Ground Zero Sum

An Old Old Story: Ground Zero Sum by An Old Old Story

[soundcloud link; via An Old Old Story; HT: Experimental Theology]

[via Slacktivist]

Disappointment, despair and Harold Camping

Not Overlooking the Obvious

HT: Brain Pickings, noticed here



[from The Jubilee Project]

Giving the Message

[via Graceworks.ca {formerly TheHeresy.com}]

Christmas Gift Guide for the Homeless

[via JordonCooper.com]

Not Just Expanding Territory...

..."trespassed."

That's not Lou Dobbs' preferred word for illegal immigration, since we don't tend to think of trespassing as a particularly menacing form of crime and people like Dobbs -- the CNN anchor fearfully obsessed with illegal immigration from Mexico -- want to portray these aliens as more of a threat than the word "trespasser" seems to convey.

But there's another reason you won't hear that word from Dobbs or from his role models on Fox News or the other members of the frantically xenophobic anti-immigrant mob, like the birthers, deathers and tea-baggers or the demagogues who stoke their cowardly anger, like drop-out Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin or South Carolina's Rep. Addison Graves Hansen Huntington Wegener Ricketts Parkinson "Joe" Wilson* -- the congressman who said he was overwhelmed by his emotions when he heard the president excluding illegal immigrants with what he regarded as insufficient viciousness. ("You lie!" Wilson shouted, after Obama said illegal immigrants would not receive federally funded health insurance under his health care reform plan. Obama's statement was true, but Wilson fears such immigrants might not also be aggressively prohibited from purchasing private health insurance, and the idea of them doing so keeps him tossing and turning all night.)

The main reason that none of these Very Angry, Very Scared people wants to use the word "trespass" is that it reminds them of church.

There's this prayer we Christians say in church, at every service, whenever we get together....{full post}

[via slacktivist]

"At least we're annoyed together...and no 'butsies'."

[via Zefrank.com]

Ze Frank on Labor Day and Socialism

Critical Patriotism

As I write this, it is already 04 July 2009. It’s Independence Day, the anniversary of the day (04 July 1776) when American colonists declared their independence from the U.K. It’s the birthday of this republic, the United States of America, although our current form of government did not set until 1790. Throughout this land on Sunday, churches will be filled with pastors giving sermons on freedom or on “God and country,” etc. Most of them will be pretty bad. Some of them will be positively idolatrous–reducing the God of all creation to a tribal deity that somehow cares more for this nation than others–a truly blasphemous idea.

Some preachers will do better....

A Christian patriotism must be an “eyes wide open” critical patriotism that is always calling for repentence and reform. Because Christians can never forget that no nation, no government, is anywhere close to the standards of the Rule of God. Our first loyalty is to that other “kingdom” (forgive the patriarchal language, the political meaning comes through better) which is not from this world–but which will overthrow the Powers and Authorities of this world. We are loyal first to the “God Revolution,” and second to the global church (the scattered People of God) and third to the whole world, in and out of the church, as God’s beloved creation. Only after that, as a lesser loyalty, can we be lovers of our own nation and government.

Nationalists and jingoists, therefore, will always find Christians to be suspect. We will not appear patriotic enough for them. Too bad. {full post}

[via Levellers]

---

The American view has tended neither toward the death of God nor His reconfiguration as the foundation of some American civil religion. Writers often discuss the American civil religion, but generally describe it as some variant of Biblical religion with an active God.

From the beginning, Americans have not grappled in the same way with the contradiction between intense personal longings and impersonal science or theology. Consider our Declaration of Independence. The theoretical core of the Declaration—on self-evident truths, unalienable rights, and instituting government—speaks of “Nature’s God,” a Deist creator, the source of the impersonal laws of nature. Christian members of the Continental Congress insisted that two other references to God be added to the eminently modern Jefferson and Franklin’s draft, and so the rousing conclusion, ending with “sacred Honor,” speaks of a Creator-God as the “Supreme Judge” of us all and as the source of “divine Providence.” Thanks to this legislative compromise, the Declaration offers up a “Nature’s God” Who also knows and cares about each of us. Through most of our history, such compromises between modern and Christian Americans have considerably reduced the distance between Christian and modern views of the person’s natural and theological environment. {full post}

[via The New Atlantis]

Independence Day: Celebrating Courage to Challenge the Situation

[via The Situationist]

why we need mothers & fathers, brothers & sisters, daughters & sons

[via the carnival in my head, HT: Faith Dance]

Fulfilling the Need

Relationships: Recession-Proof Business?

[via Radical Womanhood]

Unspoken Obligation

I mean as married people, people that have been blessed with the gift of marriage, “complete people” if you will as evidenced by that incredibly accurate line in the move Jerry Maguire, we kind of have an unspoken obligation to get our single friends married off as fast as possible. (I prefer to get my single friends married "up" instead of "married off" because then they can say things like "I out kicked my coverage" and "I married way over my head" or the lazier but still accurate, "my wife is way hotter than me.")

But you've got to be subtle about these sorts of things....

Ultimately, the single friends you're trying to force, no strike that, encourage into marriage might remind you that in Christ, their lives are complete. If that happens, just pretend you hear you're wife calling you, "What's that? My wife needs me? My awesome, always happy, super hott with two t’s wife needs me?" And then slowly back away.

We'll get that single person next time. Oh we'll get them indeed. {full post}

[via Stuff Christians Like]

Sin is...the beginning of empathy.

[original, quoted Hacking Christianity]

[also mentioned there...]

Empathy is the beginning of change.

Unclean but Touchable

Earlier this month we witnessed the Shoes Heard 'Round the World, when Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zeidi chucked both of his shoes at President George W. Bush during a Baghdad press conference.

This prompted a slew of articles helpfully explaining that al-Zeidi was expressing anger at Bush -- as though his gesture had somehow been open to any other interpretation. When this quaintly exotic foreign man called the president a "dog," these articles further explained, this was also meant to express contempt. In the Arab world, the articles all said, shoes and dogs are regarded as unclean....

So here's an invitation or a challenge for the New Year: Sign up for the scavenger hunt. Take the Big List of the unclean and the untouchable and turn it upside down and inside out. Seek out those people instead of avoiding them. Touch them and let them touch you. {full post}

[via slacktivist]

Celebration For The 'Have-Nots'

As I chat with people, loneliness is named most often as the reason why people find Christmas difficult.

It’s easy to say lonely people have the wrong perspective. Let’s look deeper. Our letter-boxes contain sales catalogues with jewellery that lovers can exchange for Christmas, spa packages for couples, and menus for the family roast. We walk into shopping centres filled with people rushing, pushing, bumping, focused on making their Christmas perfect. Around the corner are pictures of starry-eyed children singing Christmas carols. The television airs movies about love, and families. Everything seems geared up to tell those feeling they have not, how much they are missing out on.

If we are using this time to celebrate Christ’s birth: let’s get with it! Christmas is not about the ‘haves’, it’s a celebration for the ‘have-nots’.....

If God had decided to hang out only with agreeable heavenly beings, where would we all be?

What do we really need to celebrate Christmas? {full post}

[via Musings of a Third Culture Kid]

Being Warm in the Cold

(also on Twitter: salvationarmysk)

Salvation Army Community Centre: It's cold outside

How we handle the extreme cold at the Centre

[via Weblog: News from the Salvation Army Community Centre, HT: Jordon Cooper]

Related:

Since we are now thigh deep in the giving season, I feel it is pertinent to share my complete and total disgust with the fact that shoppers trampled a man to death on Black Friday. If you're not familiar with the story, and don't mind having your faith in humanity tested, read more here. A few onlookers even stopped shopping long enough to make jokes about how overweight the person was that they had just killed in their haste to save five bucks on a panini maker....

In order to maintain my giving spirit in the face of such a dreadful story, I've decided to give you five good reasons to do your shopping at your local Deseret Industries, Salvation Army or other community thrift store: {full post}

[via East Coast Frost]

Envy, Justice and Dogs

Scientists have demonstrated that dogs can feel envy. So says The New York Times and so says National Geographic.

But scientists have not, in fact, done any such thing. What they actually seem to have demonstrated about dogs is far more interesting. The experiment in question actually had little to do with the deadly sin of envy and quite a bit to do with the cardinal virtue of justice. {continue...}

[via slacktivist]

Lost In Their Own Journeys

How about this. I’m on a journey around the world. I have all my tickets purchased and my agendas. Sometime into my journey the travel becomes rocky … then, suddenly, everything is ripped from me … my tickets, my agendas, everything … including my identity. I’m alone in a foreign land with nothing but the clothes on my back. Oh, and two young children in tow who have also been stripped of everything, including their identities, except for the clothes on their backs. I am forced to figure out who I am, where I am, how to care for my children and myself, how to help them figure out who and where they are, etc.

Yet during this time, everyone else we were travelling with has moved on in the journey. There are points along the way we still see each other, such as educational and religious meetings. But it’s odd … because all these people have all these experiences we don’t have. They are refreshed, full of life and energy … and hope … and continued goals … moving forward.

Occasionally these people ask about us, but for the most part, they’re all lost in their own journeys. Meanwhile, we’re still struggling … trying to recreate our identities … to discover who and what we are … to reconfigure our futures, our journeys.

These years … where the rest of the world has moved forward … and we’ve been trying to heal and reconstruct our lives … these are The Lost Years.

It’s getting easier to see these differences, smile, and move on. But other times it’s all I can do not to cry.

[via The Order of Recon]

Turning Things Upside Down

Sarah Palin has cast herself in the role of the populist, the maverick who will go to Washington and turn things upside down. She's the outsider, the breath of fresh air, uncorrupted by years in Washington. She combines this message with a religious air that reaches into a conservative Christian base for support. She opposes Roe v. Wade and gay marriage. She backed a bill that celebrated Christian Heritage week in Alaska and endorsed the teaching of creationism (or ID -- that's not been clear), and carries herself with a sense of righteousness that is rooted in Christian populism. Robert McElvaine compares her Christian populism with that of another outsider, William Jennings Bryan. In some ways they share belief systems, but the recipient of their ardent attacks are very different. Palin attacks the elite (media, Hollywood, educational establishment) while Bryan attacked the "Interests," Wall Street financiers and corporate leaders. a group that has not received (at least until now) attention from the Right. It's an interesting piece published today in Sightings.{read on...}

[HT: Ponderings on a Faith Journey]

"Our world glamorizes personal intimacy. But intimacy is more talked about than experienced because it is a painful process. It involves risks, possible misunderstandings, vulnerability, perhaps even losing something of oneself to the other person. Relating to the other as person means giving him or her free space to be truly a person. It means foregoing the temptation to impose our own will on the other. There is joy in personal relationship, but the joy comes by way of death to self. Giving, listening, and personal intimacy are painful processes, but they are also renewing processes that form our communal character."

Simon Chan, Spiritual Theology [HT: Faith Dance]