November 2005 Archives

O'Reilly: "Every company in America should be o ... [Media Matters]

O'REILLY: What's happened is frightening. A legal assault by the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] combined with the media that blatantly promotes secularism has succeeded in convincing some Americans that the words 'Merry Christmas' are inappropriate while celebrating the national holiday of Christmas.

This, of course, is nuts. Anyone offended by the words 'Merry Christmas' has problems not even St. Nicholas could solve.

Every company in America should be on its knees thanking Jesus for being born. Without Christmas, most American businesses would be far less profitable; more than enough reason for businesses to be screaming Merry Christmas.

Here's the
Video provided by Media Matters

Now there's a novel idea (really, not so novel....it's been almost implied for eons) : that Jesus was born in order to generate business. There's the gospel according to O'Reilly, and the "apostles" of the airwaves that pollute Christian Faith with unabashed consumerism/Americanism/free-marketism.

My two young'uns, Brian (16) and Kelli (7)

Juan Cole on George's illusions about being remmebered fondly as a "war president"

Informed Comment

Let me finish with a word to W. As for your legacy two decades from now, George, let me clue you in on something--as a historian. In 20 years no Iraqis will have you on their minds one way or another. Do you think anyone in Egypt or Israel is still grateful to Jimmy Carter for helping bring to an end the cycle of Egyptian-Israeli wars? Jimmy Carter powerfully affected the destinies of all Egyptians and Israelis in that key way. Most people in both countries have probably never heard of him, and certainly no one talks about the first Camp David Accords anymore except as a dry historical subject. The US pro-Israel lobby is so ungrateful that they curse Carter roundly for all the help he gave Israel. Human beings don't have good memories for these things, which is why we have to have professional historians, a handful of people who are obsessed with the subject. And I guarantee you, George, that historians are going to be unkind to you. You went into a major war over a non-existent nuclear weapons program. Presidents' reputations don't survive things like that. Historians are creatures of documents and precision. A wild exaggeration with serious consequences is against everything they stand for as a profession. So forget about history and destiny and the divine will. You are at the helm of the Exxon Valdez and it is headed for the shoals. You can't afford to daydream about future decades.

Referring to an interview with Seymour Hersh by Wolf Blitzer

Hersh goes on to tell Blitzer that Bush disparages any information about Iraq that does not fit his preconceived notions, and that he feels he has a (perhaps divine) mission to bring democracy to the country. Hersh's inside sources paint a president who is detached and in the grip of profound utopian delusions, which Hersh charitably characterizes as "idealistic."

See Flash Video of part 3 of my conversation with Gordon Cosby, where he talks about how he thinks I've been "ruined"

Finding those who are our so called "opposites," and talking about spiritual things, can feel even more intimidating. Basically we get tripped up by fear. We fear seeming arrogant and disrespectful. We fear being ridiculed. We fear being swallowed up by the pain of seeing so directly into the dismal face of poverty or privilege. We fear being paralyzed by our guilt over the discrepancies between us. These fears are legitimate and need to be felt. And then we must go anyway.

Our guiding question will be, where would Jesus go? Most of these places will be where the privileged and connected are the ones on the outside.

Look around your town or county. Where are people struggling for a better life? Where have people been abandoned? Where is the church absent? Find these places and go there. Don't go there to serve anyone. Don't volunteer to answer the phone or organize a clothing drive or teach reading or fix a meal. Don't do anything. Be. That's all. Learn how to hang out with people who are not like you. Hear their stories, and share something of yours. Be in the tension of not knowing for sure what to say or do. Relax and receive whatever God wants to give you. Learn to be present.

We will not be able to be the church that God intends if we don't let God plant in us, very simply, a passion for people. Not a coercive, codepenclent "love that's not love," but true affection that desires nothing else than to be there, and to be real. Crowds gathered around Jesus because he was available, and he was genuine. Who he was with them was who he was within himself. Are we living true to our inner selves? Are we the kind of people others enjoy being around? Do our schedules allow "hanging out time," and do we hang out where destitute, lonely people hang out?

This from my "Authentic Church" post Sunday is the place where I find myself, and often have, when I allow myself to really reflect on it, over the past 4 years (and probably even longer). I'd say that I have most often found myself here over the past 30 years, since my first exposure to the embodiment of church represented in The Church of the Saviour.

Movable Theoblogical: Finding Others

The compelling desire to be with others in more authentic ways, ways that will foster diversity and reconciliation and help us to act for justice, often presses in on us long before we find others who share that desire. We can feel very alone. We long for something more, but don't know how to find others who might be willing to step out into new structures and processes with us.

You might be wondering where to start. That's easy: start where you are. Let the new way begin in you.

We can't expect others to internalize what we have not yet internalized ourselves. The first "other" we must be reconciled to is our own self. Our true self in Christ waits to know and be known by us.

I am in a place where I don't feel at all that I am the sort of person that anyone would want to be on a journey with. As I have gotten older, I feel less and less like someone who others want to have around. And I feel less and less patient, more frustrated with the direction of things; more restless about how far the church is straying, and the seeming lack of an alternative which offers a hope of turning things around.

I'm determined, though, to seek out the other hidden malcontents; others who have been "ruined" as Gordon Cosby said it; "ruined" by exposure to a vision of church that will not let me satisfied with anything less; particularly with church that doesn't help me AT ALL to battle my addiction to culture. Gordon told me in our conversdation: "It sounds to me , Dale, like you've been ruined". And "it takes disillusionment to be ready for Authentic Church".

Marsh's wrap-up chapter, entitled The Contours of an Activist Faith for the 20th Century has a lot to say about the fluid movement of God in and out and in between the ecclesia and the activism; one might say there is an interdependence, even so much as the church drawing some lessons and challenge from the willingness of the "movements" communities to challenge the status quo, and to insist on the communal roots whcih seek sustenance for the activist journey. The following segment expresses some complexities of the relationships between ecclesia and healthy , community based activism. I'm not entirely sure I'd be able to say that I wouold say everything just like this, but I like Marsh's thesis of the absolute neccessity for the spiritual community base.

While the church as a worshipping community exists for the specific purposes of confessing, proclaiming, and worshipping Jesus Christ as Lord, the beloved community quietly moves from its historical origins into new and unexpected shapes of communion and solidarity. To be sure, the church has an obligation to nurture and fortify the beloved community, even though it often fails in this task. But the church's failure, its concessions to expediency and comfort, does not limit God's action in the world. At such times when the church chooses the easy way over the narrow way, God may nurture and fortify the beloved community through the activity of the Holy Spirit. Beloved community may then become a source of knowledge and conviction for the church, which the church in turn must acknowledge and appropriate in humility. But beyond humility, Christians should rejoice in the fact that when the church defaults on its mission in the world, the Spirit places the beloved community in the embracing arms of the kingdom of God.

In this manner, the Christian regards the peaceable reign of God as the hidden meaning of all movements for liberation and reconciliation, the hidden meaning that "brings us together for these days as strangers and yet as friends" (as the theologian Karl Barth wrote in 1919).6 We should not collapse the kingdom into the church, nor should we diminish the full energy of the church to radiate outward into a gathering more inclusive than the confessing body. As we have observed throughout the pages of this book, beloved community is a way of talking about the redemptive and reconciling spaces whose real history is the church but which cannot be contained by the church or brought fully under its management. Beloved community overflows the boundaries of the church in a way analogous to St. Augustine's description of the divine love overflowing the triune God in tile creation of the world. The logic of the church (as one might say), like that of the beloved community, moves always and everywhere beyond itself toward the peaceable reign of God on earth.7 For this reason, we should also note that the Christian church has no monopoly on affirmations of the human; that movements, agencies, and persons outside the church often understand and appreciate affirmations of human dignity with greater attention to the detail and scope of their application in the world. (Who could doubt, for example, that Amnesty International operates with greater attention to human suffering than the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, which regards its mission as the saving of lost souls from eternal damnation?)

Importantly, the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer pondered this matter of Christians and "good people" in his late meditations on justice. Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor and dissident, had joined an organization in the Gentian resistance called the Abwehr, and his writing, ponderous now in its intent, strains toward exceedingly difficult theological notions in a fragmented and unfinished beauty. For Bonhoeffer, those who come to the work of mercy and justice from places outside the church are drawn by a power that the church most eloquently bespeaks. The "children" of the church, who have left the church for reasons that are not only understandable but sometimes noble, and who have gone their own way in the world, return to their mothers They do not return to their mother out of guilt or weakness, or out of an anxious realization that they could not make it on their own; whatever need they feel is based on shared concern for humanity. "During the time of their estrangement their appearance and their language had altered a great deal, and yet at the crucial moment the mother and the children once again recognized one another," Bonhoeffer writes. "Reason, justice, culture, humanity and all the kindred concepts sought and found a new purpose and a new power in their origin. "9

p. 208 The Beloved Community

Charles Marsh's The Beloved Community is a gem. I was sold just on the content of the first two chapters (MLK and Clarence Jordan, two of my biggest heroes in the faith) , but I was moved by the rest of the stories in it as well. The theme of the book was the neccessary spiritual community that provided the spirit to drive the movement, a nd to keep grounded in true reconciliation that does not tire as "politics" ebb and flow.

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of the "spiritual movement in Montgomery," Clarence Jordan of the "God movement" in southeast Georgia, Fannie Lou Hamer of the "New Kingdom in Mississippi," John Perkins of the "quiet revolution" of Christian community building, Mark Gornik of "the shalom of the city" together these Christians point us to the reality that stands behind beloved community and gives purpose to lifetimes spent in service to poor and excluded people, the reality that cuts through all these human movements as their hidden sense and motor.53These contemporary retrievals of the spiritual movement toward "redemption, reconciliation and die creation of beloved community" demonstrate the vital role of spiritual nourishment in the work of mercy and justice, not as a substitute for material sustenance but as the condition of justice.54 As Chris Rice said, "Communities like ours are hardly normative and they are never going to be normative, but their influence is disproportionate to their numbers. I just think of the hundreds and thousands of people who were touched through the work of Voice of Calvary in various ways: by coming and living with us for a while. These are places of deep conversion, places where the creation of allies is happening, places where Christians are learning not so much how to solve the race and other social problems but how to be truly church. I think there is lot of power in that. " 55 The civil rights movemerit had extended the gesture of reconciliation, only eventually to withdraw it in the face of hateful rejection; but the new Christian radicals are finding the strength to keep the arms of mercy open, even in the face of restitution shirked and due reparations withheld. 55- Chris Rice , presenting to the Workgroup on Theology and Race, U. Va. Feb 24, 2001.

p.206 Charles Marsh, The Beloved Community

I learned while on my DC trek that Gordon Cosby has been singing the praises of this book for the past few months. (I forgot to mention to him that I was reading it! ) But the Church of the Saviour and all its seedling churches have run on this principle;; on this reality. That behind every movement of true change there is a "God movement" that blows where it will, and gathers about itself a community of character, molded by the stirrings of God moving amongst them.

It's scary how easily it seems to be assumed that what the state syas it is doing, it is actually achieving. The "larger purpose"; the long-range, "real-world" matters are being taken care of by the magistrate, and it has become in our political climate

Only with the emergence of nation states, according to Giddens, are states circumscribed by borders, known lines demarcating the exclusive domain of sovereign power, especially its monopoly over the means of violence. Attempts to consolidate territory and assert sovereign control often brought about violent conflict. More importantly, borders in the nation state system include the assumption of a 'state of nature' existing between states which increases the possibility of war. Our fellow citizens are limited to all those presently living Britons, Americans, Germans, etc. The dominance of state soteriology has made it perfectly reasonable to drop cluster bombs on 'foreign' villages, and perfectly unreasonable to dispute 'religious' matters in public

Cavanuagh, Theopolitical Imagination, p. 43

There seems to be virtually no willingness to truly consider the lives of other people in other lands. All is presented to us as "neccessary for our security". "Security" is posed to us in terms of force, in terms of economics (another form of "force" or coercion), and in terms of "the way the world works". Violence is often justified as "this is the only language they understand" (which , when you look at it, seems to be proving that point about not the recipients of that violence, but of the ones using that justification.)

A simple "exchange program" where American families are transplanted into Iraq would dispel the myth of "over there" and that "behind the scenes" activity really doesn't affect us. A simple placing of "our own kind" in the jeopardy under which we have placed thousands of Iraqis would shed some light on just how much insanity we have consented to via our complicity (as a nation, and sadly, as a church).

Eric commented on the post below that includes the section on Extreme Diversity. re-reading it once again, it is truly an important section of this striving to be and to embody authentic church.

Movable Theoblogical: The "Basics"

The world has told us that we are "opposed" to one another because of our differences, but this is an illusion. We are liberated as we come to know each other more deeply and are able to transcend the illusion of "opposites." Reconciliation requires finding common ground on which we can both transcend and embrace our differences. The authentic church provides that common ground.

The "pieces" that make a whole people are found scattered amongst us, it seems. This is what I gather from the message of the above. The idea that we cannot do it alone is to bring home the truth to us that we not only need companionship and support, but those "other" experiences that bring us closer to knowing all of God's family; all of God's people.

The compelling desire to be with others in more authentic ways, ways that will foster diversity and reconciliation and help us to act for justice, often presses in on us long before we find others who share that desire. We can feel very alone. We long for something more, but don't know how to find others who might be willing to step out into new structures and processes with us.

You might be wondering where to start. That's easy: start where you are. Let the new way begin in you.

We can't expect others to internalize what we have not yet internalized ourselves. The first "other" we must be reconciled to is our own self. Our true self in Christ waits to know and be known by us. Are we in love yet with that beloved and broken child of God? Are we moving toward freedom from our own addictions? Are we actively seeking to reconcile our own broken relationships? Are we being honest about our own need for transformation, even as we ask God to bring others who are aware of theirs? Our first task is to confront ourselves lovingly and begin to surrender those attachments we cling to that keep us from clinging only to God.

And, of course, we need others. For starters, you have us. We will have conversation and find ways to support each other, even at a distance. We will share with each other how desperate we are for this --- how much we need and want recovery --- until we find that we are no longer satisfied with staying on the surface in any of our conversations. As we dare to speak more deeply with others, God opens doors to find those who also want something more.

What was it about Jesus that drew people to him? Primarily, they liked him. He treated them with respect; listening and confronting and speaking from his depths. When we are freed to be our true selves, our affection for each other will increase, and our conversations will take on a depth that we might not have imagined.

Yes, many of us have had the experience of being held hostage by a religious extrovert, and we might not want to be seen as one of "those Christians," but this is no excuse. We must be willing to take the risks of authentic friendship and compassionate connection, revealing ourselves for who we really are. Often these conversations become the way to discover who will be our companions on this journey.

FINDING OUR OPPOSITES

Finding those who are our so called "opposites," and talking about spiritual things, can feel even more intimidating. Basically we get tripped up by fear. We fear seeming arrogant and disrespectful. We fear being ridiculed. We fear being swallowed up by the pain of seeing so directly into the dismal face of poverty or privilege. We fear being paralyzed by our guilt over the discrepancies between us. These fears are legitimate and need to be felt. And then we must go anyway.

Our guiding question will be, where would Jesus go? Most of these places will be where the privileged and connected are the ones on the outside.

Look around your town or county. Where are people struggling for a better life? Where have people been abandoned? Where is the church absent? Find these places and go there. Don't go there to serve anyone. Don't volunteer to answer the phone or organize a clothing drive or teach reading or fix a meal. Don't do anything. Be. That's all. Learn how to hang out with people who are not like you. Hear their stories, and share something of yours. Be in the tension of not knowing for sure what to say or do. Relax and receive whatever God wants to give you. Learn to be present.

We will not be able to be the church that God intends if we don't let God plant in us, very simply, a passion for people. Not a coercive, codepenclent "love that's not love," but true affection that desires nothing else than to be there, and to be real. Crowds gathered around Jesus because he was available, and he was genuine. Who he was with them was who he was within himself. Are we living true to our inner selves? Are we the kind of people others enjoy being around? Do our schedules allow "hanging out time," and do we hang out where destitute, lonely people hang out?

The Church of the Saviour churches have always been open to diversity, Yet despite seeking welcoming ways to worship, pray, study and work together, most have not become fully diverse. We have had meaningful relationships with people of different races and economic classes, for example, and sometimes we also have been church members together, but generally we have not been a radically diverse and reconciling body at the foundations, with people of widely varying life experiences finding mutual partnership and belonging.

We have hoped that if we consciously sought to give ourselves to God and God's flow of love, reconciling and intimate relationships would happen naturally. By and large, however, they have not. This new process is an attempt to end our complicity in staying separated from each other and to build rich, mutual relationships with those from whom we have been isolated.

If we are going to be the church of Jesus Christ, true to his nature and part of God's redemptive plan for the world, we must find new ways to be together, ways that say, clearly and concretely from the outset, Yes, we are different from each other. We are of different races and cultures, some of us own very little and others of us own much; we have had different opportunities in our lives; there are ways in which we do not understand or trust each other, but we are family, and God has called us to be together.

We no longer wait untiI we have the "race issue" or the "economic issue" or the "power issue" figured out. We no longer will wait until we have a clear understanding of each other and feel completely at ease. Rather, our differences will be our starting place.

Will Sampson with a set of questions wondering how who I call the "Bush Christians" will begin to react to the now daily uncoverings of the pervasive scandals and manipulations of the Bush administration and its tentacles (the "tentacles" part I have added to the assesment, as well as the question about "holding out"----these are two things that occurred to me as I read Will's post) willzhead: Pastoring People Post-Bush

The cat is out of the bag. The secret has been let loose. President Bush is not an honest man. .... This current administration may go down as one of the most corrupt in history. Bill Clinton received sexual favors from an intern. Shame on him. But, to my knowledge, no one in his purview was responsible for using Christian radio to help further the business of Indian casinos and, in the process, pocket $45 million in lobbying fees.

I'm afraid that a good number of these Christians have hitched a disturbingly high amount of their theological well-being to this house of cards, and will die hard. Especially with Fox News in the mix, which is the only newscast most of them will even watch. They watch others and automatically dismiss any reports that cast the administration in a suspicious light to be part of the "liberal media conspiracy". It is all the more scary because we've seen in history debacles of how tenaciously church folks will cling to "righteousness" of a political cause against all evidence (Nazi Germany). (Once again, it's not comparing the magnitude of the evil, but the propensity for the "court prophets" (the "religious representatives" who provide the theological rationale for national interests as forwarded by the group in power. I must say however, that I can do something of a listing of the consequences of this administration which do catalog quite a distressing list of atrocities, but those shoujld be kept out of a context of "comparison" to Hitler and assessed on their own merits).

The point here is, is that "ideologies" die hard. But in the end, there is always that all-too elusive hope for a deeper harmony amongst God's people. We can't help but be saddened and disturbed when the call of the gospel is exchanged for "lesser", incomplete, even opposing loyalties; what Cavanaugh calls the "false soteriology" of the state.

These items from "The Bascis", does indeed make a great group/church litany.

Movable Theoblogical

Together- None of us can become free alone. We will spend one hour together every week, sharing our struggles and joys.

And yet the church seems to be content to hand over the gift of ourselves and the gift that is us that God has set forth, and leave us to fend for ourselves against the culture. Of course they say "Go and God be with you", but what is missing is the embodiment of that litany. The idea is that the "Go" is to be set in the context of being "sent forth" from a people who form us and pray for us, and to do so, they have to know one another. So little effort , if any, is expended to stress the "alternative community" which makes "community" a living concept that goes beyond the stale, empty, "corporate" (as in corporations) notions of community. These latter notions hold out community as a "feel good" selling point so that people will hang around and be consumers and contributors.

Time- In the beginning, we will set aside at least 15 minutes a day for personal prayer and scripture reading, with the intent of getting to know Jesus and sensing how much God loves us. We also will commit to pray for each other

This is just for starters. This is a BARE minimum. But start someplace we must (kind of sounds like Yoda, doesn't it-----"Start someplace we must") but seriously, to "break in" to our routine with a much more "open-ended" possibility inherent in living in habitual seriousness with prayer and Scripture is so elemental that it is often totally ignored. And so we excuse ourselves on the assumption that such small portions cannot possibly work miracles. But I do think that such small doses draw us in and engage that hunger that lies often buried deep within, behind our busy facade that we place such emphasis and expend so much energy in maintaining.

Task- Jesus loves us deeply and passionately and calls us to give back to others. We will seek to find the task that God has for us to do. We want to be with those who are suffering and to help change the unjust structures that cause the suffering.

What a foreign concept that seems so clear and yet so neglected and avoided: that God calls us for a purpose at any given time, and continues to call us into new things. And again, it's not meant to happen out of community, and its meant to bring us into close contact with the broken and suffering. I'm reading a chapter right now in Marsh's The Beloved Community called Building Beloved Communities: Dispatches from the Quiet Revolution, which is a chapter that tells a story of several who have left what was surely more "successful" prsopects as our society holds them out, and placed their lot in community with struggling, wounded, seemingly hopeless and depressing communities. But what they found was what amounts to success as God defines it; that in casting our lot with the least of these, we find our deepest purposes, and discover the purposes for which we have been given gifts to offer, and we also discover the gift of "the other".

Take- We will take hold of Jesus, the Liberator, who tears us away from the worldly values and systems that bind and kill us. We will name those things in ourselves that keep us from living in a new way of nonviolent love and freedom, and offer them up for healing.

The bolded part, calling us to "Name those things" is a work of a lifetime. Elizabeth O'Connor explores much of this work of "naming those things" in her book "Our Many Selves", probably the most impactful book I have ever read. One reason for that is that I did it with some others. But the "goings-on" that we face in those battles we face within as we confront the "many selves" that show themselves in different contexts, which bring out the "unlovable" and "rejected selves" in us, and seek transformation for ourselves, in naming our "selves"; our many selves.

Tell- As we are being liberated and freed, we will tell others about the Source of our new freedom.

What other choice do we have? It's a ntural.

There aren't a lot of rules for how we function in these groups, but the following patterns have guided our time together:

We meet once a week for one hour.

Leadership rotates so that all who desire to do so will have the opportunity to lead. The leader begins the session on time and facilitates the sharing, often beginning with the principles and the affirmation in "The Challenge and the Hope" [see Appendix 1).

One member, sometimes the leader, serves as teacher and speaks for five or six minutes, usually focusing on one of the five steps and a passage of scripture.

Approximately 45 minutes are given to personal sharing. This sharing, which is the heart of the meeting, is not about ideas but feelings, not conjecture but experience.

Confidentiality is honored. What we say in the group stays in the group.

Generally we follow the 12 step method of attentively listening to what is shared with no response or cross talk.

The leader facilitates prayer at the close of the time, and in some groups a member celebrates the Eucharist.

Group business items are considered at a separate time, as needed.

BECOMING A MEMBER

Becoming a member of this initial group is very simple. We want all to know how much each person is wanted and needed, and how much everyone's participation benefits the whole.

Becoming a full member of the group requires three steps:

At the invitation of a current member, attend two consecutive meetings and indicate a desire to belong.

Be willing to embrace the basic principles named in "The Challenge and the Hope" [see Appendix 11.

Commit to the principles and practices of the five steps, and be willing to share personal experiences and feelings openly and honestly, respecting the confidentiality of the group.

ENDING ONE'S MEMBERSHIP

Ending one's membership in the group is equally simple:

Be absent from two consecutive meetings without notice.

Indicate a desire to withdraw, preferably after prior discussion with the group.

EXTREME DIVERSITY

From the beginning, these groups have been an experiment in extreme diversity, intentionally bringing together seeming "opposites," people who appear outwardly to have little in common with each other and who might not otherwise be likely to find depth belonging together. In overt ways racially, culturally, economically, etc. we are different from each other, and often separated because of these differences. By joining the group we are saying we want to know and be known by others who seem different from us and to offer these seeming differences as a healing gift for the whole.

We intentionally work to maintain a balance of diversity because we want to embody Jesus' nature, and we know Jesus expresses himself through all parts of God's family, reconciling all who are separated. That's just who Jesus is. If we hope to be healed from our isolation and be made whole again, we will seek to reunite with all from whom we have been separated. We therefore seek mutual relationships with our so called opposites. Not to "do for" but simply to "be with" one another. We long for God to heal and redeem what has been broken between us.

To have the desired diversity means that although we believe the life changing love of Christ is available to all, we will guide people toward groups where their presence will more likely complement the balance. Also, we no longer hope that our "opposites" will seek us out and discover how welcoming we are; instead, we will notice who is not represented in our group and accept personal responsibility for inviting them in. We will extend ourselves to others whom we might not have sought to know before. We will ask, who is not represented here and what would need to happen to create a more diverse body?

In a group that is small enough for in depth sharing (probably a maximum of about 20, splitting off into new groups when the number grows larger) it is nearly impossible for all variations of diversity to be represented, but we are committed to making concerted effort to have as much diversity as possible.

Extreme diversity is essential if we are going to become the authentic church, but it does not come to most of us naturally. Our natural gravitation tends to be toward sameness. We want to be intentional about breaking this ingrained pattern. We are inspired by Jesus, who was always crossing the cultural boundaries of his day. He sought to break through walls of separation and injustice, and so shall we. Joined in that desire, we will, as Gandhi said, "become the change we hope to see in the world."

We all are damaged by the ways we have isolated ourselves, trying to avoid being known. Determined to protect ourselves and play it safe, or be as independent as possible, we have adopted various attitudes and behaviors as pathetic substitutes for the holy. We need each other , especially those whom we have hurt and have been hurt by, if we hope to be healed. Letting down our walls and learning to care for each other is the way we begin to find the healing we so desperately need.

The world has told us that we are "opposed" to one another because of our differences, but this is an illusion. We are liberated as we come to know each other more deeply and are able to transcend the illusion of "opposites." Reconciliation requires finding common ground on which we can both transcend and embrace our differences. The authentic church provides that common ground.

Josh Marshall has a few choice words for the Disaster readiness consultancy firm Michael Brown is starting.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: November 20, 2005 - November 26, 2005 Archives

First , from an AP article:

Brown said officials need to "take inventory" of what's going on in a disaster to be able to answer questions to avoid appearing unaware of how serious a situation is.

In the aftermath of the hurricane, critics complained about Brown's lack of formal emergency management experience and e-mails that later surfaced showed him as out of touch with the extent of the devastation.

Then Josh, from TPM

This guy's really a Bush man through and through, ain't he?

It's important to keep close tabs on everything going on in your disaster so as to avoid the true catastrophe of having the press think you're not on top of things.

It's good to see that getting knocked around last Fall helped get his priorities straight.

In Josh's previous post on the news of Brown's intentions, Brown said this::
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: November 20, 2005 - November 26, 2005 Archives

"You have to do it with candor. To do it otherwise gives you no credibility. I think people are curious: 'My gosh, what was it like? The media just really beat you up. You made mistakes. I don't want to be in that situation. How do I avoid that?'"

And this service is going to in demand by who? The fact that Brown was so woefully unprepared and unarmed with bare facts about the disaster is going to be something which makes people line up at his door to find out how he did it? As Josh says, it seems that the key thing here is not to APPEAR incompetent. But even there, we're supposed to learn from someone who failed miserably at that as well? I have a suggestion for anyone who wants to "spin" appearances: get it handled on Fox News. Maybe Fox News should hire him. He can do a show with Ollie North.

KEEP IT SIMPLE

The greatest challenge for most of us who want to go deeper spiritually, and to do so in community, is to find ways that are simple enough to hold the complexity.

Just as Jesus is a gate where the sheep can come in and go out and find pasture [John 10:7 9], we too want to be a gate through which people can come in and go out with ease. We want to make concrete for others the openness and breadth of Jesus' way, as welI as its yet to be discovered treasures. The authentic church will hold the tension between easy and difficult, broad and narrow.

We want processes for this introductory group that are simple enough to enter easily, yet hold the potential of leading us into the untold depths of Christ. We want to be flexible enough to allow the Spirit room to play and yet sturdy enough to hold up under the pressures that inevitably will come.

A FIVE STEP PROGRAM

We have chosen to begin with a simple five step program. The processes of other groups might be different. Changes can be made freely as each group is guided to do so, but we suggest that they be made toward greater simplicity, not greater complexity.

Just as we have tried to keep this little guidebook as simple as possible (while assuming that most readers are familiar with "church language"), it is important to be as straightforward and plain as possible when we share the purposes and hopes of this group.

The following, which some of the groups use as part of a unison litany, states our intentions in language that we hope will speak to all, with or without overtly "religious" experience.

Together- None of us can become free alone. We will spend one hour together every week, sharing our struggles and joys.

Time In the beginning, we will set aside at least 15 minutes a day for personal prayer and scripture reading, with the intent of getting to know Jesus and sensing how much God loves us. We also will commit to pray for each other,

Task Jesus loves us deeply and passionately and calls us to give back to others. We will seek to find the task that God has for us to do. We want to be with those who are suffering and to help change the unjust structures that cause the suffering.

Take We will take hold of Jesus, the Liberator, who tears us away from the worldly values and systems that bind and kill us. We will name those things in ourselves that keep us from living in a new way of nonviolent love and freedom, and offer them up for healing.

Tell As we are being liberated and freed, we will tell others about the Source of our new freedom.

This was almost 3 years ago, but one of the best of myself I could find (I'm usually behind the camera). Brian is taller than me now. How time flies and kids grow!

Also durijng that October 2004 trip to the Rockies

Juan Cole reflects on the Bush-Aljazeera relationship, and why he doubts that Bush was "joking"

Informed Comment

Despite attempts of British officials to muddy the waters by suggesting that Bush was joking, another official who had seen the memo insisted, "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair. That much is absolutely clear from the language used by both men."

Not long ago I saw a documentary Control Room, about Aljazeera, and prominently featured Josh Rushing, who worked in the U.S. Central Command Media Office. Excellent film, by the way. The death of the journalist menti oned by Cole actually happens during the filming (not on tape, but during a shoot, when the cameras were not rolling....since they were taking cover)

The Christian Blogosphere: what some in it are currently saying about Iraq | blogs4God

Of course neither my view or the views held in the above link represent the Christian blogosphere in it's entirety - just a vocal portion of it.

Of course. Of course, also, these "vocal voices" are not at all representative of those who are vocal (me for instance, or an entire contingent of thousands who agree with Jim Wallis that the Religiour Right does not speak for all Christians. But that whole issue is effectively sidestepped and ignored in so many of the "sub-blogospheres" purporting to represent "God-centered Blogs". I posted on this yesterday, and got comnments back and an email saying "You're welcome to post anything you want here, as long as its civil". I commented back and said something to the effect of "I thought Blogs4God was an aggregator and "summary" type of blog portal, and for over a year, you were linking to articles of mine with regularity. Since the election season and my voicing of sharp criticisms and concerns about the Bush administration, it's like I've dropped off the radar. I said I didn't really plan on c oming over to Blogs4God and post comments there. I expect, as always, to post what I belive to be pressing questions and rant on these questions for a time. I expect that since we all have blogs, that anyone can post rebuttals. I want to avoid comment section wars of words, which is what I expect will happen inevitably if I post my viiews there, but blogs can certainly be distributed conversation, and so I prefer to wait and see if this whole issue is considered woirthy of mention as Blogs4God summarizes the "interesting posts of the day". And of course, I'm not going to censor any comments that may be entered on my blog either. If anyone wants a debate about peace and Iraq and such, then we'll have one.

Someone took this picture for me, but the camera took so long to actually take the picture, that I got caught with my eyes closed, and Gordon quit smiling, but ......well, there it is.

See Second Flash Video of part 2 of my conversation with Gordon Cosby, where he talks about how it takes disillusionment to be ready for ["that" = he points at the booklet I was holding, Becoming the Authentic Church] and also how we need a place to "keep us sober" from addiction to culture

During our trip up the mountain in the Smokie Mountain National Park, October 2004

This is Kelli, 7 1/2 years old

Thunder Jones has a good post on how what amounts to subsidies for high-tech (focused on military) could better be used in subsidizing health care, which will help businesses who are going under and strugging becuase they can' afford it anymore.

The Mundane Life of Thunder Jones: Choosing Your Subsidy

It is true that the military subsidy has helped to create the consumer microchip, the internet, and modern aviation. It hasn't been all bad. Then again, we've essentially been subsidizing the ability to dominate the other via violence or the threat of violence. Subsidizing healthcare will create advances in medicine as well as providing for the common good. I choose healthcare.

Movable Theoblogical: Addiction to Culture, In Need of Redemption
I just put up my very first VideoPodcast. It starts out cutting Gordon Cosby's head out of the frame (sorry, badly placed camera.....it was taken with my Canon A80 in AVI mode. It goes with the post in the above link.

See Flash Video of part of my conversation with Gordon Cosby, where he covers some of this , referring to the latest thinking of theirs on the way their support groups work

Some more scenery near Rolling Ridge, where I spent some time last week.

I have an image, http://theoblogical.org/movtyp/images/AuthChurch.jpg, that shows up to the left of tghe post below, but only in Firefox and Netscape. IE won't show it, although it is no problem with the rest of the images on the page. Anybody know what could possibly cause this? If you take the img url above and plug it in to IE to browse to it, it shows up fine. But not in those blocks to the left of my Authntic Church posts. ???????

What's up with that? IE is being way too wierd.

This is crucial to get hold of:

WE ARE CULTURAL ADDICTS AND WE CANNOT BREAK THIS ADDICTION ALONE.

Finally seeing this truth really "getting it" that we are addicted to the very culture and the very way in which we live is the beginning of true freedom.

When we "wake up" to the fact that we have been distorted as human beings by the culture; that we have been "drugged" on a chemical which is culture, and are very much like the addict who is hooked on alcohol, then we see the need for a community whose narrative is wholly different from that in which we have been intoxicated. We have to "detox" from the culture of individualism and violence.

When we finally see that we are addicted to a culture of comfort, security, competition, praise, staying busy, controlling people, being in shallow relationships, having too much or too little money, worrying, seeing ourselves as superior or inferior to others that a vast assortment of sensations, behaviors, substances and activities keep us disconnected from our real feelings and needs and disconnected from God we can then unmask the false nature of this cultural system and see that it can never give us what we long for. We will be able to see at last how much we have depended on this false system, and how utterly helpless we are to break our dependence and to heal ourselves.

Then, together with every alcoholic or drug addict who has hit bottom and cried out for help, we too will cry out for a Saviour and for a faithful community to save us from our cultural addiction. At this point, humbled and ready to receive mercy and healing love, we see the truth and commit ourselves to becoming recovering cultural addicts and to being used by God in whatever ways God chooses.

See Flash Video of part of my conversation with Gordon Cosby, where he covers some of this , referring to the latest thinking of theirs on the way their support groups work

A while back, I posted something like "Blogs 4 God has ditched me", and not soon after, I got an email from someone there saying, "NO we didn't". My observation back then was that since the election season, and ever since, there has been ZERO linkage to me other than the lone listing I have there. Before the Election season and all its issues, on which I coimmented regularly and often as to my opinion of the Bush administration, there were pointers to my blog on a fairly regular basis. Since then, and even after the denial of that charge, still NOTHING. It's not that I even want them pointing to me if it means what I think it means: that they would do so in the context of disagreement. Perhaps that is why they DON'T point to me any more. IN that case, that's fine. I really don't want to attract any "trolls" from the ranks of those who consider it tantamount to blasphemy to criticize the Bush administration.

But it also seems to me to be another instance of "ghetto-ization" of many such "Christian" blogdoms, and it seemed so at the GodBlogCon as it seemed quite heavy if not exclusively Pro-Bush Pundity bloggers. I know that such is so with LeShawn Barber and Hugh Hewitt.

I saw the general makeup of Blogs4God when I signed up, but wanting to be ecumenical, I joined. And prior to the election season and all my theologizing about the Bush administration, Blogs4God regularly linked to my posts. I understand that they may well have a few more "godBlogs" in their aggregation tasks now, but to fall to ZERO menti on?

It's even more disturbing that this "political" marginalization has happend considering that I have made a complete U-turn in terms of theological-to-political rant ratio. Much of my blog has been centered on church and the need to Authentic church. Prior to my trip to DC, I wias reading heavily in Radical Orthodoxy writings, via Stanley Hauerwas and James KA Smith, William Cavanaugh, etc. It would SEEM that such things might be of interest to "God bloggers". I'm not quite sure now what the criteria is for selecting links.

Just as the Southern Baptist convention, ala the likes of Al Mohler, have basically narrowed the scope of theological inquiry to their choice topics and issues, and "cut off" discussion (Mohler has no comments on his blog), and NEVER talks about the Bush administration's war policies ----I mean, completely ignores it-----it seems that opposition to war and to Bush is also anathema to Blogs4God. And that is extremely sad. They (the "keepers" of Blogs4God, don't have to agree, but if they are going to purport to represent the totality of "Blogs that explore the things of God" , then a huge contingency is missing from their "coverage".

From what I read of the GodBlogCon, the "featyured" attenders and "linked" reviewers and "name-dropped" people are all pretty rabidly right wing (except for DJ, with whom I am familiar from past blog comments and blogger meetups----plus DJs being a rep of American Bible Society brings a certain "ecumeniucity" to the "right-heavy" leanings of GodBlogCon.

The "First Impressions" list at http://www.godblogcon.com/blog/ are batting 1.000 for total absorption in the right-leaning blogosphere, seemingly oblivious to the fact that there even exists things like Progressive Chritian bloggers, or anything "other" than , well......Why was that?

This all bothers me.

If we can name and embrace what, for us, are the "givens" of being authentic church, and we know we want something more, and we even are willing to let go of old traditions and structures, what keeps us from embodying the new? We see who Jesus is, and genuinely believe that his way is the way for us, but are unable to live that way fully and passionately. We long for Jesus' nature, but we seem to be trapped by our own nature and unable to break free. What causes this disconnect in what we want to do and what we actually do?

The answer is quite simple. We have not yet faced one basic and inescapable fact:

WE ARE CULTURAL ADDICTS AND WE CANNOT BREAK THIS ADDICTION ALONE.

Finally seeing this truth really "getting it" that we are addicted to the very culture and the very way in which we live is the beginning of true freedom. [To begin to learn more about cultural addiction, see Appendix 3, Resources "Facing Our Cultural Addictions,' p. 47.]

When we finally see that we are addicted to a culture of comfort, security, competition, praise, staying busy, controlling people, being in shallow relationships, having too much or too little money, worrying, seeing ourselves as superior or inferior to others that a vast assortment of sensations, behaviors, substances and activities keep us disconnected from our real feelings and needs and disconnected from God we can then unmask the false nature of this cultural system and see that it can never give us what we long for. We will be able to see at last how much we have depended on this false system, and how utterly helpless we are to break our dependence and to heal ourselves.

Then, together with every alcoholic or drug addict who has hit bottom and cried out for help, we too will cry out for a Saviour and for a faithful community to save us from our cultural addiction. At this point, humbled and ready to receive mercy and healing love, we see the truth and commit ourselves to becoming recovering cultural addicts and to being used by God in whatever ways God chooses.

From the deepest parts of us we now understand that we can no longer pretend that everything is fine and we can manage our lives alone. We must join ourselves with others for our mutual healing and transformation. We need others who are equally serious about taking hold of the liberating Christ. We need ...

• a group, in Christ, that is breaking with the culture, the world's systems, and providing support for total recovery from that culture
• a reconciling group of extreme diversity, especially highly privileged and severely oppressed
• a group closing the gap between the deepening of personal faith and the expression of that faith in public political ways
• a group seeking biblical justice in all forms, including the redistribution of wealth
• a praying group, growing in our capacity to love, understanding that authentic love is always nonviolent.
  I Knowing that we are cultural addicts and need an authentic community for our recovery ...

JUst a little scenery to end my blog day and the day in general, from my collecgtion of stuff shot during my DC/Virginia/WestVirginia driving last week. This was on the way from Rolling Ridge near Harpers Ferry, WV down to DC, somehwere near the WVa/Virginia state line along the panhandle of Wva.

My DV Camcorder which I got in 2000 has had periodic problems with the apparently infamous "E04 error: Unit in Safeguard Mode" problem after about 2 years of my 3 year warranty. I got it back to have it "serviced". Didn't see the error much after that for about a couple of months. Now it's back and happening with regularity almost everytime I try to use it. Usually "Remove the battery and re-attach" by itself doesn't work. I have to remove the tape, remove battery, re-attach battery, re-insert tape" and various combinations of that. BUt the error happens also when I am running from the AC Adapter.

A search like this reveals that this problem is rampant across JVC DV "GR" model camcorders. I tried the "smack it 4 or 5 times with the battery over the speaker area --which is on the side inside where the flip-out LCD screen opens. Mine seems to work after doing that. This I find after taking it with me to DC and having it refuse to work when trying to use it to shoot some mountain scenery on my way in to the DC area. I wish I had known then about the "whack it upside the speaker" trick. I had to settle for shooting Video with my Canon Digital Photo camera that shoots low quality, small size video avi clips of 3 minutes max.

In any case, I was looking at the new models, about to try to get a replacement (whcih I was loathe to do, but Thanksgiving and Christmas is coming up, so my wife asked me to see what we could get....then I decied to do this Google search. Really wierd)

Juan Cole explains the manipulative Republicans' adolescent call for what amounts to a vote on a straw-dog: their version of a resoltion that in no way resembled what Murtha actually suggested (except that it had to do with the subject of Withdrawal from Iraq). There's where the similarity ends.

Informed Comment

Republicans in Congress responded to Murtha's considered plan by introducing a phony resolution the bore little resemblance to Murtha's, and then helping defeat it overwhelmingly. The intent was apparently to force the Democrats either to look as though they were in favor of "cutting and running" or to vote against immediately withdrawing US troops and so associating themselves with Bush's 'stay the course' policy. The Republican straw man resolution was:

' Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately.

1 Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately. '

Well, this stupid resolution is not what Murtha was saying, and the vote on it is meaningless. It is worse than meaningless. It is political clowning.

From INformed Comment: Informed Comment

At the Iraqi national reconciliation summit, the Shiite delegation of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq walked out when a Christian Iraqi implied that they were traitors and puppets of the US and alleged that the new Iraqi consitution was written by the Americs. The delegation only returned to the table when it received an apology from their hosts and a pledge that the Christian delegate would be prevented from "abusing the platform."

I'd like to find out a bit more on who that person was

OK! I'm almost there on the customization of the look for certain Categories.
In this post earlier, Eric and Dave offered help. The links Dave pointed to were the easiest solution for my feeble MT mind to grasp. Worked like a charm. Eric had helped me before figure out where to put the css change for the blockquote , which I had applied at one time but since moving to StyleCatcher and its "dual" stylesheets (where styles-site.css imports two stylesheets. I guess I could add the mt IfCategory tag in the template file, just after the css call, as a condition to pull in a particular css file AFTER that so that its settings override any previously set styles? Am I on the right track?

For example, right now, styles-site.css has this:

/* This is the StyleCatcher theme addition. Do not remove this block. */
@import url(/movtyp/mt-static/themes/base-weblog.css);
@import url(/movtyp/mt-static/themes/theme-theoblogicalOld/theme-theoblogicalOld.css);
/* end StyleCatcher imports */
.AuthenticChurch {
padding: 10px 10px 10px 10px;
background-color: #effbdb;
border: solid 1px #7c9e40;
}

I added the special section for AuthenticChurch below it based on this link's suggestion

If I then do this:
Then in your Main Index template, add the div class
<div class="<$MTEntryCategory$>">
just after the MTEntries tag. Close the tag by adding a </div> before the closing MTEntries tag.

then I should see the .AuthenticChurch class get called. Let's try it.

Update: 9:48pm It all works.

Some have been asking, what about the earlier model of The Church of the Saviour? Isn't it a good enough way to be in meaningful community with others? As some of us have been exploring this different way of coming together, one thing we have discovered is that this supposedly "new" model is actually a very natural evolution of the "old" model that we've tried to embody faithfully for nearly 58 years.

We have always tried to follow the authentic Jesus, and to do so in small committed groups of people who are intentionally on an inward journey with God and one another and an outward journey with those who have been excluded, who are "other."
We have been richly blessed by God, and yet when we look at our own churches we wonder, have we truly embodied the full, diverse nature of Jesus Christ? Have we impacted our society on behalf of the oppressed, challenging and changing systems that keep some outside? Have we become what God intended?

Sometimes we become so focused on sustaining what we've been given and wanting to honor the traditions of the past that we miss the new thing that God might be trying to do today, something that will build on all that has come before. We miss the surprises that lie in store for us. To be channels of that playful Spirit of eternal newness, we must always be ready to let go of what is in order to receive what will be. We must be ready to return to what is fundamental.

As long ago as 1963, Elizabeth O'Connor wrote in Call to Commitment that people were questioning why The Church of the Saviour was changing its structures. This is how she responded:

We never have expected to hit upon that final stable structure. This is important for a church to understand, for when it starts to be the church it will constantly be adventuring out into places where there are no tried and tested ways. If the church in our day has few prophetic voices to sound above the noises of the street, perhaps in large part it is because the pioneering spirit has become foreign to it. It shows little willingness to explore new ways. Where it does it has often been called an experiment. We would say that the church of Christ is never an experiment, but wherever that church is true to its mission it will be experimenting, pioneering, blazing new paths, seeking how to speak the reconciling Word of God to its own age, It cannot do this if it is held captive by the structures of another day or is slave to its own structures.

We must never let ourselves be held captive by the structures or traditions of any institution, including our own. We must be open to being given new structures and new methods that will serve the mission of Christ even better for this new time.

To be in the flow of God's ever evolving movement, we will transcend all traditional and institutional loyalties, including loyalties to the very institutions we ourselves brought into being. We will adventure out into places where there are no tried and tested ways and be ready to experiment and pioneer and blaze new paths in order to make the news of our extravagantly loving liberating, reconciling God real to this age.

The coffeehouse/bookstore of The Church of the Saviour

I just realized, in looking up the section of Servant Leaders, Servant Structures where the purchase of the "Headquarters" building for Church of the Saviour was done, that I omitted several sections of chapter one when I copied the book into blog posts. I have added the missing sections to the Read More section of this post

Here is the relevant passage to go with the picture above:

The community's first purchase was an old rooming house complete with housekeeper and several roomers who stayed on and were caught up in the contagious exuberance of the new occupants. The previous residents helped with the painting and cast their lot with the odd but captivating band of newcomers. The question then was: Would there be money enough to buy the paint to carry on the next day's work? That question still comes up as paint is needed for the restoration of apartments in the inner city. We know now that the community being born then was always to smell slightly of turpentine and have paint on its shoes. For more reasons than one, one of its missions bears the appropriate name of Jubilee Housing.

In those days we were blissfully ignorant of the houses for which we were to be the agents of transformation. Only a few years went by before the first quarters were obviously inadequate, and we acquired a twenty-three-room house and began again to scrub, scrape and paint. This old Victorian mansion still remains the headquarters and place of worship for the whole community. The corporate indebtedness was huge. We were then about thirty-two persons, probably twenty of whom were employed, and we owed about one hundred thousand dollars. Our distinction at that time was that we probably had the highest per capita indebtedness of any church in the country.

The work of renovation on the new building was scarcely completed when the group further increased its indebtedness by the purchase of 176 acres of land in the country. The membership had grown to thirty-six, and there were another fifty or sixty persons taking classes. Again there was a farmhouse to restore and the Lodge of the Carpenter to build. The large living room, kitchen, and dining room made it possible for eighteen persons to make day-long retreat. As we became more involved in the outward journey, it became more essential to give equal attention to the inward journey, and we began to think about weekend retreats that would give us more time in the silence. finally, we built behind the Lodge overnight facilities for eighteen retreatants. Each room has a single bed, a washbasin, a desk, two chairs, and a lamp. All the windows look out on woodland.

As we grew in our understanding of silence, we gave more emphasis to the contemplative life. When we become too busy, Dayspring is always there as a reminder that there is no true creativity apart from contemplation.

Most churches claim to follow Jesus, but not all are following the authentic Jesus. Too often we fashion Jesus in our own image and then wonder why there is no radical world change. The authentic Jesus is not in pursuit of privilege and power and prestige, but makes his home among the lowly. The authentic Jesus does not condone violence but is the embodiment of love, embracing all people equally with mercy and the hope of transformation. The authentic Jesus confronts cultural addictions and the systems that create and sustain them. The authentic Jesus says no to the world's power and yes to God's power. There is only one real Jesus into whose being we hope to abandon ourselves, dying to our false illusions and letting our true selves be resurrected in him, who is the world's hope. Together we seek to discover and live his nonviolent, healing nature.

from Becoming the Authentic Church, p.7

The cultural addictions. To whom/where do we turn to break free of this? Part of what they go on to say is that "Extreme Diversity" is neccessasry to open us to other realities of life, and that the spirit dwells in those places where our differences are freely explored and recognized as gift. It is in overcoming the fear of the "other" that reconciliation is possible, a reconciliation that is beyond the means of the world to know, except in the beloved community which is the church.

I vistied Dayspring, the retreat /contemplation center for the Church of the Saviour near Germantown, Maryland communities on Sunday Nov. 13, onthe way back to Rolling Ridge.

how to become so much like Jesus that our very way of life comforts the world's brokenhearted and confronts the world's broken systems-is a key question for all who seek authentic, faithful belonging.

This little snippet that I have now placed up in my banner points to the Journey Inward, Journey Outward duality/reality in which The Church of the Saviour has been so unique and successful in keeping a healthy tension/balance. While the quote would seem to emphasize the Outward Journey, the Inward Journey is sought as an "antidote" to the ways of the culture which would oppose and prevent the comfort and the confrontation from happening.

It's not often that I feel hesitant about what I want to say in writing. But as I have been posting the sections of the booklet The Authentic Church, I am only in awe of the images these words evoke. Gordon Cosby and Karla McLung have written about their vision for the church and what might help it to become what it is meant to be in our time.

This segment from Kayla's Introductory statement:

At the heart of each of us is a driving hunger for ways to five and be in relationship that are genuine. So it is with churches as well. As unique and different as churches are, the ones that are authentic hope to bear a striking and clear resemblance to Jesus, to be so much like Jesus that people sense they have encountered him when they encounter the church. How to facilitate such an encounter-how to become so much like Jesus that our very way of life comforts the world's brokenhearted and confronts the world's broken systems-is a key question for all who seek authentic, faithful belonging. If ever there were a time for the church universal to become more truly the body of Christ, to find ways to embody the life and ministry of Christ for the sake of the world, it would be now as violence and despair grow. We desperately need an authentic encounter with Jesus, an encounter that will shake us at our foundations and compel us to become the loving, reconciling people we have been created to be.

The bolded section , which Karla identifies as the key question, is also dear to me, and scary, and constantly nagging at me. Gordon Cosby told me "it sounds like you've been ruined". I told him I often use the word "spolied". Since 1976, when I am remembering what had been brought close to me via the words of Elizabeth O'Connor, some in-depth discussions with friends who were also struck by this community, and in countless times since then when I "wake up" for a little while and realize that I have slidden back into a "staying afloat in the culture" mode, this community's journey in being-becoming-renewing church has been a source of calling back to me from the depths.

The most recent years, particularly in the past 4 years, since my "negative" result on a Prostate biopsy, I have returned to what I have and have not accomplished in the way of a more intentional journey to discover, participate, and struggle toward church. A good deal of this has been seemingly fruitless. I am presently trying to figure out who I need to invite to look at this "Authentic Church" with me, and see if this addresses the longings of the heart and also sounds like good news to them.

The bolded section in the quote above is going up in my banner---- it is a significant piece of all this, along with the idea of our being "cultural addicts in recovery".

Movable Theoblogical: Becoming The Authentic Church

For me the central question is what it means to be the authentic church of Jesus Christ, crucified and resurrected. What is its nature? Its essence? And how can that essence be structured and expressed so as to become a healing agent for the world?

It's not a question any longer of which issues are of primary concern and what kinds of programs might best serve those issues, but a question of being. How are we to be in the world so as to live the Jesus life with greater boldness and passion?

Whoa. How are we to BE in the world? And the other questions, such as what to do as "Recovering Cultural Addicts". This is a major reason why God calls unto himself a church. To BE together against the snares of the culture that knows not God. Gordon told me when I spoke with him MOnday that an alcoholic can go to an AA meeting for help staying sober over the weekend. Where do we go to "get sober" from our addiction to culture? Rare is the church which takes us somewhere else that is OTHER than culture. Only God can lead us there. Only the prescence and being of Christ can do that.

I have a few video avi clips of that conversation that I will share along with the text from this wonderful booklet , Becoming the Authentic Church. For anyone who wants to comment on any of this, Gordon Cosby and the people with whom he is on journey with want to know what you think, and what some of this means to you.

I would like to show, on my sidebar, the most recent posts in my Authentic Church category, which I have set up as a sub-category under Church of the Saviour

Perhaps also even show the first couple of lines from the post aside from the title.

I would also like to customize the Archives Template so that when one of the Authentic Church posts is being displayed, a different template is shown from the default. (This might even prove to be handy for other uses, like showing related info in the sidebars of those pages, like the Church of the Sacviour Category, or Books, or whatever.

Any ideas?

The items in Authentic Church are lifted entirely from the Booklet, and my comments will be set apart with a different format, like this , for instance

from p.10ff

Some of us have loved the church for as long as we can remember. We have given ourselves fairly faithfully to seeking the risen Christ in community, and we see things that are right and good about this universal body of believers. And yet, at the same time, we are aware of a growing inner dis ease and discontent among many at what the church has not become. We find that we are not alone in feeling a deep and unequivocal caring for the church ... and yet longing for something more.

We see the realities of our world and recognize that the church has not become a strong and mighty witness for scores of displaced refugees and starving, ill, ignored, assaulted masses. We are not calling the nations to bow before God in recognition of systemic oppression of the poor. We are not demanding that practices of reconciliation and justice be at the heart of national and global policies, nor even at the heart of our own schools, work places and neighborhoods. We are not lending our corporate voice to the voiceless and our power to the powerless,

In short, we are not filled with the fire and passion of Jesus Christ. We have not let our life together be poured out as a sacrificial gift of love, taking on Jesus' nature and proclaiming with him and the prophet Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

Luke 4:18 19 (see also Isaiah 61:1 2)

No longer do we wish to remain silent in the face of immense needs. No longer will we condone the church's complicity in the violence of war, racism, sexism, addiction, and the growing divide between those with access to wealth and those with access only to poverty. No longer will we accept being separated from each other because we are of different races and cultures and economic classes. We long for a new ecciesia a body of people called out from the world's culture who will speak and act in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, embodying that Spirit and committing ourselves to bold practices of love.

What we are imagining is actually quite simple. We are imagining that this is the time, that this is the kairos moment, when the church of Jesus Christ will become its true Self, poured out in loving surrender. We will let go of our illusions of what we had hoped the church would be and boldly step out into what does not yet exist. We will take on the nature of the One who lives and breathes love restorative, reconciling, nonviolent love love that challenges the world's oppressive systems by empowering the weakest among us, and within us, to find our value and voice.

We will then become, more authentically than ever before, Christ's body in the world.

You say this sounds impossible. You say the church is the most messed up institution you know. You say you can't find even one authentic local expression that is true to Jesus' nature. Which is why we respond:

The items in Authentic Church are lifted entirely from the Booklet, and my comments will be set apart with a different format, like this , for instance

THE "GIVENS" OF BEING AUTHENTIC CHURCH

THE.AUTHENTIC CHURCH IS AN OUTWARD EXPRESSION OF GOD, WHO IS LOVE.

In love and through love, the new community is created. God, who is by nature unlimited love, draws us to let our partial, limited love unfold in depth until we reach our full capacity for giving ourselves to God and to the totality of everything and everyone that God has created. In our present wounded, damaged, distorted condition, it is difficult to imagine what this sort of beloved community might look like or how we even would begin to commit ourselves to it, but we open ourselves to the impossible, trusting the Source of love to show us the way.

THE AUTHENTIC CHURCH FOLLOWS THE AUTHENTIC JESUS.

Most churches claim to follow Jesus, but not all are following the authentic Jesus. Too often we fashion Jesus in our own image and then wonder why there is no radical world change. The authentic Jesus is not in pursuit of privilege and power and prestige, but makes his home among the lowly. The authentic Jesus does not condone violence but is the embodiment of love, embracing all people equally with mercy and the hope of transformation. The authentic Jesus confronts cultural addictions and the systems that create and sustain them. The authentic Jesus says no to the world's power and yes to God's power. There is only one real Jesus into whose being we hope to abandon ourselves, dying to our false illusions and letting our true selves be resurrected in him, who is the world's hope. Together we seek to discover and live his nonviolent, healing nature.

The items in Authentic Church are lifted entirely from the Booklet, and my comments will be set apart with a different format, like this , for instance

At the heart of each of us is a driving hunger for ways to five and be in relationship that are genuine. So it is with churches as well. As unique and different as churches are, the ones that are authentic hope to bear a striking and clear resemblance to Jesus, to be so much like Jesus that people sense they have encountered him when they encounter the church.

How to facilitate such an encounter how to become so much like Jesus that our very way of life comforts the world's brokenhearted and confronts the world's broken systems is a key question for all who seek authentic, faithful belonging.

If ever there were a time for the church universal to become more truly the body of Christ, to find ways to embody the life and ministry of Christ for the sake of the world, it would be now as violence and despair grow. We desperately need an authentic encounter with Jesus, an encounter that will shake us at our foundations and compel us to become the loving, reconciling people we have been created to be.

The processes that we try to describe here offer one possibility for how we who care about the church might follow our primary calling to love each other as we have been loved and to create spaces in which that healing love can be expressed and extended. It is an attempt to make Jesus real for all of us.

The church's structures change, but its message and mission do not. Through those who will risk leaving the familiar in order to pitch our tents in the unknown, God still schemes and dreams the new.

-- Kayla McClurg

This is the first post in a series of posts from the Booklet Becoming the Authentic Church: A Guide Toward Being in Diverse, healing Community Rooted in Reconciliation and Justice
. My firend Bob and I have taken these thoughts and begun to take concrete steps toward finding this Authenitc Church (he in his setting and I in mine) You will notice that I have been quite taken with this vision in the next several days, weeks, months, years. I relish your comments. I have a bit of video from my meeting with Gordon Cosby on Monday Nov.14, and wil begin to post some of that over the next several days, along with photos I took over that time.
The items in Authentic Church are lifted entirely from the Booklet, and my comments will be set apart with a different format, like this , for instance

The processes described in this guidebook represent an attempt to follow the simple way of Jesus.

They are not the only way, they merely express one way by which we are seeking to go deeper in order to be freed to love.

Repetition of primary ideas is intentional.
Even as we share the possibilities with you, we too are hoping to hear and understand them more deeply.

This is a work in progress. We welcome your insights as we learn from each other how to live boldly in the not yet.
Together may we discover new life giving ways to be the diverse and healing body of Christ, becoming love on behalf of the world.
-----------

At this point in my life, and at this point in our world's life, I am asking what is to be my focus to what am I to be giving my limited time and energy? What is the new thing, the genuine thing, that God wants me to be learning, doing, being now?

For me the central question is what it means to be the authentic church of Jesus Christ, crucified and resurrected. What is its nature? Its essence? And how can that essence be structured and expressed so as to become a healing agent for the world?

It's not a question any longer of which issues are of primary concern and what kinds of programs might best serve those issues, but a question of being. How are we to be in the world so as to live the Jesus life with greater boldness and passion?

The temptation always is to turn stones into bread. We have tried over the years to be faithful to Christ by loving and serving the poor giving bread. But have we primarily been offering people helpful ways to get their share of the culture's bread, or have we offered the living bread of God?

The church, when it is true to its nature, is God's channel for sharing both kinds of bread. That is what I long for and want to be a part of in the remaining time that God gives me. I want to let go of whatever doesn't take us deeper, whatever takes more time and energy and effort than it yields, and together with others I want to embody that transforming presence in the world. This might not be what is most important for you, but for me, it is all that ultimately matters.

N. Gordon Cosby

The above was taken from Becoming the Authentic Church: A Guide Toward Being in Diverse, healing Community Rooted in Reconciliation and Justice
. Copies of this booklet are available via Potter's House Book Service for 3.00 each (Well worth it. I have been working with this booklet since I picked it up on Saturday. Comment here and I will make sure Potter's House gets it-----right now, I cannot find it on their Web site. I gotta talk to them about getting thier GREAT book store completely online.

I left last Thursday for DC, drove all day (11 hours), and got to Rolling Ridge Retreat Center in the panhandle of W.Va. near Washington DC (well, about 70 miles out) about 1030pm. My friend Bob Sabath now makes his home there. I spent Friday and Saturday night at Bob's old house in Mt. Ranier MD just over the DC/Maryland line, where his son, daughter, and daughter-in-lawnow live. I spent Friday night and all-day Saturday in Columbia Heights/Adams-Morgan, with my "base of operations" at the Potter's House on Columbia Road. I also returned there Sunday morning for 8th Day Community's Sunday morning worship and the "Headquarters" ecumenical worship at 11:30, from where I returned to Rolling Ridghe via Dayspring, the Retreat grounds for the Church of the Saviour communities which they've had since 1953, when they purchased it, about 45 minutes north of the city. Now, "civilazation" is incringing upon their rural retereat. (I have pictures, whcih are forthcoming)

Anyway, I'm back, and I have a booklet that I came away with which is a crucial piece of what I brought back from that 4 days in DC. Becoming the Authentic Church, which seems to be a current statement of the telos of the Church of the Saviour communities. The back of the booklket says this:

Contained within these pages is one simple way we might live more authentically as the diverse and healing communi8ty of Jesus Christ. Journey with us.

I have use of a Sony ICD-BM1 voice recorder for my trip. It records MSV files. It's included software only converts to WAV files. Is there a way to get this direct to MP3? I don't want to have to find a converter to convert the WAV files, nor do I want to have to do two conversions. Anything anybody knows of out there? I want to do some podcasts on the road!

I don't know exactly when, but sometime between Saturday and Monday, my iTunes feed that was validating just fine at feedvalidator.org (see it here is gettg error s now, saying the feed is not valid .

Today, this new error apperared: iTunes elements should only be present in feeds encoded as UTF-8
Yesterday, this was not even there. What changed from Saturday to yesterday was that my URL for the DTD was throwing an error: http://www.itunes.com/DTDs/Podcast-1.0.dtd. When I changed the case of DTDs to dtds and the filename Podcast-1.0.dtd to podcast-1.0.dtd , then the error went away.

Yesterday, and still today, this error :
column 0: Undefined item element: itunes:category (3 occurrences)
<itunes:category text="Religion & Spirituality"></itunes:category>

I fussed with this for quite a while yesterday, trying to get it to validate. Finally, I went ahead and tried putting the feed into my iTunes software, and it loaded fine. I put the Feed into Sage. Again fine. INto Bloglines, fine as well.

So is it feedvalidator.org that is confused? And why the change in case on the DTD file?

I'm confused.

William Cavanaugh, in Theopolitical Imagination: Discovering the Liturgy as a Political Act in an Age of Global Consumerism(TI):

Clearly Christians have to an alarming degree adopted the salvatio mythos of the state as their own, and submitted to the state's practices of binding. We submit to these practices, even give our bodies up for war, in the hope that the peace and unity promised by the state will be delivered. What I have tried to show is that the state mythos and state religio are distortions of our true hope, and that the Christian tradition provides resources for resistance.

This speaks to me this morning as I get hit early on with some samples of thecomplete adoption of the state mythos of salvation through violence. I was confronted with the French response to the youth violence as some sort of challenge to what I can only surmise is "you criticize America and therefore you must adore France, those pussies" kind of thinking. I'm not even a French citizen. In terms of nationality , I am an American citizen (which by contrast means NOTHING up against my citizenship in a People of God), and so I am attached to the "peoplehood" of this nationality as opposed to others, and so I can only compare the ways in which the "assurances" of our state as such today with the "promises" of the Kingdom as proclaimed by Jesus.

The citizenship in the Kingdom of Godt so completely obliterates all other loyalties that any calling to account for national actions must appear as hate to those who can see no other loyalty ( despite claims that they do) , and yet that "other loyalty" is but the mythos of the state retrofitted into an emasculated gospel; a gospel devoid of resurrection, which makes it no gospel at all.

I just spoke with my friend Bob, who lives in Harpers Ferry, WV, about 70 miles northwest of DC, on a property that contains a Retreat Center called Rolling Ridge. He also has a house in Mt. Ranier, Maryland , which is about 20 minutes from COS that has a gust room avaialble if I didn't want to make the hour and a half trip up to Rolling Ridge every night to crash at the Retreat Center.

I'm going to check the ads for BestBuy and CompUSA to see what geeky items I might add to my arsenal that would be of use to me (like some extra DV tape, maybe a longer lasting battery for the DV camera, and what kind of MP3 voice recorders there are)

I'm scheduled to meet Gordon Cosby a week from tomorrow.

I was struck by the stories of Martin Luther King and the early SCLC and Jordan's Koinonia Farm community. I can't identify a better narrative, including theological analysis, of the issues at stake and in play re: church and state when we look at these two stories through the eyes of Marsh.

He talked about how shortly after King had invited Jordan to come and speak at Dexter Avenue, the two took contrastingly different paths:

The next year, King left his one and only tenure as a parish pastor, to work full-time for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, while Clarence Jordan, despite his harsh and exceedingly precient judgments on the white evangelical church, came to a noti on of Christian community so extreme in its rigor and discipline that it risked becoming as insular and obsessed with purity as the segregated churches he loathed. The differences between the two ministers then intensified. From King's perspecitve, Koinonioa Farm simply became irrelevant to racial reform in the South, to the massive legal changes necessary for a more just nation. From Jordan's perpecitve, King became a parody of his former self, a man of non-violence who relied on the men of great violence for his well-being, a politician (and not a very good one), whose pastoral energies were lomg spent.

No doubt, as the new civil rights leader, King had little choice but to broaden his scope, fortify his leadership, and forge ahead into complex political terrain. But as a profressional organizer with a staff postion in his father's church in Atlanta, King was no longer accountabnle to the Dexter deacons of the world, proud people who kept his feet to the fire on moral rectitiude. ...King's new freedom to operate must have no doubt felt liberating after years of negotiating the scrupulous Dexter crowd; but in Jordan's estimation it was freedom purchased with a moral cost.

Jordan believed that the only way authentic change could transpire in southern race relations was through "incarnationl evangelism," and that meant making Christian truth concrete in community and in shared life with the excluded and the oppressed. Evangelism at its highest, Jordan said, is "based not upon a sermon, not upon a theory, not upon an absraction, but upon the word of God become flesh and dealing with us, and restoring us to our right minds."

Two figures in Christian history in my own era (actually just prior to my coming of age) who deeply challenged me as a college student, and who awakened me to that first glaring contrast between God's Kingdom and the Kingdoms of this world, and the church standing mostly with the kingdoms of the world and the cultures that grew up under them. Racism and the complicity in it that so dominated the churches that Jordan's "God Movement" could not be seen except where this, as the first of the barriers that must be overcome, were challenged and set aside to make room for other challenges like economic realities. It was King who ended his life aiming at the violence of war and the injustices of poverty (and it was probably one or the other or both that led whoever was responsible for his assasination to decide that enough was enough). Both these men battled these three massive demonic forces: racism, violence, and poverty (and both realized how each of the three lived in residence with the others, and that they were interrelated.

I listened to hours and hours of Clarence Jordan lectures on tape while a college student, and it was impossible to miss Jordan's incranational evangelism. "You don't take the name of God in vain with your lips, you take it in vain with your life"

I began getting this back in the early 80's, before Sojourners. Here are online archives of issues 1997-2004.

Welcome to The Other Side

I decided to clip this section on my early readings in Charles Marsh's The Beloved Community from an earlier post to bring this work to a greater focus. What a tremendous book (through 72 pages thus far. The narrative of both King and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the first half of the story of Clarence Jordan and Koinonia Farm is a treat and a moving story.

I have started into The Beloved Community, Charles Marsh's book on "How Faith Shapes Social Justice, From the Civil Rights Movement to Today". Marsh introduces his book with this:

Although a boycott was neccessary in Montgomery to bring an end to discriminatory laws, King urged the church people in the movement to keep in mind that a boycott and its achievments do not in themselves represent the goal. "The end is reconciliation, the end is redemption," he said, "the end is the creation of the beloved community."

I'm just in the first chapter, but I 'm reading with new awareness what I read about back when MLK first captured my attention folllowing an NBC minii-series in 1978 called KING. Marsh follows MLK from his upbringing through his education, and how the moment of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the threats that ensued shook him to his core and brought him to a moment of surrender and seeking God. This shook him out of his dependence upon his "liberal education" and sophistication and thrust him in with the lot of his community, and took him places he had not planned to go.

The next chapter deals with Koinonia Farm, a Christian Community Clarence Jordan began in the late 40's in rural Georgia after he garduated from University of Georgia with a degree in Agriculture and from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary with a degree in New Testament Greek. Jordan is the author of The Cotton Patch translations, an NT Bible translation using Southern lingo and sets the entire gospel and rise of the church in the South where Jerusalem is Atlanta, Washington DC is Rome, and Jesus is born in Valdosta, Gerogia. Jordan's interracial Christian community actually pre-dates and spills over intot he early Civil Rights movement. IN the Cotton Patch translation, the Kingdom of God is "The God Movement". The Chapter in Marsh's book is titled: " nN the Fields of the Lord: The God Movement in South Georgia"

I'm only on page 35, but I have not been able to put it down for long. And I gotta finish After Christendom, since its due back next Tuesday.

I will be meeting with Gordon Cosby Monday Nov.14. I hope to have a good conversation about the church. (In fact, I rather expect it)

Pastor John Wright with a great post

Pastor John Wright

This week, however, I got involved in a discussion in another context that contested the moral superiority of the United States to the 'fascist and totalitarian nation-states' of the mid-20th century. While, to understate the obvious, I am not a big fan of Hitler, Mussolini, or Lenin, I tend to see the United States as the inverse of such totalitarian regimes, with its own version of totalitarianism, the totalitarianism of democratic free-market capitalism, that is at least every bit as pernicious because it is not as obvious in its totalitarian controls.

I was blogging about this some time ago. It was in response to something Bonhoeffer had written

Although the circumstances are not of such extremity of evil, neither was it perceived to be as such at the time. People refused to believe that such could be the case. While I do not see the present tendencies leading to murders of the scale of the Holocaust, I see a different type of pressure emerging, one which is economic, social. political, and like in Bonhoefer's case, VERY much a SPIRITUAL issue. Even one in which the very soul of the American Church is at stake. While some lend their "theological support" and offer various "Biblical supports", others avoid support but choose silence out of a desire to maintain "agreement" and focus on "common ground".

The more "systemic" processes , those "inherent in our assumptions" and hidden by rhetoric about how "that's just the way the world works" are more effective in that they remain in the dark. It's not overt violence done to neighbors in close proximity (except of course, to those in Iraq, who are, by the way, also our "neighbors", according to Jesus), but a violence of economic isolation; of exclusion; of "fighting back the hordes" who would rob the elite of their profits they have grown to "need" at an increasing pace. The only ethos free of this is that in which we are invited to participate in the power of the people of a resurrected Christ.

Pastor John quotes from an article: Slavoj Zizek | To Loot and Rape

In the much celebrated free circulation opened up by the global capitalism, it is "things" (commodities) which freely circulate, while the circulation of "persons" is more and more controlled. We are thus not dealing with "globalization as an unfinished project," but with a true "dialectics of globalization." The segregation of the people is the reality of economic globalization. This new racism of the developed world is in a way much more brutal than the previous one: Its implicit legitimization is neither naturalist (the "natural" superiority of the developed West) nor culturalist (we in the West also want to preserve our cultural identity). Rather, it's an unabashed economic egotism - the fundamental divide is the one between those included into the sphere of (relative) economic prosperity and those excluded from it.

About half way into After Christendom, Stanley Hauerwas is posing questions about a "justice" whosae defintion is being set by, as he tells it, a sense of natural revelation that imparts to any in the world a common "shared" sense of what justice is, and this is grasped by Christians as a form of power-play. Certainly likely that there is an abstract like this which people can claim and laud for its relevance and impact, but do so out of a desire for Christian thought to have a place in the mainstream.

And of course, this starts putting me on the defensive about how he is going to implicate the "Peace and Justice" Christians. As I would say (and have written, ad infinitum) in response to Jamie Smith's treatment of this topic, there is here an issue of giving a more charitable survey of the kind of thought from which this RO type perspective derives, for it is just those educated, progressive, Christians who would and in some cases have represented the most open and receptive hosts for the elements of RO theology to take root. But the way to this dialogue is not in what must come off as a paternalistic attitude toward "activist types". And thus far, there are far more academic theologians floating RO ideas than there are people throuroughly engaged in just those types of communities their theology would envision.

I adore the writings of Hauerwas (that's probably too "cute" a word for it). I "relish" it and simultaeously "brace myself", knowing that in my present state of "churchlessness" (other than the loose connecitons with "ecclesia-based" folks I have developed, mostly online, but beginning to see some various opportunities for "meet-ups" of various local bloggers such as Jonathan (who has a great thread going on his blog, and like me, has gotten himself a Vanderbilt Divinity School Library card to get hold of some of these RO books to pore over)-------sorry for the long parenthetical comment -----to continue:
in my present state of "churchlessness" I am "super-sensitized" to the yearnings for church embodiment that I read about in Hauerwas and Smith, and also Cavanuagh, whose "Theopolitical Imagination" I am also reading.

Sojo mail today contained this link and quoted this portion:

[Bishopslist] A Prayer from Bishop Will Willimon

George had an Alabama boyhood, an Alabama youth, and Alabama dreams. I pray for his mother, for his family and friends, his church, and all those for whom his death means not only the ending of his dreams, but the beginning of their lifetime of grief and loss. Lord, help us to feel some measure of their pain. Save us from offering cheap consolation or patriotic platitudes in the face of their loss. Instill in our hard hearts a determination to work with You for a government in which we shall make peace as quickly and resourcefully as we make war, a country that loves Your righteousness and justice more than our security and power.

Carlos quoted from the Nov.1 issue of Ron Sider's ePistle

What is most troubling is that the people who talk about Jesus the most are the ones who seem most willing to abandon his teachings and opt for a politics of pragmatism.