March 2006 Archives

At the Potter's House on Monday this week, we visited some with Gordon Cosby (pictured on the left, me on the right) and Kayla McClung of CoS, and Gentry Underwood showed up (Gentry is from Nashville, and had flown over for the weekend with his wife, and so he was visting as well) There's a lot to sort out about what I will blog on this couple of days in DC. I hope that as I learn more about some of the ideas Gentry has for CoS, I can be of use. What Gordon was telling me in these photos is also worth quite a bit of coverage, and it has to do with what community (and its structures for building and maintaining community life) is behind the stories that go online.

Click any of these images to get a slightly larger one in a separate window.

Written earlier today in the absence of a strong Wifi Signa, and pulled off of the SD memory card from the PDA:

The wireless signal coming from the hotel next to my car place (where I'm getting new tires put on) is flaky...I got on just long enough to send an email to work.

The tires were needed since the existing ones were getting worn on the inside, and we're about to embark on a trip to the DC area. I have a time set with Kayla McClung, who works with Gordon Cosby as a minister at the Church of the Saviour. I spoke with her on the phone yesterday. Looks like I'll be meeting with her and Gordon Cosby on Monday next week.

on P.136 of In Good Company, there's a good quote about "market forces", and it brought home to me what I am noticing about the tendencies of the "Bush camp" Christians to jump to the defense of a social policy that affirms the "consumer mentality" that the economic powers have affirmed as right and good. The defense of an "anti-regulatory" movement (most arrogantly being carried out by the Bush administration). This defense seems to be as energetic as any overtly theological issues they may deem important.

Liberal societies train us to believe that our own self-interest is legitimate, that our greed through market mechanisms serves the common good. (a thought from ME, not Haerwas :I recall the Gordon Gecko character telling the stockholders, "Greed is good". Greed WORKS".) That 'good' turns out to be little more than an aggregate of our self-interests. For those if us produced by such socities to speak about love and economics surely sounds like madness.

violence always needs to justify itself through deceit, and to appear, however falsely, to be defending a right or responding to a threat posed by others.

Sounds familiar, eh?

"John Paul II, through his narrative of Eastern Europe, invites us to become part of God's people by refusing to submit to violent narratives that capture our souls by asking us to submit to false economic and political orders through seemingly meaningless and insignificant acts-- likeputting yellow ribbons on church doors"

There's a growth under Bush of the "Publishing and PR" houses asking us to do just that. (Add to that the Fox News's and such)

"When people think they posses the secret of a perfect social organization, which makes evil impossible, they also think they can use any means, including violence and deceit, in order to bring that organization into being"

All in the name of some "theoretical" which they assure us is our fate if we fail to follow them into the abyss. It's all for our "safety and freedom". Disheartening. Disturbing.

via jesus Politics, On this day before the third anniversary of the Iraq invasion, this bit of polling turns my stomach

Go to church, back the war - Nation/Politics - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

Overall, 45 percent of Protestants and 47 percent of "other Christians" thought the war was a mistake. The figure was 52 percent among Catholics, 58 percent among other religions and 62 percent among those who had no religion.

Frequency of church attendance also held sway. Overall, among those who never went to church, 62 percent said the war was a mistake. Among those who attended services once a week, the figure was 44 percent.

Republican churchgoers were the most supportive. Among those who attended services once a week, 16 percent thought the war was a mistake. The figure was 26 percent among Republicans who never attended church.
Among Democrats, 79 percent who attended church weekly said the conflict was a mistake; the figure was 81 percent among those who never attended services.

The third paragraph shows how indcotrination actually changes the "unchurched", "Neutral" opinion (kin dof like a control group). It illustrates how civil religion has replaced the teachings of Jesus ( the practicioners of this civil religion would say "clarifies" and "read Jesus correctly", which seems to be an abandoning of the "the Bible says what it says and means what it means" kind of clarity that they say is used in backing their theology, EXCEPT of course where it comes into conflict with "the real world" (which is not the world as God has proclaimed as the end and goal of history, in the Kingdom of God, but the world as defined by the powers; the empire)

Not that "polling opinions" and "stances" is what makes for faithfulness in churches. For many Christians of Democratic persuasion, opposition to Bush may easily fail to move beyond joining the political debate. In fact , it often starts and stops there.

I feel like the blame is to be found not only in the abandonment of the Jesus story as authoritative, but also in the failure to form an alternative polis; a people set apart, so that the church no longer represents an intentional community resisting the allures and the lies of culture and its ideologies (its theologies; irregardless of their claim to be "universal, non-denominational, or religion-free") Without the formative structures and habits, the "opinions" coming from churchgoers, left and right, fail to move beyond partisan politics.

A revisiting of some of the dialogue about the sometimes racous dialogue on Generous Orthodoxy Think Tank about the .....a one liner is kind of hard to pose.......the argument about whether Radical Orthodoxy in general, and Hauerwas specifically, are "dismissive" of activity around "justice seeking", or whether or not there is an "obligation" for Christians to "work with" political structures in the context of being faithful.

(Did I get the "gist"?)

Generous Orthodoxy ThinkTank: Eric Lee's Response to Steve Bush on Hauerwas

JKA posted:

Given that Steve Bush's earlier post "Between Hauerwas and Augustine" generated such lively and vigorous discussion, some might be interested to revist the discussion by considering Eric Lee's recent "Reply to Steve Bush." (Eric is a faithful commenter at Think Tank.) Just FYI.

Some of what I replied to Eric with:

I still don’t know quite where I am on those questions……I don’t mean to be “relativisitic” when I say I like the reasons you both give….I understand Hauerwas a lot better now than last summer, and I like JKA a lot better than I did last summer, but I see where SB is coming from when he asks:

Cannot Christians join with others who are actively attempting to rearrange the social, political, and cultural structures of global capitalism, even as the Christians participate in, and indeed as an extension of such participation, the realization of eschatological justice and peace in the Eucharist? The theological commitments of Radical Orthodoxy suggest as much, but their rhetoric refuses this possibility.

I also like:

I find Radical Orthodoxy’s increasing emphasis on the expansive generosity of God’s grace welcome, since this implies that non-Christians invested in worldly political and economic practices have ethical potentialities heretofore unacknowledged by Radical Orthodoxy.

I also recognize the sections from Hauerwas that you rightfully posed as evidence to the contrary that he TOTALLY frowns upon working with others on “justice” issues (even though I realize Hauerwas has an aversion to that term , mostly because of the tendency of so many to fail to see the way in which so much of that simply props up the system against which they are aimed).

I was reminded also of Bonhoeffer and his work with the resistance and the plot to kill Hitler. Earlier, there were plans for a coup, and Bonhoeffer placed much hope in the possibility of working to effect a “hostile takeover” employing some key military leaders who were on the fence who might help effect the coup. Of course Hitler was an especially heinous case, but I wonder how “heinous” something needs to be before some amount of “collaboration” on some common ground of some appeal to some “don’t do harm” principles that many non-Chriistians could agree on is not “preferable”; and just as Bonhoeffer eventually decided that it might be better to involve himself in an assassination plot when the coup failed to materialize. Again, my point here being that there are numerous instances where Bush and Co, are not simply ineffective, greedy rich guys seeking to close all available avenues toward “leveling the playing field” (even though its never the aim, as Zinn points out in his history, to really achieve a lasting justice/equality; they just talk the talk, do what they want and plan to do, and deny it and twist it and progagandize it into a rally cry ; and to some extent all of the US political administrations have done so; but I do have to say that these guys are the worst of the lot, and we could all do with some light being shed on them, and take our chances with prevention of further plundering of every arena they get their grubby paws on. Still , this would not be “beloved community”, or reach the end of reconciliation, but it would certainly be a lesser evil, and worth stopping, and a better place from which to be able to peer back and say “that was awful”, then set sights ahead, and perhaps the churches that do live the Jesus story will be seen to have been right.

Today, I have more to add on this:

My sensibility on this centers on the question of AT WHAT POINT do the actions of government, in the name, of course, of "freedom" and "democracy" and "the will of the people", require resistance, and when is it deemed "neccessary" or "obligatory" to "unveil" the degree of deception that is happening to obscure the real damage being done? When is it desirable/obligatory to "participate with a coup". I also don't think we can posit a "POINT" at which we spring into action, or "Wait" if such a POINT is not considered "REACHED". I think there are numerous modes of "Trends" that are causes of rightful concern, and that WAITING for a POINT is not "faithful".

What I'm saying here is that there are more than a handful of instances where the Bush administration is attacking and dismantling numerous "safety nets" that , n the past, conscientiousand knowledgable people , in those areas, have worked to protect from abuse by "capitalism" (like environment, Food and Safety, education, healthcare, elderly care, and on and on). INcreasingly, I am seeing the Norquistian activity of "dragging these to the bathtub" in the name of throwing these areas to the dogs of "the market", not to mention the ongoing dragging of the world into violence and war. I don't see that "waiting" for the death toll to reach that of Hitler's actions is any kind of "comparison game" to be played. If it was considered "rational" for Bonhoefer to participate in a coup plan, and finally an assasination plan (that's not what I'm suggesting here----I am instead desirous of any and all "coverups" and instance of corruption and scandal to be uncovered ad infinitum. Not that this country will in any way take a rightful next step beyond that point, but it will at least STOP THE OPPRESSION AND KILLING.

I feel that there are vastly more areas of common ground between "Radical Orthodoxy" and "Progressive Christianity" than many of the most vocaL critics of the latter from within the former are indicating by some of their more public writings or statements. The pieces from Hauerwas that Eric has lifted up seem to me to give testimony to that. James KA Smith talked about in his interview on "Evangelicals Out of the Box" that many Progressives seem to expend much energy in avoiding "sounding like" the Religious Right. I think that perhaps there is an element of this in Hauerwas when he complains about Christians talking about "peace and justice". Yes, the terms have come to be polluted with liberal democratic notions. But they are clearly Biblical TERMS, and the property of no ideology.

It seems we need to try to look more at how these theologies are constituted in living breathing communities seeking to be a people set apart and living apart from the dictates of culture, and a people called to aid one another in being formed as a "recovery group" to help us overomce our addictions to culture by faithful practices.

via Jesus Politics, Franklin Graham spouts more of the kind of maturity all too often typical of the American Civil religion. Anyone who defends the peaceful Islamic themes from distortion by Christians who afford nothing of the "exegetical" hack jobs they do for their own "difficult passages" in the Christian Bible to the Islamic theologians who try to "contextualize" the violent war-like passges in the Koran. It really disgusts me how blindly they follow this path, and fail to show any ability to see their own approach to Islam as similar in any way to those who they think misunderstand Christianity. There are no "explanations" allowed to defenses offered by those wishing to undserstand Islam as they themselves would insist that detractors from Christanity shold consider.

Jay Vorhees has a good post here on this topic

Jesus Politics: Franklin Graham: I don't need an education from Islam

"Do they want to indoctrinate me? Yes. I know about Islam. I don't need an education from Islam," he said. "If people think Islam is such a wonderful religion, just go to Saudi Arabia and make it your home. Just live there. If you think Islam is such a wonderful religion, I mean, go and live under the Taliban somewhere. I mean, you're free to do that."

I commented:

Yes Jay,

I often wonder what many of these “Islam is evil at its core” people would choose as their faith if they had grown up in the Middle East, in an Arab country. Judging by the proclivity of many of them toward Civil Religion, I suspect that they would have been a vocal member of the status-quo, popular religion, and joined in with angered Muslims accusing Christians of generalized hatred toward Islam. I have long believed in a “Cosmic Christ” who reveals himself in and through many “other cultural forms”, seeking to “break through” ANY cultural “norms” which inhibit “Beloved Community”.

Dale

The clincher on the "maturity" of these "islamic curse" people is the "go live there" remark. Not too different from the "America , love it or leave it". "Move to some other country if you don't like it".

I have been searching for words and ways to say what has been eating at me for months. Reading Hauerwas and Bonhoeffer and others like JKA Smith, Daniel Bell, William Cavanaugh, and then making a visit to Church of the Saviour last November, has really brought to the fore all my frustrations and yearnings about the church. When I got back, it seems to have taken forever to get to spill some of this. People were busy. When I finallly got an opportunity, I feel like I blew it. There were no further questions. And no wonder, since I barely scratched the surface, and gave very few specifics. I thought I "held back' on the level of my frustration, since , being in the face to face prescence of a listener, unlike in blogdom, I shied away from revealing too much anger/frustration at the church, but the result was that I seemed to treat it like just one "idea" among many. I totally avoided the subject of how improbable I feel it is that the church will ever be that "Good Company" that is about forming, re-shaping, instilling of habits and modes of living and relating that pose a direct contrast and challenge to life "as is"; the status quo.

I've been seriously down over the past 4 or 5 months becuase of this. I mope around feeling like no one wants me around. When I tell myself that this is "just depression" and everyone seems to be going through it, I start thinking instead of how I might just changed, and have developed irritating or discomforting habits of relating.

I felt pretty popular in high school and college and seminary. I had numerous groups of people with whom I felt totally at ease. It seems that since we moved to Nashville, all of that is no more. Is it my getting older? I had just turned 40 the year before we moved to Nashville. As a late thirtysomething, I seemed to have no trouble at all relating and being enjoyed by younger twenty something fellow computer-geeks I worked with.

Someone told me the other day that today's 20 something (the 'X' ers) are a totally different lot than the twentysomethings of the last decade (the latter of which I seemigly had no problems "hanging" with). I sense a very different relationship to today's youth culture.

The sum of it is : I'm in a totally bewildering place. When I met with Gordon Cosby in November, he told me it sounded like from all my experiences and from things that I was saying that I have been "ruined" in a good way, (to the church as typically constituted) and that I have to "get going", which I took to mean that I need to get about the business of finding that "Beloved Commmuniity" where the reason for being is to help one another resist the addictions of the culture. This is the theme and the challenge of "Becoming the Authentic Church". (the booklet I came back with which I started posting on this blog under the Category "Authentic Church") I was thankful that Eric made comments, but I was sorely disappointed in how there was virtually no response from the rest of the blogosphere, which bothered me greatly. With all of the talk about "Radical Orthodoxy" and ecclesia and the emphais on the church as the only true polis, I thought there would be a few remarks at worst, and a serious dialogue and exploration and perhaps even some "I've also been runied and I want to get going; how can we do something about this? What is God calling us to do?

And so I have been disappointed that I have been unable to do much persuasion that these ideas put forth in Becoming the Authentic Church are a serious enough vision to warrant at the very least, further dialogue.

The matter of how many people are actually reading here anymore is also fuel to the duldrums I have been feeling. Techorati has yiellded less than a handful of links to any of my posts over the entire period since I returned from DC in November. ONE blogger noticed the postings and promised to "get back to it" for further consideration. All the other Technorati links are people who have either the Methodist Blogroll or the Progressive Christian blogring listings on their site, so they're not even the links I'm looking for when I click on my Technorati link. Trackbacks are also useless in this scenario, since so few are even linking to me.

None of this is to say that I am without hope or anything. It's just my perhaps pitiful way of letting you know where I'm coming from so often these days.

Scoblizer brings up a great point for blogs as listening. It's a great way to "tune in" to what friends are thinking about. It's a good way to "allow" others to listen to me. It's a way to put what I want "out there", out there. It's a rather important place for that rreason. A lot of what is here is ME, and how many others are influencing me and making me think. That sounds a lot like what ought to be going on in churches. It sounds a lot like what ought to be OFFERED by churches as furthering the conversations, making them more readily available, and telling the story of the community in a variety of ways and narratives.

Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger » Overwhelmed with pitches, Dave, say it isn’t so!

I’ve realized that what got me here was listening. Listening to my friends talk about their lives. Listening to software developers complaining how hard it is to deal with Microsoft (or how hard our software is to use). Listening to people living their lives and noticing THEM.

Why do I read blogs? To learn about my friends so that I have something to talk with them about. Garrett Fitzgerald, for instance, tells about loving to watch the C5s landing at an airstrip near his house. That brought back memories of seeing the same land at Moffett Field in Silicon Valley (my dad used to work at Lockheed so I had a few opportunities to visit the airbase).

Excellent post, Robert!

Good post from AKMA:

AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Something, sometime, will make clear just how grim, how cynical, how exploitative and degraded the U.S. government’s policies have become. Evidently tens of thousands of Iraqi civilan deaths haven’t done it. Thousands of U.S. military deaths haven’t done it.

Reading in Naked Conversations, the authors are talking about the level of danger of negative comments, and say that "we know of fewer cases of confidential information slipping out on a blog than through conversations with editors or in social situations." (p. 143)

Perhaps, but the big difference is SEARCHABILITY. if names or companies are mentioned, or products of siginificance to the company, people find blog conversations prominent in search results. The blog postings stay there and are reachable via search. This makes them much more "overhearable" than face to face conversations. This is the DISADVANTAGE in the expression of negative or inflammatory postings about one's company. The ADVANTAGE for blog posts being found by searching is that far outweighs this enables the people looking for certain topical conversations to find them via Yahoo or Google. This Searchability is what makes blogs so useful for churches. It enables us to aggregate content of interest to us.

Further reflections from Tom Fox on the occasion of our remembering that for which he ended up giving his life.

Waiting In the Light: The Force of War and the Force of Peace? The Same Force Moving in the Opposite Direction?

Would it be possible to bring about the Peaceable Realm and still keep our unique modes of worship? Would it be possible to turn enough swords into plowshares to at least create the beginning of an energy reversal away from the false gods of nation, flag and ideology (gods who owe their allegiance to Satan) and towards the one true God of the Cosmos?

The negative mirror image of war can be reversed and begin to be seen as the true image of peace but it will take many, many people being willing “to turn, turn, turn till by turning, turning we come round right” (from the Shaker tune “Simple Gifts”). Only then would our world-view direct all our energy towards God and none towards Satan.

Amen Tom. It is heartening to us here that you are in the prescence of the Prince of Peace now, and know now the full truth of the many truths you glimpsed then.

We were saddened to learn that Tom Fox was confirmed dead this week. A church member at the church I attended this morning lifted this up in the prayer time, having been a classmate of Tom in college. This is from the last post on Tom's blog:

Waiting In the Light

“The ongoing difficulties faced by Fallujans are so great that words fail to properly express it.” Words from a cleric in Fallujah as he tried to explain the litany of ills that continue to afflict his city one year after the U.S.-led assault took place.

The twisted religion of Blair and Bush - Editorials & Commentary - International Herald Tribune

Both Judaism and Islam suffer from being religions that are synonymous with the construction of states and political power. This was recognized within Judaism by a constant tension between the prophets and the kings, with the former always calling the latter back to a true righteousness untouched by the corruption of power and avarice. Islam had a not dissimilar distinction, with the imams often limiting the political ambit of the caliphs, directing them to a properly configured vision of an Islamic polity. It is disastrous that both of these critical religious legacies have been lost to a secular politics that now has no limits

These days seem rare anymore.

Nowadays, in camps both left and right, the idea of a "City of God' is flagged as theocracy, and in its place, the "empty shrine" (as William Cavanuagh puts it) is lifted up as the place where some sort of "gentleman's agreement" is etched in the consciousness of a nation of people so that distinctions melt into a "freedom of conscience ---which the Southern Baptistsnow leadership which authoritatively has moved in to define even more specifically some "boundaries" for that "indvidual freedom" (they're quite the mess....kind of enslaved in two layers of nationalism and fundamentalism, both of which align them to an ideology such as that of the neocons).

The life and person of Christ is given back seat to the "public" agreement that Jesus was really talkling about a "peace" that we ourselves must "protect". But obviously (at least for me and many others), there is a bit of self-deception and mass hysteria in play that makes it possible to achieve the kind of self-certainty and blind allegiance exhibited by the Religious Right. The self-deception comes in accepting a cultural, nationalistic Jesus that must "censor" the words that ironically are the same words the fundamentalist, nationalistic churches refuse to take literally alongside all the other places where they insist that Jesus MUST be taken literally (resulting in some confusion on what it means to consider Jesus at all)

APPENDIX 3

S0ME RESOURCES

Reading together about spiritual and cultural subjects will enrich a group seeking to be in authentic community. Following are some of the resources we have found helpful in our own explorations.

BEING CHURCH

• The Dream of God by Verna Dozier
• The 'Givens' of an Authentic Church, sermon by Gordon Cosby
• Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
• A Possible New Form of Church, sermon by Gordon Cosby
• What on Earth is a Kingdom of God? by David Buttrick

FACING OUR CULTURAL ADDICTIONS

• Breaking the Taboo: Talking About Faith and Money in the Church by John Sonnenday
• The Other Side of Sin, ed. by Andrew Sung Park &  Susan L. Nelson [In particular see chap. 5 ,
  Beyond the 'Addict's Excuse"' by Ched Myers]
• Pathologies of Power by Paul Farmer
• Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger by Ron Sider
• When Society Becomes an Addict by Anne Wilson  Schaef
  

JESUS AND JUSTICE

• The Biblical Jubilee and the Struggle for Life by Ross Kinsler and Gloria Kinsler
• The Biblical Vision of Sabbath Economics by Ched Myers
• Cadences of Home: Preaching Among Exiles by Walter Brueggemann
• Good News to the Poor by Theodore Jennings, Jr.
• Jesus' Plan for a New World by Richard Rohr
• Jesus the Rebel by John Dear
  

LOVE AND MERCY IN COMMUNITY

• The Art of Spiritual Direction: Giving and Receiving Spiritual Guidance by W. Paul Jones
• Awakening from the Sleep of Inhumanity by Jon Sobrino
• Becoming Human by Jean Vanier
• Community and Growth by Jean Vanier
• Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen
• Love Set Free by Martin Smith (out of print; check used bookstores or internet sources)

PRAYER/LIVING MINDFULLY

• Centering Prayer by Basil Pennington
• Invitation to Love by Thomas Keating
• Open Mind, Open Heart by Thomas Keating
• The Power of Now by Eckart Tolle
• The Way of Love by Anthony deMello

STAYING TRUE TO THE ESSENCE

• The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard
• Living in the Vision of God by Dallas Willard
• Radical Newness: the Essence of Being Church by
• Gordon Cosby and Kayla McClurg
• Reluctant Saint: the Life of Francis of Assisi by Donald Spoto
• Saving Jesus From Those Who Are Right by Carter Heyward

TELL US OF OTHER TITLES
IN THESE SUBJECT AREAS
THAT HAVE BEEN HELPFUL to YOU.

'The checked titles are available from Tell the Word or Potter's House Bookservice.

Others are available from any book supplier. We appreciate your support of the Potter's House Bookservice at 202‑232‑5483 or www.pottershousebooks.org.

From Stanley Hauerwas:

I am a theologian with a theological position that makes no sense unless a church actually exists that is capable of embodying the practices of perfection. In effect, since my own Methodist church is seldom capable of being such a community, though individual Methodist churches manage to be quite impressive, I live off communities that for varieties of reasons find themselves stuck with strong practices and convictions that they cannot leave behind and remain who they claim to be.

This is where I find myself floating these days. It seems the only church structure that really makes sense to me is a 12 hour drive away from here (The Church of the Saviour). This is not to impune the practices and communities that no doubt exist in places much closer ---(hopefully, a lot closer than I imagine), but it nevertheless adds to my restlessness, and the lack of rootedness in A community that I am convinced is vital, and also convinced that my wanderlust in this area has turned out to be a disservice to my wife and kids that I find hard to bear in these past few months.

We're taking a spring break trip in a few weeks (all of us this time) during the school's weeklong break, and we're heading back to DC (I was there in November). My wife's parents have a time-share arrangement in which they can trade for "other locations" for a small fee, a nd they were not going to be using up their time for this year, so they found a place in middle Virgina just west of the Shanendoah National Park, and about 100 miles from DC, 100 miles from Williamsburg/Jamestown, and 100 miles from my friend Bob's place near Harper's Ferry (Rolling Ridge Retreat) where we will stay one night in the Retreat House they have there for various groups that come in to do retreat-like programs. Of course, we'll be taking in some of the sights of DC for the sake of my by-then 8 year old daughter Kelli, and just the second time for my by-then 17-year old son (who was there ten years ago , just as wide-eyed as his sister is now).

I hope there will be opportunities for some "wide-eyed" obeservance of some of the life and practice of some of the various Church of the Saviour church communities while we are hanging around the area.

I am contemplating how I might, on this blog, review and/or revisit and re-contemplate the issues raised in the "Becoming the Authentic Church" series I posted here when I returned from DC this past November.

There apparently is a CD-set of Gordon Cosby sermons that I want to acquire to play in the car on the way there in about 3 weeks.

I finally got the Pocket PC working correctly. I had been experiencing wierd behaviours with the Dell Axim I have from work. It seems that my first try at installing the driver for the Dell CF Wireless card was the wrong driver becuase I had thought the PocketPC was running PocketPC Windows 2002, but it was actually 2003. So, I had simply installed the right one, which got it working, but the Power ON button no longer worked. I had to use the RESET button. That was an even bigger pain when I realized that when the unit went into sleep mode, I also had to reset it to get it back on, which caused me to lose my place. I was thinking about trying to UNINSTALL the network card drivers and install ONLY the 2003 verison (perhaps the old 2002 driver had overwritten or conflicted with something in 2003), but I did not see any UNISTALL mechanism. So I did a hard reset, and then installed right away the 2003 Dell CF Wireless Card driver. It worked! I had to reenter all my settings for connection to my home network (for some reason, the DHCP on my Netgear outer doesn't really do DHCP, so I have to specify particular IP settings)

Now I am on a mission to find a good blog tool. My Movable Type blog is not at all friendly to viewing on my device. Is there a PDA-friendly set of templates for MT? Is there device-detecting code for MT that knows when a portable device has requested access? I have a fold out keyboard, and so I would like to be able to add entries, and also do the "BlogThis" function I have in both IE and Firefox where I can highlight text on another Web page, right click and select the appropriate MT this or WP this, and have that URL and text be pulled into a new post dialog where I can comment on the link.

Pocket Blog hasn't been updated since September 2002. Pocket Sharp MT requires the 2.0 release of the .NET Compact Framework , which is a 22mb download. That seems a hefty sacrafice for the limited space on Pocket PC storage. I'm not even sure as of this time what the .Net Compact framework does for me. But it sounds interesting. That's a matter for further review. In the meantime, where ar ethe blog tools for pocket PC?

Yesterday, I blogged a piece on the section of Naked Conversations where "Who Should NOT Blog was being explored. That section of the book was a little too simplisitc I think. Movable Theoblogical

The authors in Naked Conversations also assert that "embellishers" should not blog, that there are too many "fact checkers". But I seem to notice quite a crowd in the Bush-camp, especially among the "God-bloggers". they are among Bush's most persistent and stubborn supporters. Most "fact-checkers" tire of posting there. Obviously, one person's "fact" checker is another one's blind, partisan, mistaken opponent. (p.138)

A good for instance appeared yesterday and today:

Daily Kos: CENTCOM Creates "Blog Team" To Scan Blogs

The Military is apparently hitting the "blog PR" circuit. "Planting" ideas on various blogs willing to share their blogspot (or blog limelight or blog opinion. But use of the blogosphere for PR is not exempt from that "blind authenticity"; I was conversing with Eric about this under THIS post. The transparency of blogs does not mitigate against being wrong. "Honestly sharing my opinion" does not necessarily make me "authentic". Getting caught up in the religious right (or left) does not make one authentic. My exploration of Gordon Cosby and Karla MCClung's "Becoming the Authentic Church" (see my sidebar on the right) takes on this notion head on. We have a deeply ingrained addiction to the culture, and we resist assimilation by joining counter revolutions that speak to us in some way. But our problem of addiction is not solved by "picking sides" and joining the rhetoric. If we do not cast our lot with the People of God we are destined to be "cast about by every wind of doctine" (Paul somewhere).

The military is fighting a serious challenge to their recruiting efforts, and so they want to create a "person on the street" interview where "their side of the story" can be hammered home. So, far from being exempt from "embellishment", blogs are often the very place where people are free to and often encouraged to embellish. People can construct their own personal "spin zone", where "we report and you decide". Just look at the ferocity and tireless efforts on "God-blogs" to be "Bush apologists". It's really becoming obvious how "required" this ddfense is for "true believers" in the Religious Right. (And yes, I have become all too aware of how this momentum is also gathering in the backlash of the left) That's why I believe the message of "Becoming the Authentic Church" is so important to the church right now.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: February 26, 2006 - March 04, 2006 Archives

Oh, videotape is not the friend of George W. Bush today.

Remember this quote, right?

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did appreciate a serious storm but these levees got breached and as a result much of New Orleans is flooded and now we're having to deal with it and will." - George W. Bush, Sept. 1, 2005

Only now the AP has unearthed videotape of the president being warned that just that could happen the day before Katrina hit.

Uh.....sounds familiar. .....

"Who would have thought that they would use airplanes to fly into buildings?"
Condaleeza Rice, Sept . 2001 (apparently a month or so after reading the August 9 PDB)

Chris Matthews ran the tape just a few minutes ago on Hardball.

See the report on it here.

Late Update: video link here.

In Naked Conversations, they list who should NOT blog. Basically, it's whoever needs control, or needs to maintain strict PR (they gave the example of Suddam Hussein. I would add Karl Rove and the Bush administration to the list. Of course, any president or presidential candidate nowadays is slave to "appearances" and "staying on message")

Blogs have so far worked extremely well for companies and people with do-the-right-thing cultures. We think they will fail in cultures that have public-be-damned attitudes.

OK, pretty obvious, but there are still those who "blog" seemingly to say that they are, and yet their blog is very much a PR thing, and many have no comments or interaction. We could say that these are simply pretenders, trying to cash in on the status and the "coolness" of it. Al Mohler is a perfect example. He "blogs" but he is not seemingly the type to want to dialogue.

The authors in Naked Conversations also assert that "embellishers" should not blog, that there are too many "fact checkers". But I seem to notice quite a crowd in the Bush-camp, especially among the "God-bloggers". they are among Bush's most persistent and stubborn supporters. Most "fact-checkers" tire of posting there. Obviously, one person's "fact" checker is another one's blind, partisan, mistaken opponent. (p.138)

What really gets under my skin is those within the church who worry about "what might be said" on a blog. If we insist that the "marketers" or official spokespersons of the churches and her organizations are the only ones we want publishing their prounouncements, then the best anbd deepest reasons for blogging are forfeited, and they might as well work on image crafting, and quit giving lip service to the idea that they are interested in people getting to know one another. I like the United Methodist Communications mission statement: "We help the church tell its story". That's one of the best pleas for instituting blogs and enabling blogs across the denomination that I can think of.