Is something a gift if it's assumed or accepted as a given?

(seen at ~ s c o t t y d ~)

I've grown quite weary of all the prosperity theology running rampant across North America. I have a theory on how it all came about. Our society has become increasingly more affluent, particluarly in the last fifty years, and especially in the last twenty. The Christians are not exempt from this affluence. In order to stave off all the Bible talk about helping the lowly and how the rich people have a hard time with the ways of God (we have a lot of such verses), we have created all sorts of prosperity theology to justify our lifestyles and our toys. If GOD poured the riches down from heaven, then it must be okay to drive a mercedes. If GOD wants me to be rich, then it must be my fault if I'm poor (i,e, lack of faith, not enough prayer)

[Editor's note: if you have a prosperity gospel problem, go to Trinity Foundation, Inc., the Door Magazine or to the Door Magazine Chat Closet. They can find someone or something to help you.]

(seen at signposts)

Why is that when this Administration and its supporters here and around the world define how others are to react or be regarded they demand that it be done in the plainest black and white terms, but when they seek to characterise their own behaviour we are suddenly urged to contemplate every degree of variation in the grey spectrum?

(quoted from here)

Good works may not save you at all, but it might save someone else.

(seen at wanderer :: worshipper :: lover of leaving)

What have you done recently in the name of peace?

I heard this statement on the news last night. The reporter used it in the context of stating that U.S. President George W. Bush will be asking Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas this question in the next few days. Of course, anything that emerges from George Bush's mouth is worthy of skepticism ... especially when he is lecturing others on the importance of pursuing peaceful alternatives to conflict ...

Nevertheless, the question is one which should definitely be pondered on a personal level. What have I done recently in the name of peace and justice? What have I done recently to plant seeds of hope where despair is rampant?

(seen at Cathy Johnson)

You know, there's something that a person has to keep remembering - you can't solidify life! Life is so fluid, and our perception of who we are and what we are is often based on our small concepts of moments in our time. Our earthly ideas of ourselves are tainted with influences from our own minds, our surroundings, our friendships, our culture, our church, etc. We tend to try and define ourselves - make ourselves solid.

Unequally Yoked?

At the end of the day, interpreting the will of God is what the same-sex marriage controversy is all about. Those who are pious and believe in the literal scripture view homosexuality as an abomination and recoil from the notion the state should ever sanction such things. For gays and lesbians, however, the word "marriage" has become a symbol of a religiously based sanction for their own unions.

(originally from the article Get feds out of marriage business in yesterday's Star Phoenix)

(seen at signposts in this post)

It is not enough to say an act is wrong because God forbids it, unless the wrongness can also be justified on moral grounds.

To people who don't believe in God, quoting the Bible is as useful as talking to a brick wall. Close to a third of Australians don't accept that God exists. If formal religious observance is any guide, it is likely that far more do not believe strongly that God exists.

Most people simply do not live by what the Bible, or the Koran or any other religious text says. (If we did we would all, instead of just an extremist few, be out killing infidels or taking virgins for ourselves.)

(seen at They Blinked)

the stories of most are lost.

(seen at scratched surface)

Vision is hegemenous. vision is not limited to eyes.
I am the lense through which I am allowed sight.
since darkness' entrance into the heart of man
Life is a culmination of lens excercises known as "adversities".
comfort in too great a dose, avoid!
comfort is bewitching.

(seen at Caterina.net)

Can you force people to be free?

It is an old conundrum. The philosopher Bernard Williams, in an article published in the journal Philosophy & Public Affairs, shortly before his death this year, puts the hypothetical case of the happy slave. If a slave wants none of the things that his servitude prevents him from having, is he free? And if he is persuaded by his “liberators” that he does want those things, has he then been made free or has he simply been made into a slave by his liberators?

Suicide bombers present the same puzzle. Suicide is voluntary, and implies freedom of choice. But it is hard to understand the actions of suicide bombers without some notion of indoctrination, and if the suicide bombers were indoctrinated then they did not choose freely. Similarly, the instinctive American response to people who demand to live in a theocracy is that those people are not choosing freely—that a genuinely free person would never willingly exchange his lot to live under the thumb of an autocratic priesthood.

(quote originally from this article)

(seen at Been There...Still There)

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

--Helen Keller

(seen at Jordon Cooper)

When anger enters the mind, wisdom departs.

Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471)

(quotes: top seen at The Scriptorium, bottom seen at Randall Friesen)

"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."

~Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

~ Marcel Proust

Losing My Voice

poem: off-tune by Jadon Slade Androsoff (today)

lost my voice while singing this song
composed of silence and song:
for slowly it's snuffed into dead air
when my breath was taken away,
as now extinct, where once had been
momentum for this melody,
and here these signs, though left behind
do not confess too much at all,
except to note these unplayed chords
which were not faithful to this tune;
yet only gusts from refrains past--
before they blew out harmony--
could even strike intended tones
that passion pulled upon the strings
to orchestrate this choir of words
beyond unheard lone witnesses;
but every measure has not been found
amongst these scraps of scripture
without a means to be fulfilled
throughout the nuance and noise;
so echoes faintly resonate
within discordant quiet,
because these deafened characters
forget the inspiration,
as all these symbols just ring hollow
with distant modulations.

audblog audio post

(seen at The Searching)

"...Gertrude Stein said, 'Great art is irritation.' ...Sometimes to challenge the way we think we must develop a new perspective. Irritation mkes us move away from our comfortable way of looking and our comfortable way of creating art. It stimulates us to become part of a new conversation, with others and within ourselves, about who, how, why, where, and when we are. In modern Western culture, art serves a completely different purpose. It is a way to see into parts of our world that most of us cannot or do not look at or see. Western culture has always thought of art as an object that is a focus of harmony and beauty to which we could all aspire; we have resisted the idea of art as irritation. This has created a more passive audience, one that cannot differentiate between voices whose purpose is to hype or sell, and voices that are truly engaging their audiences in meaningful dialogue. We have become an evanescent community of consumers and observers rather than a dynamic audience whose members learn from one another. We have thought of the arts as conveyors of learning, attatching what we have learned to a specific form in order to preserve it for future generations. But the tools with which we present art have changed. When the context changes, the audience must change too. And when that happens, art itself is going to change."

---from "Interactive Excellence", by Edwin Schlossberg

There's a thin line between being elegant and being simplistic.

(from Sylloge)

Now is the time to get drunk! To stop being the martyred slaves of time, to get absolutely drunk—on wine, poetry, or on virtue, as you please.

—Baudelaire, Enivrez-Vous, Paris Spleen (1869)

(from Caterina.net)

Would Truth dispense, we could be content, with Plato, that knowledge were but Remembrance; that Intellectuall acquisition were but Reminiscentiall evocation, and new impressions but the colourishing of old stamps which stood pale in the soul before. For, what is worse, knowledge is made by oblivion; and to purchase a clear and warrantable body of Truth, we must forget and part with much wee know. Our tender Enquiries taking up Learning at large, and together with true and assured notions, receiving many wherein our renewing judgements doe finde no satisfaction; and therefore in this Encyclopaedie and round of knowledge, like the great and exemplary wheeles of heaven, wee must observe two Circles: that while we are daily carried about, and whirled on by the swindge and rapt of the one, wee may maintaine a naturall and proper course, in the slow and sober wheele of the other. And this wee shall more readily performe, if we timely survey our knowledge; impartially singling out those encroachments, which junior compliance and popular credulity hath admitted.

-- Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica

Alone With Myself

(from wanderer :: worshipper :: lover of leaving)

The following is presented by a love of blogging

---

PrairieFusion Presents BlogParty2003

If you are reading this, have a weblog and you live within driving distance of my backyard (1403 Avenue D North, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada), you are invited to PrairieFusion's BlogParty2003 on Monday, July 21st at 7:00 p.m. Much food, drink, blogging, dancing, and festivities.

FAQ

Q: Can family members attend if they don't have a blog?

A: Yes but they won't understand how cool we really are.

Q: Will there be WIFI?

A: Of course

Q: Will Jordon do the "running man"

A: Possibly

Q: Do I need to bring food?

A: Bring whatever food and drink you think would make it a better evening.

Please RSVP to coop@jordoncooper.com

---

The preceding was presented by a love of blogging

(from faithwalkin')

A principle of change related to the future is that we'll always have to change sometime tomorrow. We'll either change due to the pull of a more brightly visioned tomorrow, or we'll be pushed out of the present due to the pain of obsolescence and exhausted skills. The pull of the future is more fun than the push of pain, but it does take some preparedness. "

- From the book MORPH! by Ron Martoia

(originally seen at LivingRoom)

'I know this is ridiculous. There is no such thing as a Make-a-God kit. But what if there were? Religious skeptics claim that we make God in our own image. Suppose it were possible to create a god to match our desires. What kind of God would you make?' Let's add something here. Is there anything you would change about God?

found at King of the Leper Colony.

(from Been there...Still there)

One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes ... and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

--Eleanor Roosevelt

(from Clay.Humanclay.ca)

Sudden Movements

Quick Jerk
Sudden wave of fire throughout
Creeping from inside
Making me move

Beating tingle
Fast breath of life moving through
Warming me inside
Padding my thoughts

A wave of light enters my being
flourishing among the warming spirit
Granting just what I need
Changing me to something useful

Brisk bite
Swift brush on my heart
Moving outwards
Shaking me up

(from scratched surface)

Pop culture is the new propoganda. it's ubiquitous, one wants to be a part of it in its ever morphing life perpetuating idealogy. All things Popular begin with knowledge communicating an idea, the idea takes on alife of its own once it reaches another, and the cycle works through to its end. why must all things end?

(from Carrie Church)

Great opportunities to help others seldom come,
but small opportunities surround us daily." (Sally Koch)

(from John Campea)

So #&$%!*! frustrating!

It’s bad enough that jerks and other ill-intentioned people have the power in life to cause you pain. I’m not really talking about physical pain, but more along the lines of emotional pain/hurt/stress. At least you can see the jerks coming. The real problem is the not-jerks, the good people, the folks who honestly mean you no harm. I’ve often found that well meaning people, who through mistakes or ignorance, have much greater power to hurt you. The worst part is that you can’t really get too pissed off at them… because after all, they didn’t MEAN to hurt you. So now you’re hurt AND frustrated. Ugg, we are such fragile creatures… well, at least I am.

(seen at wanderer :: worshipper :: lover of leaving)

It is important to know when we can give attention and when we need attention. Often we are inclined to give, give, and give without ever asking anything in return. We may think that this is a sign of generosity or even heroism. But it might be little else than a proud attitude that says: "I don't need help from others. I only want to give." When we keep giving without receiving we burn out quickly. Only when we pay careful attention to our own physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs can we be, and remain, joyful givers.

There is a time to give and a time to receive. We need equal time for both if we want to live healthy lives. (Henry Nouwen).

(from They Blinked)

It was a sunny Saturday, and the eager shoppers flooded the grassy plain in Letnany, making their way at a gallop toward the store. Except that there was no store. Instead, the shoppers came upon an 8-meter-high (26-foot) by 80-meter-wide scaffolding covered by a banner bearing the logo of the nonexistent hypermarket. The fabric billowed slightly in the wind.

When informed that there was no real hypermarket as promised in the ads, some people laughed; others shook their fists.

And that was the point: How would people react in the moment that their expectations, built up by advertising, collided with reality?

[read the whole article]

(from scratched surface)

love the illustration of complexity exhibited by enjoying life in such an uproarious world. Darkness brings out light more clearly

(seen at Church of the Masses)

"Millions of books written on every conceivable subject by all these great minds, and, and in the end, none of 'em knows anything more about the big questions of life than I do. ... Nietzsche with his, with his Theory of Eternal Recurrence. He said that the life we live, we're gonna live over and over again the exact same way for eternity. Great. That means I, uh, I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again. Tch. It's not worth it.

from Hannah and Her Sisters

(seen from the journey)

A closed mind is a sign of hidden doubt.

Leggo my Logos...



Got the latest Door Magazine today...

(from Clay.HumanClay.ca)

Saved on the way down

It's a hit and run
when you're gunning for the door
there's nothing stopping you from death
and you're hoping that there's something more

Saved on the way down
The hand comes rushing in
Asking help from somewhere else
A light sweeps down and rushes you off

Trapped inside a space
gearing up for the next hit
looking for what your eyes can't see
you're hoping that you're gonna make it

Saved on the way down
The hand comes rushing in
Asking help from somewhere else
A light sweeps down and rushes you off

Staring at the wall
as you pace along the floor
breaking off connected pieces
cause you just can't take it anymore

Saved on the way down
The hand comes rushing in
Asking help from somewhere else
A light sweeps down and rushes you off

It's a faulty game
when you're playing with the worst
a hand breaks in to wreck the streak
you can't find out how to quenche that thirst

Saved on the way down
The hand comes rushing in
Asking help from somewhere else
A light sweeps down and rushes you off

(seen at wanderer :: worshipper :: lover of leaving)

For all that we struggle

For all that we struggle,
For all we pretend,
It don't come down to nothing
Except love in the end.
And ours is a road
That is strewn with goodbyes,
But as it unfolds,
As it all unwinds,
Remember your soul is the one thing
You can't compromise.
Take my hand
We're gonna go where we can shine.

(from "Shine" by David Gray)

At the Worship Freehouse on Sunday, I recited two poems of mine. For those who didn't get there, or want to read them for further reflection, go here(Peace) and here(Imagine).