Taking Suggestions
Aug 27th, 2008 by Sonja

As those of you who read this blog regularly know, I homeschool the LightChildren.  Well, a more appropriate description is … they engage in home learning and I throw books at their heads.  No.  That’s not right either.  But something happens around here and occasionally something like an education seems to sprout.

Well, we fell behind in history.  This is sorta bad since I’m just a hair shy of being a certified social studies teacher.  Three hairs shy of having a masters in secondary education with a focus in … history and social studies.  So you’d think that we’d just fly right through history.  Well, yes.  And, um, no … not so much.  You see, I have all these hang ups and pre-conceived ideas about how history has to be.  So we fell behind.  We’re scooting through the modern period this summer and starting over again with the ancients this fall.  It will be fun because now I’m finally teaching a teenager and all.

In very exciting news, LightGirl has decided that she’s going to work on her own theory of everything.  The books are spread out all over the sofa.  First, though, she needs to get over Lyme Disease.  It all began yesterday when she and LightBoy watched a documentary on the History Channel on the island of Atlantis.  They came up from the playroom and recounted the whole thing to me.  Silly mom … I thought they’d been watching cartoons and was plotting revenge.  In any case, as she watched the documentary, LightGirl began to notice that many of the stories from Atlantis bore a striking resemblance to all the myth stories she read when we studied the ancients several years ago.  Later in the day, she asked to go to the library so she can get some books on myths and Atlantis.  She is quite determined to find this “missing link” as it were.  She didn’t even realize that we’re getting ready to tackle the ancients again this year in history.  It was a pleasant surprise.  Her eyes were sparkling.  She’s busy plotting the next book she wants to write.

In the meantime, we’re just flying through modern history, giving it a lick and a promise.  The girl who lives in my heart and studied international relations twenty-five years ago is weeping with shame at the utter horror of raising children with so little knowledge of modern history and its importance to where we are now.  (Okay, weeping may be overstating it just a little … but … you get the picture.)  So, here’s the thing.  We have a family movie night tradition.  We love to watch movies together.  LightHusband makes delicious popcorn, we have a light dinner before hand, turn down the lights and snuggle in together.  It can be any night … but we watch the movie together and then talk about it for some time afterwards.  So I thought it would be a good idea to get some movies with historical content to watch for modern history.  But I’m running out of ideas.  I’m going to post my list below.  Please add yours in the comments.  I’m looking for any reasonable movies about history anywhere in the world from 1875 to the present.  Please remember the ages of my children are 11 and 14.  They’re used to some violence (we’ve watched BraveHeart together without the final death scene, and LightBoy has watched Saving Private Ryan) as long as it has purpose and context.  We try to stay away from sexual content … but well the Viv@ Vi@gra ads and KY ads on television these days leave little the imagination, so really … who cares.

Here are the movies I found:

Gandhi
Reds
Grapes of Wrath
We Were Soldiers
To Kill A Mockingbird
Judgment At Nuremberg

Rapture Ready – A Book Review
Aug 26th, 2008 by Sonja

Rapture Ready - image Rapture Ready!:  Adventures In The Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture by Daniel Radosh

This book was a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.  Or perhaps a harsh emetic on an empty stomach.   In any case, it should only be read if you’re ready to both laugh at what the church has become and stomach some fairly serious criticism of our pop culture and ministry life side show and what we’ve become over the last approximately 50 years.  Every other page I was either laughing out loud, or certain I could not read another word for the sheer mortification of it.

Daniel Radosh is a thirty something Brooklyn-ite and self-described Jewish humanist who decides to wander amongst the evangelical subculture for a year and see what it’s like.  He’s inspired to this adventure by attending a Christian music/rock festival with his mid-western teen-aged sister-in-law and her friends.

He went underground (so to speak) and wandered amongst evangelicals and fundamentalist Christians to write “… a book about popular culture.  It’s about entertainment, leisure and shopping.  It’s also about politics and the culture war that engulfs America.  And it’s a little bit–but not as much as you might think–about religion.”

The book begins at SHOUTfest, meanders through the 2006 International Christian Retail Show, visits the new Jerusalem of the Holy Land Experience in Orlando, Florida, interviews and spends time with editors at a Bible publishing group, time in and with the owner of an enormous Christian bookstore, met several Christian “stars” including Bibleman and Frank Perretti, but not Stephen Baldwin although he does include a very ingenious interview with Mr. Baldwin, and he goes to Cornerstone, but he ends with, of all things, sex and an ironic interview with Ted Haggard about how many times evangelical men have sex with their wives.

It’s an entertaining read.  While Mr. Radosh did not wave his Jewishness in anyone’s face as he sojourned in the evangelical landscape, neither did he hide the fact when questioned about his faith.  He was open about the responses to this information and I found those reactions interesting and sometimes painful.

In all as I read the book, I remembered the early days of my faith journey and how I didn’t want to be a Christian because I didn’t want to “check my brain at the door of the church.”  My perspective about what a Christian was and who they are was and is that “we are like sheep, gone astray.”  Not much has changed in the intervening 16 years.  Fortunately, I’ve discovered that I can be a Christian AND keep my brains.  Unfortunately, at least according to our pop culture, that’s not the general consensus.  Nor is it the consensus of this book … painful and funny as it was to read.  Unfortunately, as Frank Schaeffer (the younger) wrote in a recent Huffington Post article:

Evangelicals get direct messages from God. So who needs tradition, let alone government? That is why Evangelicals are opposed to all structure. They hate government, and they hate the idea of bishops telling them what it means to be a Christian. They hate the idea of health care for all that might involve someone (other than voices in their heads) telling them what to do. And they want the “right” to own guns, raise kids on myths and own that SUV and believe that more drilling for oil will bring down the price of gas. They also want God to speak directly to them, never mind a community of faith. And God seems to tell them weird stuff. So today’s crazy person is tomorrow’s best selling Rick Warren or Victoria and Joel Osteen. And how can they be crazy? Look how big their churches are! They measure up to the only real Evangelical creed-the ability to make money and be successful in commercial terms.

So … when some fruitcake like a James Dobson comes along and his organization calls for rainmaking to spoil the Obama speech, or the egomaniacal cult leader Victoria Osteen co-pastor of the biggest mega sect in Houston, allegedly assaults an airline flight attendant, there’s not much other Evangelicals can do who are embarrassed by their pet-buffoon-of-the-moment, other than to wring their hands. That’s because Evangelicalism is really just another version of American individualism and the entertainment industry wherein “freedom” is interpreted as the right to be a consumer and choose one’s favorite products from ski mobiles, jet skis, a trip to the Bahamas, a new-car or joining a the local mega church of the moment. Victoria Osteen today, Rick Warren yesterday, whatever wanders in tomorrow, with a book deal and nice way of talking.

A Theory Of Everything
Aug 25th, 2008 by Sonja

 … but I might revise it later

So, as you know I’ve been on vacation.  No television (thus no Olympics to squander my braincells).  Lots of porch time for pondering.  I’ve been doing a lot of reading.  I’ve been trying to catch up on my belated Ooze reading (and I have … sort of).  Then my brother came and landed a new book in my lap.  My mom insisted I read it … first … so I could send it on to my other brother and his wife.  Okay.

In Defense of FoodIt’s an easy read.  Well, the reading is easy and engaging.  But it pulls you into some deep deep thinking too.  Dangerous territory.  The book is “In Defense Of Food:  An Eater’s Manifesto” by Michael Pollan.  You might recognize him as the author of “Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “The Botany of Desire.”

As I’ve been reading this book, the Lakeland Revival and Todd Bentley have been unraveling rather publicly.  You can read blogger opinions about it in various places.  I (of course) have been following Kingdom Grace (start with Apostolic Bullshit and then read parts II and III), Brother Maynard, Bill Kinnon and iMonk (among others).  In a post the other day, Bro M asked the question whether or not Christians are more gullible than the rest of the general population.  And something that has been unsettled in my head clicked into place.  This post is a result of that click; perhaps it was an epiphany or maybe it’s just a rant … I’ll let you be the judge.

As I first jumped into the book I found it striking how closely it paralleled the Christian sub-culture.  Quotes such as this jumped out at me:

“The story of how the most basic questions about what to eat ever got so complicated reveals a great deal about the institutional imperatives of the food industry, nutrition science, and – ahem – journalism, three parties that stand to gain much from widespread confusion surrounding the most elemental question an omnivore confronts.  But humans deciding what to eat without professional guidance—something they have been doing with notable success since comgin down out of the trees—is seriously unprofitable if you’re a food company, a definite career loser if you’re a nutritionist, and just plain boring if you’re a newspaper editor or reporter.  (Or, for that matter, an eater.  Who wants to hear, yet again, that you should “eat more fruits and vegetables.”?)  And so like a large gray cloud, a great Conspiracy of Scientific Complexity has gathered around the simplest questions of nutrition—much to the advantage of everyone involved.  Except perhaps the supposed beneficiary of all this nutritional advice:  us, and our health and happiness as eaters.”

Then there’s this:

The first thing to understand about nutritionism is that it is not the same thing as nutrition.  As the “-ism” suggests, it is not a scientific subject, but an ideology.  Ideologies are ways of organizing large swaths of life and experience under a set of shared but unexamined assumptions.  This quality makes an ideology particularly hard to see, at least while it’s still exerting its hold on your culture.  A reigning ideology is a little like the weather—all pervasive and so virtually impossible to escape.  Still we can try.  (italics mine for emphasis)

Well, I won’t bore you with the quotes on all of the pages I’ve flagged, just tell you that this book looks like a veritable rainbow when you see the long page edge of it shut.

Michael Pollan does a masterful job telling us that it is highly likely that the source of many of our health ills (from diabetes to depression, heart diseases to hyper-activity) in the modern world is the so-called “Western Diet.”  That diet composed of refined sugar, refined grains and refined fats.  We have so depleted our soil that we are now both overweight and starving ourselves to death.  It’s the Modern paradox.

(Aside … I’m particularly fond of Michael because he outs soy as a modern evil.  I’ve been convinced for years that soy will be our downfall and refuse to consume it in any form if I can help it –I’m also highly allergic to it–but now you know what my tinfoil hat is 😉 )

So what, you would be correct in asking, does any of this have to do with Todd Bentley and the unraveling of the Lakeland Revival?  Nothing at all.  And … well … everything.

You see, a long time ago, and not so long ago when you look at it in the grand scheme of things, we humans relied on each other for advice.  We relied on our elders to teach us how to walk in the world, how to behave, what were good things to eat, what weren’t, who the charlatans were and who they weren’t.  We lived in close community with one another.  Sometimes that was painful and ugly.  Sometimes it was beautiful.  But regardless, the advice we got from each other was given by people who knew one another with some level of intimacy and (here’s the important part) the giver of the advice didn’t have a horse in the race.  In other words, the giver of the advice wasn’t going to receive remuneration or paybacks for any kind of change in the behavior of the receiver of the advice.

Things have changed rather dramatically in the last 100 or so years.  Now we pay for advice that used to come from the elders in our communities.  Not only do we pay for it, but in paying for it, we subsidize those who stand to gain the most from our receiving their words of wisdom.  We change, and they get paid twice.  Something is amiss.

Or this example:  meningitis.  A drug company has developed a vaccine for meningitis.  I know this because LightGirl recently went in for a physical.  She was offered a vaccination for meningitis.  We took it.  But I was blind-sided by it.  I’m not so certain it was necessary or right.  The doctor presented it as a good thing, the insurance company covered it.  So … no big deal.  Not really.  But she’s young enough that she’ll need a booster before college and no one really knows the long term effects of this vaccine.  Really.  And what is this vaccinating against?  What are the realistic chances that she’ll contract viral meningitis?  Uh … slim and none … realistically.  When I look at it, the doctor had every reason to “sell” this vaccine to me and the drug company had every reason to “sell” it to him.   I had virtually no opportunity to sit back and peruse the situation from a dispassionate vantage point and the doctor?  He had horse in the race.  I was not getting unbiased information from him.  Now he’s a good doctor, LightGirl is not disadvantaged by having this vaccine that we know of.  My point is … we don’t know enough.  I don’t have enough information to make an informed decision.  I only have enough information to make a decision that benefits the person giving me advice.

I can never have enough information to make that informed decision … because I cannot get outside the box of the medical ideology that permeates our culture to find that kind of information.

Here’s where I find my theory of everything in the nexus between this book and Lakeland.  My generation (Gen X believe it or not) and Gen Y and Millenials and maybe even Boomers and really anyone alive today have been raised to be distrustful of their elders.  We’ve all … all of us … Christians, atheists, Hindus, whoever … religion has nothing to do with this … been taught to believe that only professionals can teach us what to do next.  That’s why we look to professionals in every area of our life.  We have professional Christians, professional nutritionists, professional child rearing experts (of every stripe) … you name the issue … we have professionals to tell us what to do.  Often confusing professionals who dole out conflicting advice which changes every few months or years.  So we must keep changing the stuff we purchase … the gadgets, gee-gaws and books … more and more books on every subject under the sun.

The reality is that most of us know … we know … what to do.  We know what’s best and good and right and true.  We know the right way to be and how to be that way.  Or maybe we don’t … but an expert is cannot tell us the best road to choose.  Only someone who knows us can give us advice.  Only someone who is intimate with what is important to us, can ask the right questions.   Sometimes we do know in our heart of hearts that when Sara Lee markets a loaf of bread as “Soft & Smooth Whole Grain White” bread it’s an oxymoronic crock of smelly dung so deep and wide that not even God’s grace can cross it.  We don’t buy it and we shouldn’t buy it … not literally and not metaphorically.

It’s not that we (Christians … or anyone else) are necessarily gullible.  It’s that we’ve been taught to suspend our native intelligence over and over and over again on so many issues.  We’ve been taught by our governments and our religious leaders; our politicians and our teachers to listen to the experts.  Listen to the experts and the professionals … they know what they’re talking about.

But they all have a horse in the race.  No one ever told us that part.  They all … every DAMN ONE OF THEM has something to gain by getting the lot of us to suspend our good judgment and believe their twisted un-truths.

So … are Christians gullible?

Not any more gullible than the Congress of the United States who believed George W. Bush when he said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, yet it patently did not … according to every single unbiased study that had been done.   Hell, I knew it didn’t … a stay at home mom in Virginia.

Not any more gullible than the hordes of people who believed Bill Clinton when he said he hadn’t had sex with Monica Lewinsky or hadn’t smoked marijuana because he hadn’t inhaled.

The problem is not that we’re gullible.  The problem is that we’re listening to the wrong “experts.”  For hundreds, even thousands of years we listened to people who knew us and were in relationship with us.  People who know, for example, that I get wigged out when faced with unexpected trouble (like a car breaking down on my way to college is likely to ruin my entire college career).  I have learned over time how to manage those issues better, but my elders who know me, also know to ignore some of my outbursts as, “she’ll get past it.”  Not, “let’s medicate that.”  Or they might ask a few pertinent questions, such as, “How important is this?”   Now we think we need to see an “expert” or a “professional” about the many different issues in our lives … these experts, these professionals have a vested interest in “selling” us something … a way of life, a medicine, a book, something …

So, the next time you get all hyped up about something, remind yourself that you live in a capitalist system.  You do.  Every thing.  Every damn thing costs.  So when you ask for or receive advice from an expert or a professional, ask yourself what does that person stand to gain from their advice … even if it appears to be as wholesome as a revival in a church.

Feel – A Book Review
Aug 19th, 2008 by Sonja

Feel - Image

Feel:  The Power Of Listening To Your Heart by Matthew Elliott

This book was a breath of fresh air for me.  Sort of.  Matthew Elliott wants very badly to believe what he’s writing.  But I never quite got the feeling that he really did.  And I want to believe it too.  Whenever there’s been a dust up in my life, I’ve heard this: “You’re too emotional.  Why can’t you ________?” Fill in the blank with one of the following:

  • get a thicker skin
  • blow it off
  • ignore them/him/her; they’ll get bored and quit
  • just calm down
  • stop being so irrational/emotional/unreasonable

So it was a huge relief to read a book that was devoted to the idea that emotions are not scary.  Emotions are not bad.  Indeed, emotions are a necessary barometer that help us navigate and negotiate through life.

Mr. Elliott’s premise is that, contrary to popular psychology, ancient Greek philosophy and most modern thought, emotions were and are to be trusted.  They are an inner compass to the dance of the Holy Spirit.  It is when we cease to listen to our emotions that we are most at risk for not hearing from God.   He even laid to rest the horrible train visual that has scourged so many of us for so long:

Fact Faith Feeling

The promise of God’s Word, the Bible — not our feelings — is our authority. The Christian lives by faith (trust) in the trustworthiness of God Himself and His Word. This train diagram illustrates the relationship among fact (God and His Word), faith (our trust in God and His Word), and feeling (the result of our faith and obedience) (John 14:21).

The train will run with or without a caboose. However, it would be useless to attempt to pull the train by the caboose. In the same way, as Christians we do not depend on feelings or emotions, but we place our faith (trust) in the trustworthiness of God and the promises of His Word.

Thus have thousands been coerced into distrusting their innermost compass.  There is a grain of truth to these statements, but there is also a pound is dishonesty.  Sorting it out takes finesse and maturity.  Neither of which seem to be encouraged in the church of today.

Matthew Elliott takes great pains to prove his premise … but he does so in a very rational, logical manner.  I found this both comforting and paradoxical at the same time.  He makes the fine point that the notion that emotions cannot be trusted dates back to Plato and thus may be traced through Augustine in our church history.  He then traces its path through modern psychology and Darwinian thought to the present.  But the reality in the Bible is that God, His people and our relationship with Her are all rooted in emotion from the very beginning.

For those breaking free of any kind of emotional straight-jacket this is a must read.  Mr. Elliott also has a blog and throughout the book encourages participation on it.   There is also a website with study guide resources for individual and small group study (this book would be fine for both).

Things To Come
Aug 15th, 2008 by Sonja

Thanks to all for your kind words and encouragement for our quilt yesterday.  BlazingEwe and I are very happy with that achievement, but we have plans to make another just for us using color in another more dramatic fashion.  We play with color in the way that some people play with marbles.  And it gives us great pleasure indeed.

So she and I and another friend are starting a quilting company.  Yes, I’m saying that in my outloud voice and with great trepidation.  We actually have a customer and are working on our first consignment quilt.  It’s due on or before October 31, the recipient’s twenty-first birthday.  His mother has asked us to recover and reconstruct a quilt he recieved when he was a baby.  He still sleeps with this quilt.  Wrapped around his head.  He seems like an otherwise average well-adjusted twenty year old … who gets attached.  Sweet.  In any case, when we have our website up (soon), I will post it here and you can see what I do some of the other parts of my day.

I won’t be around much this weekend, it’s the annual fam damily get-together at the lake.  My brothers arrive today.  My parents arrive tomorrow.  We (of course) have been here for two weeks.  Well, LightUncle2 arrived last night with my oldest niece; his wife and youngest daughter stayed back home for a variety of reasons.  LightUncle1 arrives today with his wife and two children.  We’re all going to watch LightGirl scrimmage at her hockey camp this afternoon.  Tomorrow – blueberry picking in preparation for the annual pancake cookoff on Sunday morning.  The nieces and nephews have such high standards you see.

And, just in case you were wondering at the paucity of Olympic pondering here.  There’s no television set in the cottage at the lake, so I have not watched any Olympic coverage.  I’ve read about three articles.  But otherwise, I am an Olympic-free zone in my mind.  It’s sort of nice.

Have a great weekend and I’ll “see” you on the flip side (as they say).

We Interrupt This Blog …
Aug 14th, 2008 by Sonja

… for a special announcement.

Some of you may remember a period of whining and complaining earlier this year when BlazingEwe and I were involved in making my/our guild’s raffle quilt (pattern is Shakespeare In The Park, copyright by Judy Martin in The Creative Pattern Book).  It was finished in June, quilted and everything.  We’re kinda happy with it.

So we entered it in our county fair …

Shakespeare In The Park

… and WON … Best Of Show AND First Place in our category (made by a group).

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Fully Known And Fully Loved – August Synchroblog on Poverty
Aug 13th, 2008 by Sonja

“It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.” Mother Theresa

That’s a pretty well known and ubiquitous quote by Mother Theresa.  It’s been co-opted by the folks who believe that life begins at conception and would like to pass laws to that effect in our country.  I still remember the sense of shock I had the first time I saw it on a bumper.

I know people who’ve had abortions.  Some are very close to me.  Is that really what they’d done?  I had to think it through.  I knew their reasons very intimately.  Most had gone on to have children later in adulthood.  Having the child would have been disastrous for both child and mother at the time of the pregnancy.  Some of the pregnancies were the result of rape, others the result of very protected intercourse but the protection simply failed.  In every case, mothers (and fathers) go on to mourn the loss eternally.  It is a drastic decision made during a time of crisis in a situation that is kept secret in most cases.  Very few terminated pregnancies are made known before they are finished.

It seems to me that it’s become far too easy to make snap judgements, and reduce a nuanced topic, such as abortion, to a pithy sentence and slap it on a bumper sticker to make your sentiments known to everyone else.  So I was wondering the other day, which was the real poverty?  Who is impoverished?  Where are we now that we have polarized ourselves into tidy camps.  Right and left.  Red and blue.  Take it or leave it.  For us; against them.

Then LightHusband sent me this story about a feral child discovered in Florida a few years ago.  Beware if you read the whole story.  It’s very graphic and full of lurid details about the filth the little girl lived in.  Terrible really.  It’s likely that her biological mother is ill and or at least terribly self-centered.  Because of the neglect she suffered, this girl may never be able to talk or communicate on a meaningful level.  Her brain may never develop past six or seven years old in terms of her ability to process information.  No one really knows.  There have only been two or three feral children in recorded history.  One in France in the 1880’s and another in California in in the 1970’s that were reported in this news story.

Don’t for a moment make the leap that I am suggesting this child would have been better off aborted.  Not at all.  No, I am suggesting that we are all impoverished for not knowing.  Not knowing our neighbors.  Not loving our neighbor.  When we do know, we do not take their hands and walk with them, we call CPS.  We rely on the law to transform, rather than relationships.  We want to make laws, call policemen, stand at an arm’s length away and point out the flaws in one another.

What struck me most about this story was the unknowing.  The secrecy.  The darkness.  The lack of love.  That is the nexus that this story has in common with mothers who face the choice to terminate a pregnancy.  They make choices in secrecy, without the love and support of most of their network, in crisis; hard, difficult choices that hurt everyone including themselves.

The biological mother in the Florida case had been trying unsuccessfully to keep her family together.  She failed catastrophically.  When the little girl was found both mother and daughter were nearly in a catatonic state but with different origins.  The mother was arrested and convicted for breaking various Florida laws concerning child welfare.  She was given a suspended sentence with the proviso that she rescind her maternal rights.  So the little girl has been adopted into a home with very caring parents, who are doing their best to help her develop on a more normal trajectory.  In many respects the story has a happy ending.  The little girl is learning, growing, loving and is loved.  Her biological mother is alone.  Alone with regrets, blame and an empty home.  Many would say that she earned all of that and then some.  Maybe my heart is too soft.  But then I read Larry Vaughn and I wonder what might have been …

My theme becomes concrete: What would it be like to be known fully and loved completely? Most people know of this tension. Most adults, anyway. Fortunate children know what this is like. But because they don’t know anything different they take the situation for granted. Somewhere along the way to adulthood we start putting price tags on people and become capitalists of humanity. We also pick up a few undesirable qualities along the way.Another meteor.

I am known and I am loved. But not completely. I think my brain would melt from sheer pleasure if the confluence of these two principles ever occurred.

The air is brisk and I cannot hear another sound except for my breathing.

Another meteor.

And then I feel it. I am being watched. My anxiety rises. You have had this feeling before, haven’t you? Out of necessity I have become good at paying attention to my surroundings. It is a casualty of my profession.

I look around expecting to see a deer or a raccoon. Maybe a person. Maybe (it’s 2:00am) the dead owner of the abandoned house. Nothing.

Another meteor.

My anxiety ebbs but the feeling of being watched doesn’t.

I used to enjoy watching my girls play when they didn’t know I was there. Sometimes they would talk to their dolls or draw pictures or play house. Sometimes they would sing silly songs or have conversations with the air. I always felt a sense of magic when I could witness this play unnoticed. When they played without an audience I always got a sense of purity. Whatever they were doing or saying was complete truth. If you’re a parent you know exactly what I am talking about. Like the feeling of sneaking into the movies, I had a sense that I shouldn’t be here. I wasn’t invited to the tea party or the dance or the play. But as a parent, I couldn’t look away. This always, always made me smile. I tried so hard to be quiet. Partly because I didn’t want to interrupt the beauty. Partly because I didn’t want the tea party to end, which it surely would if my presence were made known.

Another meteor.

My feeling of being watched begins to transform. My mind begins to slow down and I stop thinking about thinking about thinking. I am quiet. And still. And small.

Another meteor. Another tear of St. Lawrence.

I am being watched. And the person watching is smiling. Hiding behind a cosmic door. Peeking around the corner.

Another meteor. Another tear.

I am not alone.

Another tear.

My brain begins to melt.

*****************************************************************************

This is a synchroblog on poverty. Please read what my fellow bloggers have to say on the subject below:

Hokey Pokey – Book Review
Aug 12th, 2008 by Sonja

Hokey Pokey

Hokey Pokey: Curious People Finding What Life’s All About by Matthew Paul Turner

I remember being small and pestering my mother with “what if” questions til she’d finally cry “Uncle.”  “We’re not playing the ‘what if’ game today.”  I was a curious child and have continued to be a curious adult.

It was that curiosity that lead me to chase down God; only to find He hadn’t exactly been hiding.  I simply hadn’t been looking very effectively.   No matter, we met up.  That’s the good news.

The bad news is that the many of God’s messengers here in earth have done their level best to squelch my inborn curiosity about life, living and all things to with the here and the hereafter.  I tried to contain it for a long time.  Then I tried to channel it into respectable outlets, but I’m a woman so there aren’t really any for me.  I taught youth group, I taught women’s classes, but they all got too deep and I continued to ask too many questions.  Silly me.

So I liked this book and I didn’t like this book.  And for the same reason.  It challenged me to get off my duff once more and dance.  Life’s been sorta painful these last couple of years.  The last few times I’ve “put my left arm in and shook it all about …” I got it ripped off and clubbed with the wet end (as my grandfather was fond of saying).  I’m not so anxious to try again.  I’m not even certain I want to listen to the music at this point, but let me finish telling you about the book.

I do highly recommend Hokey Pokey (although I really wish for a better title) for those seeking validation of their curious nature and for those beginning to ask questions but wonder if it’s okay (yes, it is).

Honestly, when I first cracked this book open I wondered how much there could be to write on the subject of curiosity.  Mr. Turner takes the subject far more seriously than his title suggests.  Along the way he manages to deal with calling, the silence of God, mentors, negative relationships, community, waiting on God, our image in God as well as several other fairly deep topics (these are what struck me).  Far from being a light read, I found this to be challenging on a level that I wasn’t anticipating.  Hokey Pokey would make a good book for a small group study for a group that has been together for some time and knows one another well.  It would also make a good book to read and journal through with a friend or on one’s own (as I plan to do later this fall).  It also made for enjoyable reading on it’s own and I found a lot that I simply relished; not the least of which was that many places were familiar as Mr. Turner lived and worked in the DC area and he managed the coffee house where I used to go to church.

But Wait, There’s More
Aug 11th, 2008 by Sonja

I wrote the other day that if Jesus walked the earth today, I don’t think He’d vote.  When I did that, I forgot something very important.  It’s the unwritten code of Christians.  Peggy, my cHesed sister, reminded me of it in the comments.  It’s this:  when we say we think that Jesus would do this or that, by implication we often mean that other Christians ought to do this or that.   Most often that’s true.  Jesus is our model and we, who are serious disciples of Jesus, want to do what Jesus would do.  However, I don’t believe it’s true when it comes to voting and I’ll explain why.

So, first of all, I’m standing by my assertion that IF Jesus were here today (instead of 2000 years ago) he probably wouldn’t vote.  There are a number of reasons for this, and if you’re interested you can read that earlier post.  But primarily I believe that Jesus put relationships first.  If he were to pick a candidate, vote for a candidate then it would be all over.  For ever and a day, people would use that information as a weapon.  It would be power used for the wrong purposes.

Here’s the thing, though, Jesus lived and walked the earth during an entirely different age.  He lived during a theocratic empire.  So the option to vote was not available.  I’m doing what we in the LightHouse fondly refer to as MSU.  That is, Making Stuff Up.  Yes, I’m doing so with a lot of fairly decent assumptions (or so I like to think).  But it’s still, in the end, Made Up.   A Fairy Tale of the first order.  We have to look at what Jesus did do.  He didn’t vote, but he didn’t have the opportunity.

Here’s what He did do.  He turned His back on using power.  He rejected power in favor of transformational relationships.  Here’s what I’d like to suggest.  There is a way to be a disciple of Jesus and an active responsible  member of our representative government.  That is to stop.  Stop being manipulative. Stop striving to be correct.  Stop accruing power.  Be humble.  Vote your own conscience and allow others to vote theirs.  I remember when I was a child it was considered impolite to discuss whom and what you were voting for.  I recently discovered to my great surprise that my grandparents were staunch Republicans and were convinced that the election of FDR would lead to the downfall of the United States in 1940.  I never knew who they voted for, but what they stood for was another thing entirely.

Critique the system, the candidates, the platforms … but your vote is your own.  And perhaps your choice should be a private matter.  Here’s a great example of that from fellow Scriber Charles Lehardy:

I like Barack Obama. He is bright, refreshingly articulate, a moral and genuine Christian man with a sincere desire to bring change to America. As a conservative Democrat, I disagree with Obama’s vision for American on a number of points, but find I agree with him on a great deal. I don’t know yet who I’ll vote for and I won’t be using this space to lobby for my favorite candidate.

Weighing pros and cons, articulating what is important to ourselves, etc. is one thing, manipulating that and declaring it to be “the will of God, ordained by Scripture,” is another thing entirely.  It smacks of subordinating Love and transformational relationship to power.  This creates not the Kingdom of God, but a fiefdom of men.  More laws will not create a more moral populace, neither will more money.

So yes, we should vote, and we should (as much as is possible) vote our consciences.  Will we find candidates who represent our values?  It’s not likely that a politician will do that 100% especially on narrowly defined issues, however, chasing power and wealth, using them to further our own ends will not bring about Kingdom ends no matter how much we’d like to think it will. Even God knew that transforming hearts takes more than Law, it takes Love.

The Church and The Vote
Aug 6th, 2008 by Sonja

Yesterday I wrote the story about the nexus of my political perspective and my faith.  It has been a place that’s been filled with tension for a very long time.  After all, I live in a state where tobacco is king.  And football is a prince.  It’s the Bible Belt, sweetie and I shouldn’t expect anything different.

And yet perhaps I should.  For all the sermons, from the literal pulpit and the bully pulpit, that I’ve heard about how Christians are to be in the world but not of the world, it would seem that we ought to be somehow different.  Yet we are not.  We look just like everyone else.  We fight our neighbors, sue our co-workers and friends, we marry and get divorced at the same rates, according to some studies abortion rates are actually higher among evangelicals and fundamentalists (p. 160-161, We The Purple … I tried to find the original article that Ms. Ford quoted, but the magazine website is no longer available).  We look for ways out of the Sermon on the Mount, rather than how to live in it.  In short, according to all available data, we are just like everybody else except that “we’re also busy for a few hours on Sunday morning.” (I can’t remember where I heard that, but it stuck and it’s sorta funny.)  For many of us we also have a more than annoying habit of being supercilious, hard headed, and power hungry.  The reputation that Christians have is unsightly and unworthy.  What we’re doing is not working.  So perhaps we ought to try something else.

So take a step back from all of this with me and let’s look at this from another perspective.  For the past week or so The Church of England has gathered some of it’s top leaders and thinkers together at the Lambeth Conference.  They did something new this year and invited a rabbi to speak at their gathering.  I’m indebted to Mike Todd at Waving or Drowning for linking to the full text of Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks remarks.  Reb Sacks spoke on the nature of covenant and the context it gives to our lives.  Here’s the link to the full text, I highly recommend you download them for yourself and read them.  I’m going to wrestle with a couple of quotes below.

And let’s begin our journey at the place we passed on our march last Thursday, in Westminster. It was such a lovely day that I imagine meeting up with my granddaughter on the way back and taking her to see some of the sights of London. We’d begin where we were, outside Parliament, and I imagine her asking what happens there, and I’d say, politics. And she’d ask, what’s politics about, and I’d say: it’s about the creation and distribution of power.

And then we’d go to the city, and see the Bank of England, and she’d ask what happens there and I’d say: economics. And she’d say: what’s economics about, and I’d say: it’s about the creation and distribution of wealth.

And then on our way back we’d pass St Paul’s Cathedral, and she’d ask, what happens there, and I’d say: worship. And she’d ask: what’s worship about? What does it create and distribute? And that’s a good question, because for the past 50 years, our lives have been dominated by the other two institutions: politics and economics, the state and the market, the logic of power and the logic of wealth. The state is us in our collective capacity.  The market is us as individuals.  And the debate has been: which is more effective? The left tends to favour the state.  The right tends to favour the market.  And there are endless shadings in between.

But what this leaves out of the equation is a third phenomenon of the utmost importance, and I want to explain why. The state is about power.  The market is about wealth.  And they are two ways of getting people to act in the way we want.  Either we force them to – the way of power.  Or we pay them to – the way of wealth.

But there is a third way, and to see this let’s perform a simple thought experiment. Imagine you have total power, and then you decide to share it with nine others.  How much do you have left?  1/10 of what you had when you began. Suppose you have a thousand pounds, and you decide to share it with nine others.  How much do you have left?  1/10 of what you had when you began.  But now suppose that you decide to share, not power or wealth, but love, or friendship, or influence, or even knowledge, with nine others.  How much do I have left?  Do I have less?  No, I have more; perhaps even 10 times as much.

The Chief Rabbi is on to something here. The state is about the distribution and manipulation of power. The market is about the distribution and manipulation of wealth/money.  Where does the church fit into this equation?

So that’s what I want to write about today.  For the last 20 or 30 years, evangelicals have posited that they could play the political power game and play it well.  We’ve seen organizations such as the Moral Majority (headed by Jerry Falwell) and the Christian Coalition (headed by Ralph Reed) come and go.  Up until very recently, (as in the campaign cycle of 2006) it was a foregone conclusion that the evangelical voting block would vote Republican.  That is slowly starting to change.  Those thinly veiled voter information guides produced by Concerned Women for America and Christian Coalition are (hopefully) a thing of the past.

So, the question still remains, who would Jesus vote for?  Or would He even vote?  It’s my belief that He probably would not participate in the political process.  The state is about the creation, distribution and manipulation of power.  It works hand in glove with the market.  The market exists to create, distribute and manipulate wealth.  Both of those operations are/were an anathema to Jesus:

The Holy Spirit led Jesus into the desert, so that the devil could test him. After Jesus had gone without eating for forty days and nights, he was very hungry. Then the devil came to him and said, “If you are God’s Son, tell these stones to turn into bread.” Jesus answered, “The Scriptures say:

`No one can live only on food. People need every word that God has spoken.’ ”

Next, the devil took Jesus to the holy city and had him stand on the highest part of the temple. The devil said, “If you are God’s Son, jump off. The Scriptures say:

`God will give his angels orders about you. They will catch you in their arms, and you won’t hurt your feet on the stones.’ ”

Jesus answered, “The Scriptures also say, `Don’t try to test the Lord your God!’ ”

Finally, the devil took Jesus up on a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms on earth and their power. The devil said to him, “I will give all this to you, if you will bow down and worship me.”

Jesus answered, “Go away Satan! The Scriptures say: `Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.’ ”

Then the devil left Jesus, and angels came to help him. (Matthew 4:1-10)

Every place in the gospels where Jesus was offered the chance to have power and/or wealth he passed it by.  Even when that power would serve a so-called higher purpose.  He knew that in the end, the power would end up serving itself rather than the purpose.  It always does.  Power consumes itself.  Power becomes it’s own end and requires more and more fuel for its engine.  Jesus knew that.

He could have come as a political king.  In fact, the Jews of the day fully expected that.  That’s what they were looking for and why so many missed out on their Messiah.  He wasn’t what they were looking for.  They were looking for their savior to come and overthrow the Romans, give them back their Promised Land, their Holy City, their Tabernacle, their Temple, their status before G-d.  They’d been looking, watching, waiting for hundreds of years, tens of generations … waiting.

But it didn’t happen the way everyone expected.  And here’s the thing.  We can’t fully comprehend how things went down in those first century days when Jesus walked the earth.  Because everything changes once you know the end of the story.

Have you ever read a book and gotten about 4 chapters in, then read the last chapter?  I have.  Sometimes I’ll just read the last page.  I just need to know who’s still alive at the end of the book.  Once in a while I’ll read the whole last chapter.  It completely changes the way you read the book.  The whole plot of the book comes into play in a different way.  You understand different nuances of character and see things differently.  You begin to understand how things work together differently.  It all makes more sense when you know the outcome.

In the same way, we know the end of Jesus’ story from the beginning.  We know  that He came born as a baby in a stable, heralded by shepherds, spent part of his childhood in Egypt, got separated from his parents at the Temple as a boy, etc, etc., etc.  We know all of his story now.  But at the time, it all came out piecemeal.  One little bit at a time and must have been quite bewildering.  Even down to His death and resurrection.  Which were one more bit of evidence of Jesus laying aside power in place of relationship.

Now, it’s fairly easy to rationalize and say that, “Well … He’s God.  I’m not.  I need to keep some power for myself and for others … how else will we get along in this fallen world?”  Well, that’s a fair question.  How else will you or get along in this world?

Power is a zero-sum game.  That is, in order to keep some for yourself, someone else has to lose some.  Wealth is also a zero-sum game.  In our capitalist culture we excel in zero-sum games.  We love them.  We begin teaching them as soon as our children have consciousness.  Here are the things that are not zero-sum games … that is if you want to get some for yourself, you have to share it with others (which is counter-intuitive in our capitalist culture):  knowledge, influence, love, kindness.  Or maybe you don’t necessarily “have” to share with others, but the sharing with others will not in any way diminish the amount that you have and it will likely increase what you have.

The problem is that the church, from the time of Constantine, has engaged in the affairs of the state and rationalized it by saying that it’s for a greater good.  Sometimes waxing, sometimes waning, the church has made greater and lesser grabs at power in the state.  Remember, the state is concerned with the creation, distribution and manipulation of power.  What did Jesus do with power?  Every single time it was offered to him?  He turned his back on it.  Now there’s a good reason for that.  Which can summed up in one word … possibly two.  But for now the one word is, covenant.  No, two.  Covenantal relationship.  Jesus has a covenantal relationship with us, individually and as a group (His Bride).

Once again, I’ll let Chief Rabbi Sacks explain this:

One way of seeing what’s at stake is to understand the difference between two things that look and sound alike but actually are not, namely contracts and covenants.

In a contract, two or more individuals, each pursuing their own interest, come together to make an exchange for mutual benefit.  So there is the commercial contract that creates the market, and the social contract that creates the state.

A covenant is something different.  In a covenant, two or more individuals, each respecting the dignity and integrity of the other, come together in a bond of love and trust, to share their interests, sometimes even to share their lives, by pledging their faithfulness to one another, to do together what neither can achieve alone.

A contract is a transaction.  A covenant is a relationship.  Or to put it slightly differently: a contract is about interests.  A covenant is about identity.  It is about you and me coming together to form an ‘us’. That is why contracts benefit, but covenants transform.

So economics and politics, the market and the state, are about the logic of competition.  Covenant is about the logic of co-operation.

For the last 20 to 30 years the church has busied itself with the logic of competition rather than the logic of co-operation. We are to be in the business (as it were) of transformation. Go back to the beginning of Reb Sacks speech, where he said that “The state is about power.  The market is about wealth.  And they are two ways of getting people to act in the way we want.  Either we force them to – the way of power.  Or we pay them to – the way of wealth.”  The liberal end of the spectrum in our country tends to favor the state, the conservative the market.  And in the church (on both sides) we’ve bought into this.  We’ve agreed with the rest of the world that there are only two ways to get people to do things.  And it may just be time to admit we’ve been wrong.  We’ve been trying the way of the world in different forms and fashions for 2000 years.  And we’ve tried especially dogmatically in this country for the past 30 years.  It has not been a crashing success.

So I’m suggesting that perhaps Jesus wouldn’t even vote.  He eschewed all power in favor of relationship.  He worked the logic of co-operation in order to transform.  I’m beginning to wonder what it might look like if we, his followers, started to do that as well.  If we stopped worrying so much about being right (as in correct, no matter what sort of correct you might be talking about), and started worrying about our relationships with our families and our friends and just made that enough for each day.   If we engaged in the logic of cooperation and love.  If we became truly people of covenant and understand what that means, both the responsibility and the privileges, I just can’t imagine the supernatural “Power” that it would unleash.  None of us would gain anything by it.  We’d all individually likely lose.  But until we’re willing to look past what’s immediately in front of us and see what Jesus was talking about we will remain concerned with the small things of this world.   We have to come together, be able to look at a larger horizon, and be known finally for our love for each other as He said in order for any of this to come true.

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