolation that people feel living in the suburbs. It has also been in response to the clear calls throughout the Bible that God gives to his people to live together and live in community with Him. I think it’s a good thing. I think that being with people, and living amongst them allows us to see ourselves in a myriad of different ways. We can only see ourselves in clear view when we rub up against different folks.

Can the ideal or vision of community become an idol? Might that be what Bonhoeffer is talking about above? I think it can. I think there are many communities of faith where the community has become an idol and the sanctity and health of that entity must be preserved at the cost of any individuals therein. It’s difficult in this day and age to speak of idols. We think of bronze calves and graven images. Statues, with aboriginal dances going on around them … drums and tribal music. That’s idol worship, right? Not something we sophisticates need to worry about, need we?

Oh, but we must. We have our graven images … our Excel documents and Powerpoint slides. Whole congregations dance to the tunes of financial reports, the beats drummed out low and slow. We must have our building funds, our new programs, new sound board and equipment for the worship band. Those are the obvious idols of the modern, institutional church. What about simpler forms of church or community … are they at risk?

I think Bonhoeffer might say, yes. I think any time an institution or entity or vision is put first before God’s will we have created an idol. I think that an idol might be created in a community of 6 people meeting in a home church … if that home church is based upon one person’s vision at the expense of others and not God’s vision as expressed by all, then it has the potential to become an idol.

So … I’ve been thinking about how do we, simple humans, protect ourselves from ourselves. How do we stop ourselves from begging Aaron to cast a bronze calf for us? That’s the real problem isn’t it? It’s not that the priesthood (senior pastors, leaders, etc.) is calling us to worship these idols … although they sometimes are. It’s that we also ask for them. We beg our leaders for visions. Following the fire just isn’t satisfying enough.

Could it be that we need to change the dance? This isn’t, afterall, a waltz. We’re involved in rhumba. We’ve become too disengaged from one another … leaders and followers. Perhaps we need to be more intimate again. Perhaps we ought to stop making tiny idols of our leaders and allow them to have lives like ours.

What do you think … are we making idols of church and our leaders? How can we stop this silly business?

How Much Difference Can A Day Make?
Jul 25th, 2007 by Sonja

Eight percent.

A day can make an eight percent difference.

Yesterday when I took this quiz I was only 75% addicted to blogging. Today … well … today I had to answer one question differently. It was the question which asked if I’d ever blown off something important because I was blogging. Yesterday I could answer that question with a “no.” This afternoon, I had to say, “yes.”

This morning I made plans to meet BlazingEwe at our place of exercise at 10 a.m. as we usually do on Wednesday mornings. I had breakfast. I puttered. I did a little reading. I found a blog post I’d begun the other day and was struck with inspiration at about 9:20.

The phone rang … it was BlazingEwe. “Where ARE you??” It was 10:15!!! Huh? …uh … uh … I’ll be RIGHT there in 10 minutes. I don’t know what happened … five minutes ago it was 9:30.

82%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?Free Online Dating from Mingle2

ht to Mak for this fun and games

My Grandfather Would Be Proud
Jul 23rd, 2007 by Sonja

HT to Mike Bursell and Sally Coleman (across “the pond” as it were) …

How to Win a Fight With a Conservative is the ultimate survival guide for political arguments

My Liberal Identity:

You are a Working Class Warrior, also known as a blue-collar Democrat. You believe that the little guy is getting screwed by conservative greed-mongers and corporate criminals, and you’re not going to take it anymore.

Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com

I’ll take that … it seems to fit me. The book looks interesting too …

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