Church + Dayquil

Today I barely made it into church high on Dayquil feeling pretty good, trying hard not to shake anyones hand. I actually wish I had been feeling better, because the hymns were Church of God, Anderson and ones I hadn't heard since I was a teenager. It was great. I felt spaced out and caught up in a cloud of sentimentality and/or medicine!

The message was about unresolved guilt and other baggage people carry around like garbage. The point was to let the "garbage" go before the New Year so we can all be free to focus on the future. God wants us to be happy and free! Great!

I think it's a good idea.

I realized that I don't have a lot of guilt. I do feel victimized by various things that have happened and like maybe I should "talk to God" about some of that, but I don't really feel a lot of guilt. Hmm, maybe I should!

Sometimes I am as sensitive as a brick in the head!

still feverish: more missional emergent monastic churchish stuff

Made it into work only to be sent home. My coworkers are kind.

I have been trying to be still. Being sick makes me realize how much energy I have, how strong I feel life within me. Maybe I am talking about what I perceive to be my spirit.

In my last post I said I didn't talk about my spirituality here anymore.

One idea I share with others is to start a group of people-- people who are alienated by the church, younger adults, older people that understand denominationalism is going to end, and others, and bring everyone into a kind of collaborative effort to ________. I wish there was a safe space for people to gather and talk and discuss. I know there are lots of people scattered in various local churches, and other people who have dropped out of churches and I want to see these and other people come together. I want help organize some kind of group that doesn't inspire people to snicker and be cynical and roll their eyes, I want to be part of a group of people seeking to connect with God in a way that is sincere and authentic.

I want to be part of a missional church, well, I am part of a missional church.

Here is what drives me mad/crazy/ makes me nuts: I know three different people, different leaders in their various communities, all of whom I have much respect for, that are all talking about a similar kind of thing/ project/gathering/conversation. I am connected to all of them in different ways, and believe in all three of their unique dreams. My question is this: why can't everyone just get together and collaborate? Why can't people start a conversation together about building a new and relevant community that is going to focus on helping others as an expression of faith?

Also, I am a very impatient person. I like to get things done, I know how to organize, to make things happen NOW, not next month, next year or in the ambiguous future. Life is short, I want to get things done!

Now, I don't like to pretend expressions of faith that I don't have, but I do believe in missional communities and really could help build, organize something. I want be a part of something, I feel like there is so much potential here. I feel like I am starving for sincere spiritual "fellowship" with people and I am going to 3 different churches! Maybe its my problem. Maybe I need to try harder. I feel that so much of church is not about our spirituality, but about churchstuff. I feel like there is so much fakery at different churches. Is that because there is a boat load of fakery or because I am too cynical?

If what I am saying doesn't make sense, my excuse is a very real fever.

NEWSFLASH! i have a cold!

just kidding. not about the cold though :(

anyhow i'm just not really sure what the purpose of this blog is anymore. i don't really write my honest "thoughts about God" here or whatever, not like they are consistent thoughts anyway, but i don't write them. and as far as my other "spiritual commitments" etcetera I have A.D.D. when it comes to "choosing to read the bible in a year" AND i still haven't found a comfortable answer for what the difference is between constructive criticism and plain old complaining.
I don't want to turn into a whiny church person.

I guess if all else fails this can be a place where I post pictures of my cats :)

snowy little adventure

"Christ came down" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint

crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagon sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
with German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody's imagined Christ child

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carollers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary's womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody's anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest
of Second Comings

reclaiming the holiday

isn't it about redemption anyway? beneath the fancy, decorative lights.
one of my favorite Christmas carols is O Holy Night

God help us rise up, singing, being, hope

digging out of the cave

I think I have found a cure for the blues. I had a couple of rough days early in the week, but now I am off work for a five day weekend. I realized that since Evan left for the east coast I have allowed our apartment to morph into a kind of gloom cave. It has evolved into a kind of paper station/ clothing depot where I come home from work, dump all the crap I have accumulated around my computer, navigate my way between the ever growing pile of laundry, and find my cats peering at me from their temporary romping around on the unmade bed and/or top of a book/paper stack.

Enough! I am cleaning up and actually having some fun. There are a lot of cures for the blues. My current cure is reliving the summers of 1999 and 2000 when I was completely immersed in Dave Matthews. The music used to make me so happy! :) The sun is out! It's a beautiful day! It's going to be January soon! I have so many good things in my life! I am so lucky to be surrounded by such wonderful people and friends, to have a meaningful job and live in a beautiful place. Well, back to cleaning up the house and letting a little light inside.

more on the job

The funniest thing about my job is probably the parking situation. The main office is located in the downtown core, in a two hour free parking zone. All of the employees and volunteers park their cars, come into the office and then set stopwatches (I am not kidding!) for an hour and 45 minutes. Then all day long the watches going off--everyone is constantly taking turns running outside of the office to move their cars! The meter guy apparently only works until 2pm at which time (wait for it!) he becomes the local dog catcher! He drives around in a little white cart and chalks peoples tires to mark the start of their two hours. Part of my job, along with whoever is at the front desk (both my cubicle and the front desk have windows) is to warn people if I see the meter guy/dog catcher chalking our tires! It is hilarious! Well, I don't plan on writing about work very often, just because it's not very smart, but I just had to write something, especially about the stopwatches and the constant reparking of cars!

what seems like a very long time ago

found poem from the words around my desk

$7 dollars off Jiffy Lube
Covey Run Merlot
The Faith Assembly of...
Titanium,
"and several want to get their GEDS"

"these two new volunteers
have had a training?"

War is a force that gives us meaning
Sharpie, Chase.com, GREPOWERPREP
micro, cannon, nature valley
JVC "and mornings don't work for her", Dr. Pepper--

evergreen christian, ecconline churches-
baptist national convention usa inc.
-- "for who among us would not want
our neighbors to do the same for us?"

joy joy joy joy down in my heart

these last few days, I have felt a genuine kind of joy bubbling up within me and informing my perspective! Isn't that nice!

Busy

Suddenly my life is very, very full. Before I started my new job, I worked pretty hard to keep myself as busy as possible. Now I am even busier! Really though, I have so much energy right now, it is great! It really reminds me of when I was in Americorps except the pay is better :)

In other news, I recently found out that if I delete stuff on this blog it can still be read by people who subscribe to my RSS feed! What can I say, I am a pretty (melo)dramatic person sometimes and this has been a nice place to rant and then delete!

Here's an example that I won't delete:

Last night I had to go shopping for a holiday party gift exchange. It was hell! Everywhere I looked I saw people in various stages of bewilderment, trying to figure out what gift to pick out! I hate dodging all the moms and dads with their dueling carts! I imagined that everyone was lost in their own individual family stories, lost in thinking about things people only think about this time of year (eg. Could Aunt Sally use more candles?! will it piss off Such and such if I brought resees pieces to a potluck?! does candy corn count as a vegetable dish etc). Looking at the cocoa samplers with mugs promising "comfort and joy" I couldn't help myself and uttered a particularly unseasonable greeting toward the merchandise!

Ho, ho ho!

the church and the emerging church (pete and repete jumped off a bridge)

at one of my favorite blogs, Carol Merrit at tribalchurch writes:

I love the ECM because it gives ex-fundies (like me) a refuge. There’s an entire generation of people who grew up in conservative evangelical churches who were told that they had to be Republicans to go to heaven. We were told that caring for the earth didn’t matter, because Jesus was coming back any time now. We were told that the rich were rich because God blessed them and the poor were poor because they deserved it. We were told that women were to always graciously submit to men. We were told that same-gender relationships were an abomination. And none of this made sense in the actual world that we lived in and loved. But the emerging church has become a place for these people.

She continues with some concerns, among others, that there are few women in leadership positions in the emerging church movement:

I don’t understand why more women aren’t in leadership positions. I’ve told it’s because it’s a meritocracy and as soon as women start producing, then they can be in leadership. But I see women producing all the time. Beautifully. Just not usually in emerging church leadership. And I’m not stepping into a feminist time warp to become a part of a movement.

This is a concern I share. Another concern I have is about the use of strategies that are currently considered "emergent" being coopted as tactics to "draw people in" to whatever church, project, etc. people are working on. Not that it is bad to draw people in, but that adopting a certain style often evolves into a routine and then eventually a ritual (which can still be enjoyable as a ritual, eg the doxology).

I have only been to two churches affiliated with the emerging church movement, and attending both of them were fairly depressing as spiritual experiences (but quite inspiring thinking about the potential for social change). I personally felt at both churches like I was at a conference for the Abercrombie and Fitch crowd-- at a church that existed for all the people that made fun of me in high school sort of thing. At both churches there was a late 30s early 40 something pastor that "wanted to be real" a band, coffee, a powerpoint presentation with the sermon. Maybe I am weird and these tactics do reach most people in my demographic. At one of the churches they resorted to U2 music (something i used to enjoy before it reminded me i was a demographic)

Carol pointed out how she cannot understand why the EC is so cynical about mainline pension plans etc. I think that's especially ironic as there are quite a few emergent folks out there who have made quite a name (and market) for themselves through the EC movement.

More on this later perhaps. You can read the rest of Carol's thoughts here.

i have the best job in the entire world

that is how i am feeling after just 2 days of work!

Right now I am still trying to get acclimated, but I am loving it!

i want to be part of the hope

it is my perspective that it is not God's will for people to suffer. personally, something started happening/starts happening, something started changing/starts changing when i began/begin again to not blame God, to not believe that God just allows/exists/is-- detachedly at best and sadistically at worst-- idling by while people suffer. i am happy that i believe in a concept of God that infinitely surpasses my ability to imagine God

beautiful

from tribalchurch:

I was standing in front of the communion table in my cold musty sanctuary. Even in the midwinter, the air never lost the dampness and smell of the swamp. It was an ideal country church, a white structure with a tall steeple. Although, it sloped a bit and there was no insulation. The cracks in the floorboards allowed you peak at the ground and there were places where the corners of the building did not quite meet each other. In fact, on really frigid mornings, I would come into the office, and the water in the toilets would be frozen.

read more of Bearing God

job update!

As some of you know, I had an interview last week with a local nonprofit for the position of volunteer coordinator. Even though I have a good amount of experience, I didn't think the interview went that well because it was so rigorous and intense, but today I got the call!!! I GOT THE JOB!!!

I can't believe it! I have a real job! It is meaningful and I will be good at it! I am so thankful!

serotonin

home sweet home

its good to be back

offensiveness and the gospel

Jeremy has been arguing that the gospel itself is not offensive, we are. In his second post on this subject, The Unoffensive Gospel of Jesus, he further expands on what he believes the gospel is and is not, along with introducing why the gospel itself shouldn't offend anyone:

"The gospel is not simply that Humans sin or are sinners and need a savior. The gospel is not simply social liberation. The gospel is not simply that Jesus died on the cross for the sins of Humans. The gospel is not simply the destruction of injustice. The gospel is not simply about being saved from hell and salvation unto relationship with God or heaven. All of these things reflect aspects of the good news of Jesus, but neither of them (by themselves) are the fullness of the good news of Jesus. Rather, the fullness of the good news that Jesus articulated throughout His ministry and life is the Kingdom of Heaven, an idea that should not be offensive, and communicated properly is unoffensive."

A lot of times reading novus lumen is like attending seminary for free and without the homework! Isn't the internet great?!

Words and the Diminution of All Things by Charles Wright

The brief secrets are still here,

                            and the light has come back.

The word remember touches my hand,

But I shake it off and watch the turkey buzzards bank and wheel

Against the occluded sky.

All of the little names sink down,

                           weighted with what is invisible,

But no one will utter them, no one will smooth their rumpled hair.


There isn't much time, in any case.

There isn't much left to talk about

                           as the year deflates.

There isn't a lot to add.

Road-worn, December-colored, they cluster like unattractive angels

Wherever a thing appears,

Crisp and unspoken, unspeakable

                           in their mute and glittering garb.



All afternoon the clouds have been sliding toward us

                                     out of the

     Blue Ridge.

All afternoon the leaves have scuttled

Across the sidewalk and driveway, clicking their clattery claws.

And now the evening is over us,

Small slices of silence

                 running under a dark rain,

Wrapped in a larger.

moving plates

at the place i volunteer there is a man that swears he can feel an earthquake days before it comes. since the 1970s he says that before a quake he will experience a uniquely terrible headache. he believes that he is ultra sensitive to energy that is released in the earth. because of this, he claims to feel it coming.

i also know a different guy who lives in ohio, claims to be an "apostle", and has a website where he exploits people for money and instructs people with fine detail on how to live their lives. he is into the whole fivefold thing and has used this way of thinking to claim that he is superior in his ability to discern what God says and wants in specific situations--indeed, in almost every situation.

so how do we know what God is saying or doing or wanting when all knowing is only perspective? when does it become dangerous to think that God is on a particular side or behind a particular cause or acting in a specific situation? Obviously we all know the extreme examples of the abuse of this-- the guy in Ohio for example--or things our ancestors did or things that even our contemporaries do in the name of God. But what about having small insights and intuition about things?

sometimes i think i have a glimpse of what is going on; not really a vision, but the outline of a puzzle piece. but then, all of us, all of humanity is driven to create stories and give meaning, give a coherence, a narrative, a morality to events and happenings. i want to know how we know this meaning is from God and not produced by our own spectacularly fantastic imaginations?

a maybe miracle; or at least a weight off my mind

i am not going to go so far as to say this is a miracle, even though that is my instinct: my step-grandmother will not be coming. Just like that. They wanted to stay for two nights and my uncle (who they were riding with) cannot stay that long. Because of this she apparently decided not to come for dinner at all.

She had also wanted my mom to arrange for my grandpa to be able to go hunting with less than 24 hours notice. This was a request impossible for my mom to arrange. Whatever the real reason, she is not coming.

I am not calling this a miracle, because I don't think I am totally in the right to feel so much hatred toward her. Even so, it still feels like a miracle to me personally. The idea of her visit had been stressing me out to the point of having nightmares.

To top it all off last night it snowed.....Evan and I had hoped it would.

The snow makes everything look so beautiful and clean.

hatred, pain and unforgiveness: happy holidays!

1. Yesterday mom and i drove the truck to town and at the store I ran into a woman from my old church. It was really good to see her, but a weird thing happened when we started talking. I noticed she was using a lot of church speak. I had sort of forgotten about this I guess. She started talking about how one of the old pastors of that church had been filling in as pastor for another church and "then he got the calling" and how the "church is ready to receive" and how "God doubled" this and that and how so and she was glad to see me so "blessed". I just sort of nodded and smiled. I guess I forgot about all that jargon.

2.There are two people in this world who cause me more emotion and pain than I think anyone should have to experience. One of these people is my step-grandmother on my mom's side. My step-grandmother makes me feel extreme rage when I see or think about her. I am so angry at her, I cannot think straight. I have to separate myself from her because being around her is unhealthy for me personally. I honestly believe I am justified in hating her because of what she did to my mother. My mom on the other hand is a saint and is trying to have a relationship with her. I cannot stand this. The other person who just thinking about causes unfathomable pain is my father. I only feel dull anger when I think about him. No rage there anymore, the reality of his life and actions have in some ways destroyed me. Instead of feeling rage about my father whenever someone mentions anything having to do with fatherhood or fathers in general I feel like I am being repeatedly stabbed. Sometimes I have even caught myself flinching. But at least I don't have to see my father.

My mom invited her stepmother over for dinner and to my horror they accepted. Is it unchristian of me to hate these people? I really honestly feel justified, outraged and everything else in disliking them. I know that you are supposed to forgive people. But I think there are exceptions. How convenient for me I guess.

I had to cut these people out of my life for my own self-preservation, but now in adulthood I am biannually forced to pretend like everything is dandy, to fake that everything is and always has been wonderful. What a crock.

God have mercy on me, but I will never be able to forgive this woman. I mean come on, at some point doesn't self-perseverance take precedence over forgiving? I cannot think about these people or I will not be able to function. Maybe that's why God created alcohol.

michigan

The weather here is simillar to what we left in Washington, minus some of the rain. The skies are grey and the majority of the leaves have fallen. No snow yet.

I don't know if I blogged about this or not, but at the end of last month my stepdad was tboned pulling out of my mom's drive way. It totalled their Explorer. My stepdad was miraculously uninjured. So two week's ago my mom bought a used Taurus. It died on her on her way to pick my partner and I up from the airport. Things worked out though. They borrowed a car from someone and we didn't have to wait very long. Now mom's car is at the shop, probably at least until we leave. It was the transmission.

The guy that sold it to her told her that he was "going to be the first car salesman to get into heaven".

So these last two days I have sort of been thinking about what a low down guy this person must be. Well today she called him and told him what happened. To my suprise he actually offered to pay for most of the cost. Maybe he will be the first car salesman in heaven.

It is strange to be back here, back home. Last night when I was laying in bed I kept thinking to myself what a dream my life back in the northwest seems like from here. I kept thinking to myself: Did I really graduate college, am I really going to a church that is granting sanctuary to a homeless camp, am I really part of making this camp work, how is all of this possible?

Then I started thinking about how I actually got out of this place, how I actually made it out of here. I started thinking about the different people that saved me, that helped all of us survive. If things hadn't happened exactly like they did, I wouldn't be where I am today.

I really want to start writing out my story.

Well, I am on dial-up internet here, tying up the phone line, so I better go. I am hoping to be able to go to my old church this weekend. I may have to drive my step-dad's 1960-something manual transmission pickup the five miles there though. The good news is that I can actually drive a truck like that. I really want to go and see who is still around.

Ten years ago this coming Sunday I was baptized in that church. I remember going down under the water thinking it should mean something.

Hey all you "progressive men": Be a real man this Thanksgiving-- help make dinner or do the damn dishes

With Thanksgiving quickly approaching my partner and I are headed home to Michigan. Inevitably this Thursday my mom will wake up at 6am and begin the long process of creating turkey dinner. Invariably my sister and I will assist her, along with other women in the family, in an attempt to make things easier. After dinner, my mom will predictably yet still sneakily (as always) try washing the dishes herself until another woman catches her doing it. Also inevitably, my sister and I will likely be doing a lot of knowingly agitated nods at one another. And why? Because at least 5 males, but probably more like 8-10 males, all will camp out in front of the television and transform into total jerks while the day goes on. And even the guys that don't enjoy football, for this one day, will pretend.

Yet as I learned in horror two years ago, it isn't just the Midwest, and it isn't just middle aged men perpetuating this tradition. You see two years ago, I was unable to go home for Thanksgiving. Instead I met up with a group of friends here in the pacific northwest and we all made dinner together. All the women that is. Now, these friends are what most people would consider extremely progressive individuals. We all were students at a very progressive college and all of us were young, involved with volunteer work in the activist community, and certainly aware of things like sexism and gender roles. Yet on Thanksgiving Day, none of that mattered. Each one of the men there would've claimed to either be a feminist or to be in solidarity with feminists and they each would've professed to be genuinely serious about equality and egalitarianism. And yet every single "progressive man" there camped out in front of the idiot box watching football while us "progressive women" slaved away in the kitchen. We women also did the dishes afterward. As one friend succinctly put it: "bullshit!". We attempted to get the men to help, and they would not. Sure every once in awhile one of them might come into the kitchen and stand around but none of them helped or asked if we needed help. Instead they would flatter us with compliments about how good everything smelled and then sheepishly flee.

So be a real man this Thanksgiving and help with dinner or at least do the dishes afterwards! And ladies, if you want to be equal, try actually letting the men help if they ask. If you enjoy doing all the work on Thanksgiving, that's great. But if you secretly want help, you cannot banish any well-meaning guys to the couch to watch the football game. This Thanksgiving I really really want to be thankful that our moms and aunts and sisters didn't have to do 2 hours worth of dishes! And many kudos to those of you out there who already have this issue under control. Happy Thanksgiving!

Into the Park by Maxine Kumin

You have forty-nine days between
death and rebirth if you're a Buddhist.
Even the smallest soul could swim
the English Channel in that time
or climb, like a ten-month-old child,
every step of the Washington Monument
to travel across, up, down, over or through
--you won't know till you get there which to do.

He laid on me for a few seconds
said Roscoe Black, who lived to tell
about his skirmish with a grizzly bear
in Glacier Park.  He laid on me not doing anything.  I could feel his heart
beating against my heart.
Never mind lie and lay, the whole world
confuses them.  For Roscoe Black you might say
all forty-nine days flew by.

I was raised on the Old Testament.
In it God talks to Moses, Noah,
Samuel, and they answer.
People confer with angels.  Certain
animals converse with humans.
It's a simple world, full of crossovers.
Heaven's an airy Somewhere, and God
has a nasty temper when provoked,
but if there's a Hell, little is made of it.
No longtailed Devil, no eternal fire,

and no choosing what to come back as. 
When the grizzly bear appears, he lies/lays down
on atheist and zealot.  In the pitch-dark
each of us waits for him in Glacier Park.

Update

Well, I have cooled off quite a bit. The protests still continue and 50 people were arrested last night. Apparently after that happened some of the protesters ran through downtown throwing things (dumpters, newspaper stands, pieces of concrete, even a row boat) into the intersection, at cop cars and breaking some bank windows. They've also tried cementing railroad tracks. Now I'm not in favor of anyone getting in trouble, but earlier when someone else was talking about this, they mentioned how cementing railroad tracks and trying to derail a train could count as domestic terrorism. For the sake of the people down there, I really wish someone would get a handle on the people committing these acts or else people could really find themselves in a lot of trouble.

In my last post I was very angry about the idea of protesting shipments returning from Iraq. I am still upset about that. But I am also upset that a few protesters are being allowed to co-opt what is happening down there. The more responsible protesters need to get a handle on the people that are being destructive.

I believe in protesting and have a done a great deal of it myself, but I am strongly committed to non-violence. If they want to commit civil disobedience fine, but I don't agree with violent tactics.

For me personally war is incompatible with my spiritual beliefs. Jesus himself gave up his life rather than fight, and when his disciples tried to attack the people that had come to get him, Jesus healed the guy that the disciples had attacked.

Anyway like most people in this community, I am extremely anti-war, but I am not pro-violence.

I also think that we need to think of more ways to "support the troops" without supporting the war or the lies of our government. For example this morning i had the chance to listen to a veteran of the Iraq war talk about the protests. He said things like "Iraq attacked us on 9/11" and talked about seeing one lone Iraq man fire shots at troops from his home even though there were 300 guns aimed at him. I "supported" this veteran by not saying anything even though my instinct was to try and correct his misinformation about Iraq and 9/11 and talk about how maybe that Iraqi man was just trying to defend his home. Instead I said nothing.

Is it really "supporting the troops" to let veterans tell a bunch of lies they have been fed from the government-- things we KNOW are not the truth? I don't know what the answer is, but I know what the answer isn't: brick throwing and violent protesting, especially illogical (the equipment is returning home) protesting.

All of this (the throwing of crap into the road at least) has been taking place about two blocks from our apartment. Last night after I went to bed (i am a deep sleeper) my partner heard the screams of protesters getting pepper sprayed, along with loud bangs and the sound of people screaming outside. He turned on the local alternative radio station, concerned that someone was maybe getting shot. Instead he heard what was akin to a street party with kids joking around about all the trouble they were causing. This was live on the air. His empathy vanished.

Strangely, him telling me about this gives me peace of mind. I have felt guilty at times for not being down there, even though I do not support what they are doing, just because some of my friends are down there and I do not want them to get hurt. But it is out of my hands. And from the way things sounded on the radio according to my partner, they were having a kind of protest street party in the middle of harassing the cops. Anyway, my conscience is clear.

Maybe when we get back from Michigan I will start standing with the women in black.
I definitely want to do something. I just don't want to engage in violent tactics or in illogical protests that only further split the movement and confuse and anger the majority of the antiwar public.

Seething anger

I have been trying really hard not to post about local current events or do anything that may indicate where exactly I am blogging from. At the end of my last post I mentioned that the military was unloading supplies and material just back from Iraq.

There is a large protest movement where I live. I used to be quite extensively involved with it. Over the last year I have watched it continuously splinter, disintegrate, and then regenerate into newly formed but mostly ineffectual groups.

Three week or four weeks ago I indulged myself with a rant over at Justice and Compassion. I thought I would repost some of it here, because it is my most articulate expression to date about why I am so pissed off about the anti-war movement:

"I was 2o years old on 9/11 and 22 when we went to Iraq. I participated in protests, walk outs, I went to meetings, signed petitions, wrote my congressmen and senators. I voted, I campaigned for Democrats for one election cycle and for the Green Party the next. I went to an “alternative” college specifically to learn economics and study politics from a non mainstream, “progressive” point of view. And in college I dropped banners over overpasses, I wore bandannas at protests where I raged against things like the concept of private property, I put my body in front of military vehicles, I was pepper sprayed by the police, I helped shut down streets. I did all of this out of “moral obligation” because I didn’t want the blood spilled by my government on my uncalloused hands.

I did this for 4 years. Guess what? Nothing changed. I saw my friends split over “ideological differences”, became disgusted by extremisms, by arguments over the most “radical” strategies and tactics. I saw good people turn into ugly human beings obsessed by their own temporary stardom as activist giants, I saw good men revert to sexism while claiming to stand up for justice, stupid professors push vulnerable minds toward an imaginary revolution that ended in year long trials, skewed interpretations, all the consequence of young people participating in civil disobedience without wanting to pay or even understand that civil disobedience comes at a price.....

I am not an “Activist” anymore in the sense that you will not find me on the streets of Seattle at the end of this month, wearing a bandanna over my face, trying to “change the world”. I am sick and tired of holding signs while assholes honk their support for peace and smile at us thru their SUVS. The only thing I am sure of is that I cannot even fathom the amount of suffering this government has caused the people of the Middle East– and not just the people of the Middle East, but literally millions– the US government participating in secret wars, in trade agreements,– there is no end."

It feels especially blog-appropriate behavior to quote myself commenting on another blog.

Fast forward to today. Many of my former "comrades" (can you hear the sarcasm in my voice) have just spent the last 5 days protesting equipment coming back from Iraq.

This pisses me off so much when I think about it, its hard to speak logically about it. And I KNOW these people. And I cannot BRING myself to be in solidarity with them. Am I just swinging back on some ideological pendulum? I still think the war is wrong, I just think it is moronic to protest incoming shipments.

Another thing that really pisses me off is people that want to protest for the sake of protesting. Also people that are not committed to non-violence. Watching video of these kids throw shit into the street in front of traffic makes me seethe! Do you they really think this is helping?

But I KNOW they think its helping. Even though I was always committed to nonviolence and never did anything more "radical" than be in the same general area where other people were engaging in "direct action". Or how about college kids doing graffiti that says "No war but class war"?????????? ARE YOU freaking kidding me? These are college students! But they are so brainwashed they think they can be the vanguard of the working class! AHHH

I had a "radical" professor that knew my history in the church and used to warn me that if I wasn't careful I could get disillusioned with the left and swing to the right. I don't know. I am not right wing at all! I mean seriously! Just because I don't believe in committing asinine illegals acts doesn't mean I am right wing! AHHHHH

and what does all of this have to do with Christianity? I'd rather just not talk about it and wait for things to blow over. Either way I am out of this town in 5 days, lucky me.

WWJS (part one)

so Jim has asked bloggers to write about what they think Jesus would say to us individually (WWJS)

First of all I have been thinking about how we can discern what God is saying. On the one hand I have personally concluded that I don't really know what God is saying. After all when I pray and meditate I don't hear God saying literal words. But what is pretty amazing is that I do find myself drawn toward certain ideas. Sometimes I am not sure if these ideas come from God or myself, though once in awhile I am convinced they are from God, or that the reason I gravitate toward certain ideas over other ideas is because of God.

Then again, I have lots of ideas. So how can I discern which ones are from God? I can't! Sometimes I have a feeling that something is from God, but then I just have to wait things out and see what happens. This is all very abstract. I guess that goes back to what I mentioned in the beginning of this post-- that I am not really certain of what "God is saying".

I feel a lot of (what i hope is) healthy fear for my soul or sometimes anxiety over my relationship with God (i hesitate to say "fear of God" because i know all of the baggage and stereotypes that come with that idea for a lot of people). Anyhow I genuinely hope that I am making the right choices and getting better at living the best that I can, and I also hope that God will help change me, that I will let God change me (because i believe that can happen). I am also hyper sensitive to what humility, service, and real love toward others, especially toward people that i don't already like-- should look like-- at least for me-- and i am very conscious of how short i fall in living up to the ideal.

And on my best days I am open to God. But not only on my worst days, sometimes on my regular old average days, I am not very open at all.

On that same note, Jim did a follow-up post where he mentioned the fact that some people heard Jesus speak to them, changed, and then their lives were never the same. Yet others heard Jesus speak, didn't do anything and missed their chance:

What inspired me to create it [the post] was the thought that there are so many stories in the Gospel where Jesus met a person, said just a few sentences to them, and their life was changed forever. Most of us want to believe that as Christians, disciples, if Christ talked to us directly, in the flesh, we would be the ones following Him every day, hanging on to His every teaching, recording what He said (and arguing like dolts over who was first amongst us). Who says we would be that lucky? More to the point, who says we'd get that much hand holding? Maybe I would warrant only one interaction with Jesus. The Gospel makes it clear - those who got only one chance with Jesus were often changed for life, and those who He spoke to that didn't change missed out, forever.

It's a scary thing to think about, at least that last part. Because I definitely don't see myself as one of the people that immediately left everything and followed Jesus. I have always worried when reading the New Testament, because I mostly related to the people who didn't respond to Jesus, or even to the people Jesus didn't speak to. I just know myself and don't think I would've just dropped everything and followed Jesus. I see myself asking what Truth is or looking back at the burning city, or not being the good soil or not loving my enemies or not always forgiving so i can be forgiven. And it's not because I believe in hell that I think about these things, it's because I really do want to do good, be good, help others, give of myself to others unconditionally.

Then there is also the culture, time and place I find myself within. I don't want to be too political but I deeply believe it is extremely difficult to live a life like Christ in this capitalist consumerist culture, as a citizen living during the beginning of the decline of the american empire.

Even now as I type this I could easily step outside and hear the hum of a giant warship parked at the port a half mile from our apartment unloading its gear just back from Iraq, where close to a million civilians have been killed. And I am not doing anything about it because it seems like protesting it will not bring about the end of the war. But it still haunts me. My questions become: Am I complicit? Am I complicit in the deaths of innocent people like so many Germans were complicit in the heinous acts of their government? What does this mean for me as a moral, spiritual question?

I guess I don't know what Jesus would say about this or other things.

i tag Jeremy and Heidi - what are your thoughts on WWJS

starting out simple

i want to write about my old car.

it was a blue-green 1996 Geo Metro. It is pictured here parked in eastern washington with a tumbleweed on top of it. (i used to get a big kick out of tumbleweeds, being from the midwest and all).

this car was a miracle car. i had been driving a '93 ford escort that had been hit by 3 different deer (i never hit these deer- though one of them did run into my drivers side door once- another miracle story). people harassed me about it alot, about the old beat up escort. i loved it though, plus i didn't have a lot of cash. well i was a youth leader back in these days at my old church. i made the comment one day that the only way i would get a different car is if it was a geo metro because i knew they were good on gas millage. well lo and behold someone knew someone and the next thing you know i had this car for $2000. it was in perfect shape with only 67,000 miles on it. It was a manual transmission and I got about 45-50 miles per gallon.

to make a long story short, i went everywhere in this car-- went all over the country, including the east coast, canada and to southwest missouri several times, where the people who are like my second parents were living at the time. one time, before i went to see them, i got the car an oil change. then i proceeded to do 85mph down to Missouri on a 3-cylinder engine without checking the oil once. i thought it would be ok since i just had an oil change. wrong!

long story short, it made it there. We loaded it up with oil before i left again for michigan, and i was told to just keep checking the oil. but then on the way home transmission started to go out in gears. through missouri it would only get into 4th-- by the time I got through Illinois it struggled in 3rd. In kalamazoo i called my stepdad who informed me that if i couldnt get it home i might as well kiss the car goodbye. i loved that car! and i got in home in 2nd gear! i thought it would die. but it didn't it kept fighting! what normally took 12 hours took 21 hours, but i made it home safe and with my car.

it never ran out of gas. what i mean is i would risk it all the time because it got such incredible millage. once i had the car a couple of years i started to get really careless about it. for example, i knew that it took about $1.85 to get to my mom's house from the community college and visa versa. it would be so low i would pray to God not to run out of gas in the cold even though it was my own stupid fault in the first place for not putting enough in. sometimes i just didnt have the money. but i knew that if i could just come up with something like 80 cents by the time i got to the gas station between the college and the house, i could make it!

in the winter i used to run outside with my hair wet in the morning (in michigan a bad idea). i would sleep late, not have time to warm my car up and just jump in like a mad woman. the college was 45 minutes away, and i was always running late. i would jump in shivering before the windows were even totally defrosted and then drive east into the rising sun down a snow covered glacier-like road for 5 miles while my hair turned into ice... and back then i still smoked too. so throw smoking clutching coffee careening down hilly 19 mile road into the sun with no visibility into the mix.

i never had an accident. i would have premonitions of deer, slow down and then, lo, deer (this happens to a lot of michigan drivers though, deer are everywhere, we are always thinking about them).

i used to basically plow my way home through insane blizzards in this car. one quarter i took classes at the more northern campus, which was a huge mistake. at the time though i thought of it as a challenge. i had fun plowing through snow in my ridiculous geo.

in the summer of 2002 this car actually was submerged in the chippewa river. thats right, but by "coincidence" (i dont believe this) i found a guy to fix the whole thing for 500 bucks! we're talking new engine, plus a bunch of electronic stuff.

the car was never the same after the river incident. i wrote a poem about it years ago but i don't have it any more. it started out something like "the day the river ate my car i was ...(something something)". basically the emergency brake failed while i was obliviously enjoying the day at the park: note to self, never park on a hill by a river.

in 2004 when i moved to eastern washington to do americorps, this little baby made it! By then it had 140,000 miles on it. thats right, i put 70,000 miles on the car in about 3 years. i am very bad at math, but like i said, i always got at least 45 miles to the gallon. that tells you about how much running i did in this car!

when i lived in eastern wa i used to floor it to Ptown in my geo. i could make it from Othello to southeast Portland in 4 hours if i didn't stop. once i made it in 3 hours and 45 minutes. I just floored it. Those trips were crazy. I never had enough money for gas but always made it home somehow. Maybe this was more about my being bad at math than God intervening, but that drive was just really wild. There is this one exit, in between Umatilla and the Tri Cities called Locust Grove Road. I was always below E on gas when passing that exit, usually at about 2am. It was about 15 more miles from Locust Grove Road to the nearest gas station and usually this was "ok even though im not sure i believe in God i am going to pray right now" time because i always always always thought i was going to run out of gas. I could never drive by there, even when i had enough gasoline, without thinking about it. It was like a joke between me and God.

The geo is gone now. I sold it in Othello for $500 bucks. I had to. It needed too much work. I begged the guy I sold it to not to scrap it but to promise to try and fix it. He probably thought I was nuts but he promised anyway. I hope it is currently helping someone else get someplace, any place.

So, I don't know if this story counts as talking about God in my life. I certainly thought about God a lot in that Geo, thats for sure. Part of it too i think was just the vulnerability of driving that vehicle so much. I damn well knew if I hit anything i mean ANYTHING even at 35 miles per hour, it was pretty much going to be over for me.

I was hyper aware of my own mortality in that car. The roof of it was practically made of aluminum-- if a kid sat on it, it would start to dip and cave in a bit.

Anyway, that was the little Geo.

It was definitely a faith experience, cruising around in that thing.

Cats on the blog: Evan knew this day would come :)

Losing track by Denise Levertov

Long after you have swung back
away from me
I think you are still with me:

you come in close to the shore
on the tide
and nudge me awake the way

a boat adrift nudges the pier:
am I a pier
half-in half-out of the water?

and in the pleasure of that communion
I lose track,
the moon I watch goes down, the

tide swings you away before
I know I'm
alone again long since,

mud sucking at gray and black
timbers of me,
a light growth of green dreams drying.

as if it were motioning "no"

My Life by Joe Wenderoth

Somehow it got into my room.
I found it, and it was, naturally, trapped.
It was nothing more than a frightened animal.
Since then I raised it up.
I kept it for myself, kept it in my room,
kept it for its own good.
I named the animal, My Life.
I found food for it and fed it with my bare hands.
I let it into my bed, let it breathe in my sleep.
And the animal, in my love, my constant care,
grew up to be strong, and capable of many clever tricks.
One day, quite recently,
I was running my hand over the animal's side
and I came to understand
that it could very easily kill me.
I realized, further, that it would kill me.
This is why it exists, why I raised it.
Since then I have not known what to do.
I stopped feeding it,
only to find that its growth
has nothing to do with food.
I stopped cleaning it
and found that it cleans itself.
I stopped singing it to sleep
and found that it falls asleep faster without my song.
I don't know what to do.
I no longer make My Life do tricks.
I leave the animal alone
and, for now, it leaves me alone, too.
I have nothing to say, nothing to do.
Between My Life and me,
a silence is coming.
Together, we will not get through this.

chimes

Unrelenting Flood by William Matthews

Black key. White key. No,
that's wrong. It's all tactile;
it's not the information
of each struck key we love,
but how the mind and leavened
heart travel by information.
Think how blind and near-
blind pianists range along
their keyboards by clambering
over notes a sighted man
would notice to leave out,
by stringing it all on one
longing, the way bee-fingered
blind, mountainous Art
Tatum did, the way we like
joy to arrive: in such
unrelenting flood the only
way we can describe it
is by music or another
beautiful abstraction,
like the ray of sunlight
in a child's drawing
running straight to a pig's ear,
tethering us all to our star.

light

vision for this blog

in many ways i am still trying to find the right tone and subject matter for this blog. i know that i could stop writing about my experiences and opinions and instead post links to conversations that are happening about the emergent church and all things "postmodern". maybe sometimes i will still do that... but i think there are plenty of blogs that do this way better than i ever could.

what i would like to do with this blog is tell small stories about how i have caught glimpses of (what i perceive to be) God in my life. i haven't ever really tried to write anything like this before, so i am kind of nervous. and when i try to tell these stories, i really want God to be the focus of them, not me.

maybe some people will think that by starting out from that perspective (of having God be the focus) i cannot be objective about my experiences. the thing is, i am not trying to be objective, no one can be. we all start out from some perspective anyway.

so, thats the plan.

i am not sure if i can even talk about some things, if i am even at the place where i can write about things yet. i don't know how to write or talk about God in a way that is real enough, genuine enough. but i figure if i don't at least try that i won't ever learn how to talk about God in my life--so i might as well try.

good day

i had a really good day today at church. it was really mellow. maybe its just because i have been getting to know more people at the church through my volunteer work, or maybe its just because i got up at 5am, but i just felt so much more relaxed.

i ran into my friend who also goes to that church, but to a different service. she is my only christian friend within a 140+ mile radius and it was very good to see her!

anyway i just thought i would write about what a pleasant experience i had today because i realize much of my time on this blog is spent going on about all the not-so-nice things related to the church as an institution and christianity in general!

the most comical/ funniest part of today to me was probably when some lady that i do not know followed my friend and i around taking our picture for a solid five minutes. it sort of made me feel like an "exhibit" (((maybe part of the church's "youth" exhibit???)))) but in a funny good way

disciple-making the what!

sometimes lately i find myself tempted to pause at whatever unexpected juncture i find myself approaching and sometimes casually, sometimes seriously, wonder just what the hell i am doing. as i become more acquainted with the current events and language of the emergent church, sometimes i feel like i am being scammed through a back door straight into the evangelical community. does anyone else in the blogosphere have an opinion about "emergent" strategies being utilized as "evangelical tactics" in mainstream churches? Is that already happening? I don't know, I haven't scanned that particular book shelf in Borders long enough to know.

i'm still just not sure how i feel about pushing Jesus on other people, especially pushing Jesus on people in some clandestine way and also just general talk about what Jesus needs to do whatever on and on... my blood pressure rises everytime someone starts talking in churchspeak (the opposite of tongues) about what Jesus wants etcetera.

so there are three branches of "emergents": the relevant, the reformed and the revisionists. I guess I would fall into the category that crazy Mark Driscoll suggests are heretics, except that i am actually possibly a heretic. Also I think I may be going to a church that wants to eventually draw in people using "relevant" type worship strategies. (If all this lingo is driving you crazy, that's a good sign you are still normal!)

How is all this categorizing and evangelizing any different than the traditional church? I was talking last night to someone about watching the emergent church folks bicker online in various blogs and how thats really not any different than passive aggressive cat-fights at church meetings. I guess at least when you are bitching on your blog you can eat toffee nuts liberally at the same time! (At least I do!)

Blah/Maybe its the weather! here's a good site that always helps me counter the gloom

miscellaneous uneditted thoughts

anyone reading this blog may have noticed that i am heavy handed when it comes to editing. reviewing my saved drafts from last week, i realize that i posted and then removed 2 entries and severely edited one of them down to contain only a "happy thought"! this edited, sanitized version of my ideas on spirituality is a far cry from my honest experience: my spiritual experience is not neat, usually does not make much sense, and is rarely cheery. i openly feel that it would not hold up to rational scrutiny, intellectual questioning, nor do i feel that i could do a very good job of communicating tangible reasons for why i believe what i believe.

lately though i have been experiencing more joy about spiritual things in my personal life, but that still does not change the questions i have about many things: suffering, the global class structure or the absence of God or the seeming absence of the mercy of God in these areas. i still don't know how to reconcile my faith the with existence of terrible suffering. Why doesn't God intervene? Where is God? Are we supposed to sort of fill God's role since God is not around? I don't really get it.

i like Benjamin's post that quoted a SPU professor talking about switching back and forth between calvinist and armenian views; on externalizing good things and internalizing bad things:

Jennifer, who is a sociology prof at SPU, and whose ideas I've found provocative in the past, said something interesting. She said that we want to be able to switchcalvinism and armenianism. Which is to say, we want all the autonomy and control which the armenian view gives us, but then when something really bad happens, all of a sudden we're all calvinistic and want to blame god for it. she gave as an example that her students will say things like "Well, God put me into this horrible marriage with this awful man". And she asks questions along the lines of--well, why are you all of a sudden so calvinistic about it? rapidly back and forth between

One thing I thing I have been thinking about lately, is how some of us can be the good in the world, and if we are Christians how we can be Christ in the world, how we can counter all the suffering and terribleness ourselves. Not in an arrogant "i have the truth" evangelistic sort of way, but in a normal, real way. I don't know if that makes sense or not. Actually let me deconstruct "be Christ in the world". What does that mean, anyway?

What I mean is helping people not from a place of feeling superior or from a place of feeling like we need to be "charitable", but being a positive force simply because it is the right thing to do. I know many times it is hard to know what "the right thing" to do is, and many times there isn't one "right thing"-- but whatever we do, we can be kind, loving, warm, good, and a counteracting agent against the pain and suffering in the world. Obviously people don't need to be Christians to do this. The last few weeks I have just been acutely aware of how I personally am still screwed up, unhealed, jaded, cynical, etcetera, and basically just a case, but what a miracle, God can still use me to help, comfort and be a support to others. At least that is what i currently choose to believe or perceive or interpret to be happening

That said I also want to reiterate my problem with having a comfortable bourgeois type faith where belief in God is easier for me now that I am personally suffering less and live in the Eden-like pacific northwest surrounded by rain forest and the lingering promise of forever being, at very least, middle class.

lucky

the volunteer work i do gives me so much that i struggle to give as much as i get from it, and well, its just impossible. i love the people i work with and i am loved back by them and i am so thankful for that. i am so grateful for that.

here's a happy thought: this afternoon i walked down by the water and sat down listening to music. i sat very still and watched as four or five dozen ducks waddled right up to me and ate things out of the grass. they were so beautiful. i was listening to this jazz type music and the ducks seemed to be jiving, dancing right along, peck peck pecking. it was so wonderful. just to see them was to experience mercy.

interesting conversation

richard at experimental theology asks what Bonhoeffer meant by "religionless Christianity".

also, just in case posting to this link makes me sound like i am "familiar" with Bonhoeffer or something, i want to admit just finding out about him a few days ago. same thing with my link to hauerwas who i also just began reading. anyway im about halfway through The Cost of Discipleship--- talk about a change in perspective.

holy holy holy

until all was silent on the inside

after eleven years in the darkness we were all with him as blind
hands reaching out, fingers crossed
starving to find the light inside of each other--

and when the whale moved
the way whales move
(over, under, through) within
the cold blue, rushing through the wet, we moved too

with the whale in perpetual half-immersion
emboldened by our own self-propelled
motion through water.

he moved through the mist
we moved through the water and spoke the language of mist;
hallelujah

october 2007

ideas

#1

A few days ago, something neat happened. Well, a lot of neat things have been happening. But I wanted to write about this one really neat thing.

i had a day the other day, just one day, the first day I can remember having in my adult life, that was absolutely.... perfect. Well sure, you may be thinking, what is "perfect", right? What i mean is....

i had one whole day where i know I did not hurt anyone, i know didn't say or think anything mean to or about anyone or to myself (at least that I could/can remember) and i spent the whole day filled with peace, love, thankfulness, compassion in complete conscious service to God and it was wonderful!

#2

at emerging grace there is an interesting post about spiritual maturity that deals with the unfortunate (?) distinction between "volunteers" involved in mission work and people being trained to lead and function within the church system (ie professional ministry):

The structure of church has become like a noose in the discipleship process. Rather than discipling and training for mission, it seems that the majority of training is for "ministry" which has come to mean service within the church system....

hmmm:

Unless the institutions of church divorce themselves from raising up volunteers for their programs and creating structures of importance and inclusion based upon participation in those programs, we will not see real maturity or discipleship.

?thoughts? i sort of wonder who these people are that the blogger is talking about. i guess that was visible when i left the church around 2000ish. i guess i am not involved enough in churchlife and churchstuff to know, perhaps thankfully, if this is going on around my current neck of the woods. frankly i am not sure i want to know. the church i go to seems to value volunteers. they just had some gigantic volunteer bonanza; they also were able to come up with 50+ volunteers to help the homeless.

conversely my kidchurch (as wonderful as it was with some things) seemed to sort of groom people "into the ministry". maybe that was just my experience though. maybe i was just being "groomed". i guess i had a difference experience than most people.

looking back, i really did feel a lot of pressure to go to bible college and to eventually go into the ministry, even though i didn't want to. this in turn was framed as "running from God". even after i dropped out of high school, i ended up going for a year to a christian college, because i thought it was "the right thing to do".

#3

radiohead is done with their new album :) ---opps-- that wasn't what i was going to say.
i was going to say something... something more importantseeming. something serious. well maybe tomorrow.

this is how I speak in tongues

I no longer know if this cyclic motion
that escapes itself and moves outward
after intersecting FLOWER constitutes
a graph. Unsettled concrete unwinds
so long as it is pliable and I becoming
personally am likewise lesson ontological.
Uprise me with your sanctioning.
Near the signs there are yet paths
uneyed not blind but nonetheless.

Mist you are the epitome of Michael Burkard.
I legged until my toes were plagarized.
But this isn't about me. This isn't about my own
betterment at theft. I wanted to steal
like a master and subordinate appropriately.
You fed me regularly. Relativity like constant
MUSIC mist. The metaphors are many.
Forest is the thick.

It was up and down and turned into itself.
It faced itself into a map and took lifetimes.
I still cannot find the nose yet closer, closer is the ground.

October, 2005

Bible update

There is a really neat book that is helping me. It is called How to Read the Bible by James Kugel.

"After six days--God rested on the seventh day--the first sabbath rest in history. Most people are so used to this account that they scarcely see the powerful assertion underlying it: our world is fundamentally God's world--everything in it, including ourselves, was made by Him. To say this is more than to report on the origin of things: it is to set out a whole way of perceiving."

Is it easier to be a Christian if you don't read the bible?

I have been reading parts of the bible that I haven't read in years.... and whoa, man.

My partner says my problem is that I am reading it like a fundamentalist and that i need to look at it like more figuratively, more like literature, etcetera. Well sure. Some parts are more easily read in that way than others.

So... what if all the stories in the bible are just morality tales?
What then are the morals?
Don't get mad if God plays favorites? (Cain and Abel) Why wasn't Cain's sacrifice better? After all no innocent animals were killed in the making of Cain's sacrifice.....

What kind of God doesn't know a better solution than mass murder (the flood)? The God I believe in is smarter than this! Why does the smell of burning people/animals/whatever make God happy?

Wait I know why! It's because the religious cultural norms of the day gave a big thumbs up to all of that stuff.

Here are some other hopefully productive observations:

-the whole thing reads like a science experiment gone wrong... ok that's not productive!
-what was the actual "fall" about? Is God anti-knowledge?
- the kjv actually says that God repented? (Gen 6:6) Sort of goes against the God-is-perfect stuff.
-the old "why" didn't God know the people would do that, why did God punish people so harshly for something when it seems like the people were set up from the beginning
-why is God's insane seeming rage appeased by burning birds (Genesis 8: 20-21)? this is crazy!

Here is the difference: before I accepted this too deeply as a large part of Christianity and chucked the whole religion. Now, I understand my own life experience, and still believe in God, just not in this interpretation. More than saying anything about God, this says a lot of things to me about people, humanity and the need to find purpose/ create stories that define and guide our lives.

I'd be curious to know how others deal with some of more "insane" stuff in the bible. Do people just kind of ignore it and pretend like its not there? Do people sort of nod at it and then change the subject, as though entire books of the bible are unstable relatives not suitable for dinner conversation?

Or maybe the moral is more like this: Don't get frustrated when you read the Bible because the people who wrote the Bible were, like all of us, bound by their time and thus did a great job of making God look like an insane person when viewed from the perspective of thousands of years later.

that's about as generous toward a faith perspective as i can get.

\o?

i have been thinking more about praise and worship music as it relates to the emergent church. In my last post I quoted from Paul Mayers excellent writing on why we're not singing anymore.

Last night I went to a Compline service. At this weekly service a small choir stands at the back of the church chanting prayers and singing hymns while people meditate, chant along, or pray etc. I really don't have adjectives that do justice to this service. The sound of the choir singing is so beautiful that it is very, very difficult to explain what exactly is really happening. I have really never experienced anything like it before.

Anyway one of songs they sung last night was "As the Deer".

the way they sang it was like water.

After some research for this post it turns out that this song is actually not a "hymn." The compline choir sang it as though it were a hymn. But, hmmm, clearly the wikipedia article says it was written in 1984!

What makes something a hymn as opposed to a "worship song"? Its age?

For me personally I associate positive and negative experiences with different kinds of church music. For example, songs like Lord I Lift Your Name on High, My Life is in You Lord, or Open the eyes of my heart Lord.... (sorry there is no nice way of saying this) make me want to jump from a moving car. This is because I associate them with church fakery, false piety, mega church gatherings, corruption and just in general, they have the tendency to be repetitious and even used in some cases as a kind of assault on the people.

I am not trying to attack charismatic churches, I am just saying that for me personally, I see this repetition as a kind of mental violence. Conversely, songs such as As the Deer and others, for me, are associated with positive church experiences, so they sort of get a pass as being authentic. How convenient for me!

To get back the main point of this post, certain songs carry different meanings for different people. Different people have different experiences and that's great. God knows I don't want to be "intolerant"!

I guess I am just trying to figure out why certain worship styles agitate me so much? Is it because I am secretly jealous that some people experience spirituality differently ? I don't think so, well I sure hope not. Is it because I think that people who have what appears to be transformative spiritual experiences to songs like "O Lord, you're sweet let's wash each other's feet" are insincere just because that does not match the way that I experience God? Yeah I think that might be part of it, for me at least.

This is going to sound really, really bad, but I don't like it when people raise their hand like they are "feeling the spirit." That is not the way I feel "the spirit", not that I am even claiming to be able to understand what "the spirit" even is.

That's part of it too. How can these people know they are really experiencing God when they raise their hand or whatever? Are they trying to let everyone else know they are experiencing God? To me that seems like some kind of religious gesture done for the benefit of other people, probably because if I were to raise my hand, that's what it would mean!

Well, I am sure I sound like a judgmental, terrible person. Lately I have been thinking how amazing it is, the things I will justify doing in the almighty name of being "honest".