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Latest Discernment from Pilgrimage

by Howie

Obama and McCain met recently at Saddleback church (NYTimes)

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Last night at Pilgrimage Jill and I led an activity where we brainstormed all the different faith-practices we do, and then try organizing them from a couple different points of view in order to see if any patterns or calls to action emerge.

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We suggested several tools for the organizing part of the activity, including:

• Witness / Listening / Stewardship - The three headings of sections of our main Sunday morning worship experience at St. Peter’s, very familiar from traditional Protestant worship.
• Remembering / Proclaiming / Healing - Three things that Jesus explicitly asked his disciples to do in the gospel stories, also reflected in the organizational structure of St. Peter’s (along with administration, which supports our ministries, and vision & policy, which give them direction and accountability).
• Love of God / Neighbor / Self - And, of course, the 12 Phoenix Affirmations!
• We created space in which participants could work on their own approaches to organizing faith practices; Jill actually did, and it was a zinger!

After brainstorming the various faith-practices we do, reviewing the organizational models, and doing some actual organizing on new sheets of paper, we started to share.  Two cool things emerged.

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First, Shepherd realized immediately that our worship/structure models do not explicitly include love of self!  (No surprise, given that she and I are the main drivers of updating those frameworks.)  That was a key insight.  We don’t know how it will ripple out into things yet, of course, but I trust that it will.

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Then Jill shared that she had made a Venn diagram and organized her faith-practices into things she did just for herself, things she did exclusively for others and felt no return from, and the middle section of “win-win” things that she felt good about doing and benefitted others.  (You might think of it as a “Love of self” circle and a “Love of neighbor” circle, with an overlapping area and Love of God suffused through all three zones.)

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I immediately re-organized my practices onto Jill’s model, and discovered that the vast majority fell into the middle overlapping zone.  I do a few things exclusively for others that I don’t really feel any return from.  And there was one practice I felt I did just for myself.  Others of us noted that they were heavily loaded on the “exclusively for others” side.

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It helped us see how balanced/un-balanced our faith practices are, and how we might consider both new possibilities and “weeding” of practices that aren’t as much a part of “rehearsing Love’s Realm” as we thought.  -h

History

by Merrill

@Duck and Decanter

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I am feeling rather virtuous today because I submitted my 2007 income tax returns –both federal and state – yesterday and received emails telling me that both had been accepted ( I file electronically). That means at least I did everything correctly. As to errors, well who knows? And in case you are wondering, I filed for an extension last April and had until October 15^th. So I finished early and hence the feeling of being virtuous. In addition I gave the automatic cat litter box an especially rigorous and through cleaning. Another accomplishment to bolster the feeling.

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I also read Bishop John Shelby Spong’s weekly column yesterday (Thursday, August 14, 2008). Bishop Spong had some really harsh words about the present administration’s cronyism and about G.W. Bush as president. It is always nice to have one’s opinion of current politics confirmed especially by someone that is as eloquent as Bishop Spong. The article started me thinking about history and our perceptions of it. Especially where it touches on events that involve our religious faith. The weekly column touched on that subject but I see it in other faiths and cultures. Take for example the way the Japanese, Chinese and other nations view WWII.

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Last Sunday I read an article in the Japan Times about two different views (Chinese vs. Japanese) about the start of their war (which started in 1937 with the incident at the Marco Polo bridge). This was actually the 2^nd war between the two but I’ll stick to this one. The article, written by a westerner – to judge by the name –, is pretty even handed I believe and points out not only the Chinese/Japanese differences but also the conflict within Japan. In both countries the history (or at least the perception of history) is affected by ideological viewpoints.

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The difference in viewpoints is frequently brought to light with visits of high level Japanese officials (especially the Prime Minister and other members of the cabinet) to the Yasukuni Shrine. The shrine memorializes Japanese war dead. The problem comes about because among the over two million names listed in the shrine are over 1000 war criminals from the Second World War. China is not the only country to protest the visits. North Korea, South Korea and Taiwan have difficulties with this. It has always seemed to me that there are parallels between the right wing Yasukuni Shrine and our right wing evangelicals. Both wield influence out of proportion to their actual numbers. The vast majority of the Japanese abhor the war and condemn the both its origins and the ideology that caused it. The Yasukuni Shrine and its supporters claim that they are only being patriotic in honoring the war dead. Sound familiar? In this country there are those evangelicals that say they are only being patriotic by supporting the use of torture and the limiting individual rights. And of course both in Japan and here they have reinterpreted the facts and history to better serve their goals. The evangelicals (and their “fellow travelers”) also get to use the scriptures –at least their versions – to ‘prove’ that God is on their side. Since Yasukuni Shrine is the state Shinto shrine I suspect that they may be interpreting religious teaching to justify their point of view. I am sure that not all who worship at the shrine share in glorifying war, just as I am sure not all evangelicals have the viewpoint that war is good. But in both cases those negative viewpoints have become linked to the names. One last point. In both countries these vocal minorities wield an influence out of proportion with their numbers.

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In Japan there is also a tension caused by cultural differences. There is the traditional Nihongo (Japanese) way that competes with a modern western view of life. To me the contrasting views are easily seen by reading two newspapers that represent each. The Japan Times is oriented to the western point of view while the Ashi Shinbun reflects the more traditional. Consider articles published today (August 15, 2008) by each on the same subject, the anniversary (nominal) of Japan’s surrender. The Ashi Shinbun carried ‘Japan marks 63rd anniversary of its defeat in WWII’ and the Japan Times story was ‘Japan’s longest day August 15; still resonates’. Even the titles appear to indicate a cultural divide. There was another article in the Times that may be of interest. ‘China remembers its own local Schindler’ . I am not sure how long these links are good for but I have been successful in returning to links in both papers after a couple of weeks.

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I wonder if it was the connection to income taxes or if it was the link to the subject of Spong’s weekly newsletter that made me remember cleaning the automatic litter box. I suppose Puss & Boots, my two cats, don’t care.

Cleaver II and Notes on A New Generation In The Church Forum, Bethel UCC, Kansas City MO 6 August 2008

by Howie

Saturday morning I got up early and spoke with my Missouri - Fifth District Congressional Representative, Emanuel Cleaver II, at The Roasterie Cafe following a heads-up email from wecansolveit.org. As suggested by Al Gore’s folks, I briefly covered my concern that Congress pass new energy policy leading to 100% renewable, clean electricity in 10 years. Congressman Cleaver is already on board with the goal, and his position on the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming makes him a good friend to have.

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Knowing we would agree on that, I covered three points with the Congressman:

1. Two of the three main reasons why 100%/10 years is a great idea are traditionally conservative principles; national security and jobs. There is rich potential for common ground here, and I think we should focus our conversations/marketing in these areas…
2. Speaking of marketing, we need a catchy meme* such as “Green Shot,” “RePower America,” “Make the Switch,” or even “We can solve it.” The policy can’t be accomplished without creating the political will, which means national and personal marketing efforts.
3. I offered myself to the Congressman to do anything his office would find helpful as we work toward the 100%-in-10-years goal.

Congressman Cleaver heard “Green Shot” differently; he thought it worked as slang, like “big shot.” “You see that guy over there? He just turned off his water heater; what a green shot!” (Merrill, you rawk.) My partner in crime overheard him using the term with one of his staffers as we left, though, so maybe it will enter the conversation at that level.

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* I didn’t actually use “meme” language with the Congressman, not wanting to open that up in case he wasn’t already familiar with that set of ideas.

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Bethel United Church of Christ here in Kansas City hosted a open conversation about young people in church this past week; I participated with two friends. We were slightly disappointed that we were the only non-Bethel folks in attendance, as quite a few invitations had gone out to local churches. The conversation was sparked by their evangelism team which had attended a recent summit about how people in their teens through thirties viewed church.

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Pastor Karen led the group through a series of questions. I couldn’t help but immediately note that the purpose of the event was to listen to teens-through-thirty-somethings, but that an older generation was framing the conversation and silently asserting control by setting the agenda. (Later, Karen opened up the possibility for group members to ask questions and I took advantage of that, but the event was not really set up to support it.)

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Below are the questions and my notes on the group’s answers.

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“How has your faith changed as you’ve grown older?”

• From passive to active
• A growing sense of ownership over one’s faith and faith journey
• Increasing emphasis on faith practices
• More intense relationship with Jesus Christ

“What is the best thing about church? About worship? What is the most difficult thing about church? About worship?”

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Howie’s answers:

• Best/church - People. We are the broken of the broken and drive each other crazy, but at our best we are actively organizing a deep, positive response to each other and the world, and that is rare and precious.
• Best/worship - The potential for transformation in each moment. Personally, any time I can be actively involved in worship.
• Most difficult/church -
• Most difficult/worship - Everything that is top-down, that makes me into or feel like a passive audience member. Seriously, Pilgrimage has pretty much ruined me for top-down worship experiences. I shared my answer to this point with the group, referring them to my “best thing about worship” as a positive example about what is meaningful to me.

(For those to whom my top-down/bottom-up language is new, examples of top-down worship include most everything anyone in our day and age has ever experienced in church; traditional, contemporary, praise, all of it. Bottom-up includes Quaker meetings, Eric’s studio worship, our own Pilgrimage, etc.)

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“How do you understand your relationship with God, and how does the universal church help/inhibit that relationship?”

• “Church is static, and my relationship with God is dynamic.”
• “Church is not the peak of my God-time.”

At this point I responded to a comment about Pilgrimage/bottom-up worship styles being “unstructured.” Pilgrimage is very definitely and intentionally structured, as you can see from our “form,” - the difference is that our structure is designed to encourage, support, and facilitate spontaneous and planned participation in the worship experience. (As opposed to top-down structure which basically defines participation in terms of singing some hymns and a responsive reading. Maybe prayer requests.)

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Bottom-up structure is marked by an attitude of permission-giving.  The goal of a leader in this context is to find a way to say Yes to whatever a group member is moved to do (within appropriate physical, emotional, and spiritual safety considerations, of course!).  Structure serves to empower individuals, and is regularly reviewed to make sure it is serving its purpose.
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Pastor Karen sort of said that this all sounded great, but how does it (will it?) support a church building and a pastor’s salary?

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My answer (only in my notes, not shared) is that it might not… but that if it’s where Jesus is calling us, we should follow there anyway. Bethel UCC is bigger than its current building, bigger than its full-time pastor. They could lose both tomorrow (God forbid!) and still be the same church, if they understand their call.

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The longer answer is that the only way to support a building and a pastor in the long term is to do the kind of Christ-like work that requires those resources. Doing the vital work that makes full use of those things is the best way to keep them around. There aren’t any shortcuts.

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Karen’s last question was a sort of general “How do you feel about mission?” The group clearly answered that it is very important, and indications from younger folks was that mission precedes message for us. We want to do some work for somebody else before we try to talk about what it means.
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I asked the group for their thoughts on “What is the purpose of church? Why do we do this Jesus-following thing together rather than individually?”

• Working in groups is better than the alternative
• People need encouragement
• To raise questions we wouldn’t think to ask ourselves
• To experience love
• Refreshment / re-energizing

I reported on St. Peter’s most recent unofficial formulation of purpose, which is something like “Remembering Jesus, Proclaiming Love’s Realm, Healing the World.”  Our constant quest for clarity of purpose has been a reliable source of insight and discernment of what our ministry looks like.

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Those are my notes.  Your comments this week might be especially useful; perhaps we can digitally widen the circle of conversation!  -h

Some politics and a little about care of the earth.

by Merrill

• @Duck and Decanter
  

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  Last Wednesday was the 63^rd Anniversary of THE BOMB being dropped on Hiroshima (8:15 AM local time). The only mention I know of the anniversary was in the Ashi Shinbun online. The article (I am not sure how long the link will be good) I read quoted the mayor of Hiroshima, Tadatoshi Akiba as saying: “We can only hope that the president of the United States elected this November will listen conscientiously to the majority, for whom the top priority is human survival”. I wonder what the candidates would say if asked about that hope.

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  I am disappointed about what both of them have had to say lately. I was especially disappointed in the suggestion by Barack Obama that we should all put more air in our tires in order to get better gas mileage. Well, yes, over inflating your tire will give you better mileage. It will also help your tires to wear out faster and it takes a great deal of energy to manufacture a tire. So over inflating tires is a short sighted policy if you ask me – you didn’t but I am telling you any way. There is another way of getting better mileage. That is by reducing your speed above 50 mph. Since July 1^st I have made 60 my top speed. For my car, a 2006 Mercury Mariner, that has translated into about a two gallon per mile improvement.

  May/ June mileage July mileage 22.75 24.71

• Those values were for all my driving, most of which is not on freeways or open road. Still, even with the limited amount of freeway driving I do, I can save gas (and money). On long trips I will get 26 mpg or better. On my motorcycle, a 2002 Yamaha 1100 V-Star, which normally gets 53 or 54 miles to the gallon (at speeds less than 60) my mileage will decrease to about 35 mpg when I ride at the limit – 75 in Arizona on the interstate. It turns out that, above 50 mph, wind resistance is the determining factor in efficiency. The faster you go the more energy it takes to overcome the increasing resistance (even with a good aerodynamic shape). While I am on the subject, for most cars the air conditioning uses less gas than the drag caused by open windows.
  

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  In the 70s that was why the 55 mile per hour limit on federally funded highways was set. These days it would appear that our politicians don’t have enough courage to return to this very unpopular method of saving energy. Maybe we should ask the candidates to stop blowing so much hot air and do a little more homework and thinking.

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  For the home I also have a simple and effective way of conserving energy (I hope I haven’t mentioned this before – if I have please stop reading now). I installed a switch on my hot water heater. In Phoenix heating water is the third largest use of electricity. Typically I only need to have my hot water heater on twice a week for a few hours. Before I became a parasite on society –by retiring – I had it programmed for an hour every morning before I woke up. Since retiring I have found that I can manage with not as often. My usual thing is to heat water only when I run my dish washer –only full loads. Of course in Phoenix I don’t need hot water for showers as much as in the winter but even in the winter I find I don’t often have water too cold to not shower in between washing dishes.

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  Simple

  

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  In those two ways my care of the earth is partly motivated by saving money – but only partly. One thing I do (don’t do actually) is not to have my house and yard sprayed for bugs and other pests. I don’t like creepy crawlies any more that the next person but I refuse to use pest exterminators to get rid of them. As a result I have a lot of spider webs on the outside of my house and fences. There are also many birds (including one mating pair of cardinals) inhabiting the premises. I see some evidence of snakes like the molted skins by my front window uncovered when I had some yard work done recently. Then there was the very small snake that crawled out from underneath my bed one night.

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  Guest

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  I looked him (OK, it could be a her) up on the internet (pictures here) and determined that it is a Sonora semiannulata which are common in the Southwest. Finding out that they love to eat scorpions, which I have also found in my home, I released it into my back yard instead of the nearby Phoenix Mountain Preserve. The battery is an AAA and he was curled up in a plastic food container that I placed him in for the night.

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  Free at last, free at last` Slithering off the patio

Reality and Response

by Howie

But first, the news:

Will Americans Accept Greener Hotel Rooms?

A cool idea for sensitivity training and lessons for offering care for elderly people.

(These are NYTimes.com articles and may require free site registration.)

The Gift We Give To Tomorrow at OvercomingBias.com

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This one is super-important: The Science of Satire - Cognition studies clash with ‘New Yorker’ rationale. By Mahzarin R. Banaji

“It is not unreasonable, given the inquiring minds that read The New Yorker, to expect that an obvious caricature would be viewed as such. In fact, our conscious minds can, in theory, accomplish such a feat. But that doesn’t mean that the manifest association (Obama=Osama lover) doesn’t do its share of the work. To some part of the cognitive apparatus, that association is for real. Once made, it has a life of its own because of a simple rule of much ordinary thinking: Seeing is believing. Based on the research of my colleague, the psychologist Daniel Gilbert, on mental systems, one might say that the mind first believes, and only if it is relaxing in an Adirondack chair doing nothing better, does it question and refute. There is a power to all things we see and hear — exactly as they are presented to us.”

That last sentence is why I struggled so hard with Arrested Development. It’s why even insincere compliments have a positive effect on people. It’s why, in order to be effective, political candidates should make positive assertions (”I patriotically support freedom of speech”) instead of denials (”No, I don’t hate America!”). It’s why every story we tell is significant.

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MORAL PSYCHOLOGY AND THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF RELIGION at edge.org. By Jonathan Haidt

“I study morality from every angle I can find. Morality is one of those basic aspects of humanity, like sexuality and eating, that can’t fit into one or two academic fields. I think morality is unique, however, in having a kind of spell that disguises it. We all care about morality so passionately that it’s hard to look straight at it. We all look at the world through some kind of moral lens, and because most of the academic community uses the same lens, we validate each other’s visions and distortions. I think this problem is particularly acute in some of the new scientific writing about religion.”

Haidt’s piece is excellent and I highly recommend it to you, but while reading it I had a broad insight that I’ll share instead of commenting on it directly.

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More and more intentionally as I travel on my journey of faith, I don’t ask my faith to tell me what is real; what is out there.

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Does that sound weird?  What I mean is that I trust math and physics to tell me what the universe is, working my way through the hard and then soft sciences with lesser degrees of trust the farther we get from quantum reality.  I don’t expect faith to tell me anything different than or beyond what these disciplines have discovered, and in cases of conflict, I’m the one who needs to change.

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My faith is my response to what I learn about reality.  Faith tells me what is true, then challenges my ideas of truth; faith tells me what reality might mean, and what it could mean to live one way or another within it.

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This is why I link to and write about stuff that has to do with learning about reality all the time on the blog.  In order to make effective responses, I need the best knowledge I can get about world I’m in!  I figure we generally agree that the response Jesus calls us to looks something like the Phoenix Affirmations, and so I feel like I have a role pointing toward new discoveries and edgy realities so we can start responding to them in the spirit of the Affirmations

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I look at reality as a non-theist, but I respond to it as a Christian.  Does that parse?  Is it honest?  Does it have integrity?

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That’s what I ask myself, anyway.

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Maybe I give it integrity.

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Does that jive? -h

Acting out beliefs?

by Merrill

@Duck and Decanter

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On Sunday morning before church I read about a woman being consecrated – by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Richmond Virginia- as a perpetual virgin. Curious, I googled and found more on Roman Catholic beliefnet. The articles started me thinking about what people to do to practice their beliefs In particular I wondered about which of my activities stem from my beliefs as a follower of Jesus and which were things I did for other more down to earth reasons.

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Later at Asbury Tom Kiracofe told the story about Shiphrah and Puah who were midwives in ancient Egypt. Their story is told in Exodus 2:

15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah,

16 “When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.”

17 The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live.

18 Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?”

19 The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.”

20 So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.

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After this Tex Sample told the story of an uncle – on his mother’s side – who was a Baptist preacher preaching against segregation when such things were not done in the South.

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On Monday I got an entirely different view of people acting on their beliefs when I read about the shooting in a Knoxville church (and here). Suddenly, all sorts of new questions about the practice of beliefs occurred to me. The church in Knoxville was apparently chosen because of the social justice activism. Here we have a congregation that does things like founding a chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and championing women and gay rights because of their beliefs. The shooting took place during a play put on by children. The shooter apparently was stressed out by things like job loss and loss of food stamps and so was lashing out because anger and fear. Why the animosity against liberals? But it’s not the shooter’s motivation that caught my attention. One of the people killed had reported stepped up and taken a shotgun blast to protect others.

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Two years ago I walked from Phoenix to Washington DC for my beliefs. I walked with others and people along the way fed and put us up because of their belief that what we were doing was the right thing.

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Today when I talk to people about walking from Phoenix I still find it hard to think of it as a big deal. There is also some doubt, in my mind, about my motivations. Did I walk because of my beliefs or did I do it as a way of avoiding the heat in Phoenix and because I liked the idea of walking that far? Would I have walked if the Governor of Arizona, say, had told me not to? I know I would have if the president of the United States had told me not to. But he was on my ignore list. Was the Pharaoh of Egypt on Shiphrah and Puah’s ignore list? I can’t image being celibate because of my beliefs about Jesus. Even as a fundamentalist that would never have occurred to me. And even if it had, would I have done it for longer than a week? Would I have had the courage of Tex’s uncle to preach an unpopular message? I am not even sure that I would have thought of it especially if I had been raised in the pre-integration South. Did Shiphrah, Puah, Bernadette -the celibate -, or Tex’s uncle doubt for one instant that they were doing the right thing? I remember waking up one morning before the Walk wondering if I was.

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Jim David Adkisson believed that liberals have ruined the country – according to “A Whole Lotta Ugly” in Church Shooting an On Fait post in the Washington Post - and thought he should kill the people who had voted liberals in power. Greg McKendry, 60, stood between a shotgun and others to protect them. What of the men that tackled Adkisson and kept him from using the other 78 rounds he had? Did they think of dying? Did Greg stand up to an armed man because he was an usher? Did he think about what he was doing? Adkisson obviously thought about what he was going to do because he bought the shotgun a week before and then placed it in a guitar case before going to the church. What did he think about during the previous week? Was it only his beliefs about liberals that drove him or was he just striking back at a hostile world? And what of all the other people doing the “right” thing? Are our actions - that we think come from altruistic beliefs - any more pure than what I think must have motivated Jim David Adkisson?

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I wonder - does Jim David Adkisson still believe the same as he did before the shooting?

GreenShot Update, Guide to OB’s Quantum Physics Series, and Pilgrimage v. 2.1

by Howie

I’ve sent my “GreenShot” meme for Al Gore’s 100%-carbon-neutral-energy-production-in-10-years goal to two of the Inconvient Truth presenters.  They say they have limited access to Mr. Gore’s inner circle, but will pass it on, and gave a positive response to the idea.

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In my continuing conversation with Dad about Eliezer’s quantum physics sequence at the Overcoming Bias blog, I found the over-arching index to the quantum physics sequence.  This will be very helpful to anyone seeking to read the entire sequence, or just to gain familiarity with the subjects it covers by reading the index itself.

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Last night we had a “meta-Pilgrimage” among the regular Pilgrims at St. Peter’s UCC in Kansas City; a Pilgrimage about Pilgrimage.  We talked about the different things we’ve been doing lately including our “form,” mission projects, and educational events, and where we want to go from here.

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Like the Quaker-inspired fellowship we are, we arrived at a sense of the meeting.  First, we agreed that we should try to practice our house-church “form” more often than we have been.  Lately, we’ve done that less than once per month.  Going forward, we want to aim for roughly two experiences of form for every one outside mission or education event.

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Then, we decided to adjust the “form” to include two different practices during the stewardship section of worship.  One way is the same as we’ve done until now; a “circle of trust” based on Parker Palmer’s model in “A Hidden Wholeness.”  The second way will be more of a planning meeting for the various ongoing and new healing and proclaiming projects we are working on.  (Including our new food shelf, website, participation in MICAH ministry, St. Peter’s brochures, etc.  On and on and on… !)

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The changes come from recognizing that 1) our worship motivates our ministry, and we are not worshipping together enough to stay sufficiently motivated, and 2) our “form,” while personal and at times intense, is not as open and hospitable to new friends as we had hoped.

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That’s the plan.  Will let you know how it rolls.  -howie

A sign

by Merrill

@Duck and Decanter

Tom Kiracofe preached at Asbury again last Sunday. He and Tex Sample are standing in for Jeff Proctor-Murphy who is on hiatus for a few weeks. I like Tom but sometimes I get just a little tired of the disquieting thoughts he brings to his preaching. Take the one about the parable of the Good Samaritan a few Sundays ago. He asked us to imagine that we were the hero of the tale and that the person that we disliked (even hated) the most in life was the person needing our help. That was the situation for the Good Samaritan of the bible. Samaritans returned all of the animosity and hate that the Jews of the time felt for them. So here Tom was asking me what I would do if the person I detested the most needed my assistance. The nerve! I was reminded of Tom’s message last Tuesday by two events. I ran into the person I dislike most at present (the person I immediately thought of when Tom was asking us to imagine ourselves finding out that our disliked adversary was in need) and I got a extra nudge from a sign.

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` The sign

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Tuesday, when I saw the sign on the playground fence of First Presbyterian Church in downtown Phoenix, I did not think of me meeting a personal savior as I would have in times past. But I did think of two alternative interpretations. Both have to do with my spiritual journey. As the fundamentalist I was in (what now seems to be) a former existence, I never gave much thought to theology. I merely accepted what I heard on Sunday and when I read the scripture I found confirmation only for what I believed. It just never occurred to me to question either what my pastor told me or my own preconceived beliefs (which were mostly the result of listening to others with similar beliefs). I went for most of my life without questioning or studying theology (which for the purpose of this post, I will define as what humans believe or have believed about God and/or scripture). I will mention three key beliefs that I held in those days of denial:

1. The bible (King James version of course) was the inerrant, literal Word of God.

2. Homosexuals were an abomination to God.

3. If you had something bad happen to you – like a disease – it was because of SIN in your life.

There were other beliefs, that I now repent of, but those are enough for one post – and all I feel up to tackling today.

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That state of affairs lasted until 1990. That year I began to work with Gail. Now it happens that Gail is a lesbian. But regardless of my feelings about homosexuals, we worked well together. Sometimes I believe that this was because of the view I held of myself as someone in danger of hellfire. At any rate Gail and I got along well and eventually we became friends. One of the reasons for this was that we held a similar view of work as well as ethics. Eventually our friendship went beyond the workplace. Unnoticed by me at the time was the destruction of my cherished belief in homosexuals being an abomination to God. In fact it took me about 10 years to realize (consciously) the implications. Eventually I did and as a result I began to question the literalness of the bible and a few more of my personal beliefs. So when in 2002 I went to Asbury for the first time, I was ready for a crash course in a theology that I had only been dimly aware of. You might note that I turned 60 in 2002.

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First I got Jeff Proctor-Murphy (Living the Questions) and Tex Sample (Blue Collar Resistance and the Politics of Jesus) followed by the likes of Bishop John Shelby Spong, John Howard Yoder, and others to numerous to mention. Eventually (through Jeff) I met Eric Elnes and Rebecca Glenn and CrossWalk America. That was how when I came to read the Phoenix Affirmations, I could see how they made sense (how they affirmed what I had come to believe). But there is a rather subtle difference about how I now process the ideas that I get from these teachers as well as others I have run across (such as Bruce Van Blair, Phillip Cary, Richard E. Rubenstein, Bart Ehrman and many more). I no longer assume that they KNOW the absolute truth and that I need to believe exactly what they say. In fact I often note differences among them in what they teach. But I listen and sometimes I question what I believe and how I feel about any given thing. Taken together, the teachers that I have mentioned – and more – have changed my view of Jesus and what it means to “meet” him.

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One way I could have taken the sign is that it is never too late to learn about Jesus and his teachings. In view of my late entry into the study of Christian theology, I rather fancy this. But in another way I think that it is too late to know Jesus because of all the filters that are between now and the actual Jesus that lived and taught 2000 years ago. Even the gospels filter Jesus differently among themselves. Personally I prefer the earliest, Mark, but I also like the others for one thing or another. I think Mark is my favorite because of the emphasis on the immediate coming Kingdom of God and the need for repentance. Several times in Mark we are told by Jesus that those living at the time would see the Kingdom of God. If I could put my personal theology in a single sentence it would be: The kingdom of God came with Jesus’ crucifixion. Furthermore the need for repentance is just as necessary today as it was in the time of Jesus for entry into the Kingdom. And that brings me to the way I choose to interpret the sign.

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I was reminded that it is never too late to repent and meet Jesus. The person I feel least like loving, suffers from the effects of Cerebral Palsy and he is epileptic. He is also an extremely angry person. The anger is why, I suppose, that it is difficult for me to feel compassion. Although there is this little bit of suspicion that I might be holding on to some of that “caused by sin” fundamentalism ‘gotcha’ that I use for people I don’t like. It is very difficult for me to remove all those leftovers. But it is hard to think of a way that a baby (or child under three) could sin enough to deserve cerebral palsy even for a recovering fundamentalist such as myself. I like that sign.

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I wonder how the good folks at First Presbyterian interpret the sign.

We Can Solve It, Mos Def

by Howie

1.4-odd million people have beaten me to the www.WeCanSolveIt.org party, but that’s a good thing! We’re calling for 100% green energy production in 10 years - the same length of time President Kennedy used in his challenge to put a man on the moon.
Sound familiar, long-time readers?

So I ask you to join with me to call on every candidate, at every level, to accept this challenge - for America to be running on 100 percent zero-carbon electricity in 10 years. It’s time for us to move beyond empty rhetoric. We need to act now.

This is a generational moment. A moment when we decide our own path and our collective fate. I’m asking you - each of you - to join me and build this future. Please join the WE campaign at wecansolveit.org.We need you. And we need you now. We’re committed to changing not just light bulbs, but laws. And laws will only change with leadership.

On July 16, 1969, the United States of America was finally ready to meet President Kennedy’s challenge of landing Americans on the moon. I will never forget standing beside my father a few miles from the launch site, waiting for the giant Saturn 5 rocket to lift Apollo 11 into the sky. I was a young man, 21 years old, who had graduated from college a month before and was enlisting in the United States Army three weeks later.

I will never forget the inspiration of those minutes. The power and the vibration of the giant rocket’s engines shook my entire body. As I watched the rocket rise, slowly at first and then with great speed, the sound was deafening. We craned our necks to follow its path until we were looking straight up into the air. And then four days later, I watched along with hundreds of millions of others around the world as Neil Armstrong took one small step to the surface of the moon and changed the history of the human race.

We must now lift our nation to reach another goal that will change history. Our entire civilization depends upon us now embarking on a new journey of exploration and discovery. Our success depends on our willingness as a people to undertake this journey and to complete it within 10 years. Once again, we have an opportunity to take a giant leap for humankind. -Al Gore

So I need your help, guys. Gore is drawing the parallel with the “Moon Shot,” but hasn’t lept to the conclusion that this goal needs a name - a meme - as well. If you can help get the name “Green Shot” as shorthand for “100% carbon-free energy production in 10 years” to his attention, please do! I’m going to submit something via the website, try a message board, and work with a friend-of-a-friend who is one of the three thousand “Inconvenient Truth” presenters. If you can add to the effort, please. The marketing on this idea may make or break it, with serious consequences for all of us - especially the most vulnerable members of humanity.

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I was driving around last week, listening to Mos Def, and “Fear Not Of Man” struck me:

Bismillah ir Rahman ir Raheem *
If you can hear me ladies and gentlemen
Then I’m very happy that you came here..
Ooh-ooooooooooohhhh, ooh-ooooooooooooooohh-WHEEEEE!!!
That was for Brooklyn..
Ha ha, we get it everytime
You got me on? Ohh
Shout out to all of my crew, East-West, North-South
All the continent, Europe, all abroad international
Bring it in, bring it in, bring it in, bring it in

It’s a lot of things goin on y’all
21st century is comin’
20th century almost done
A lot of things have changed
A lot of things have not, mainly us
We gon’ get it together right?
I believe that
Listen.. people be askin’ me all the time,
“Yo Mos, what’s gettin’ ready to happen with Hip-Hop?”
(”Where do you think Hip-Hop is goin’?”)
I tell em, You know what’s gonna happen with Hip-Hop?
Whatever’s happening with us
If we smoked out, Hip-Hop is gonna be smoked out
If we doin’ alright, Hip-Hop is gonna be doin’ alright
People talk about Hip-Hop like it’s some giant livin’ in the hillside
Comin’ down to visit the townspeople
We are Hip-Hop
Me, you, everybody, we are Hip-Hop
So Hip-Hop is goin’ where we goin’
So the next time you ask yourself where Hip-Hop is goin’
Ask yourself.. “Where am I goin’? How am I doin’?”
‘Til you get a clear idea
So.. if Hip-Hop is about the people
And the.. Hip-Hop won’t get better until the people get better
Then how do people get better? (Hmmmm…)
Well, from my understanding people get better
When they start to understand that, they are valuable
And they not valuable because they got a whole lot of money
Or cause somebody, think they sexy
But they valuable cause they been created by God
And God, makes you valuable
And whether or not you, recognize that value is one thing
You got a lot of socities and governments
Tryin’ to be God, wishin’ that they were God
They wanna create satellites and cameras everywhere
And make you think they got the All-Seeing Eye
Eh.. I guess The Last Poets wasn’t, too far off
When they said that certain people got a God Complex
I believe it’s true
I don’t get phased out by none of that, none of that
Helicopters, the TV screens, the newscasters, the..
Satellite dishes.. they just, wishin’
They can’t really never do that
When they tell me to fear they law
When they tell me to try to
Have some fear in my heart behind the things that they do
This is what I think in my mind
And this is what I say to them
And this is what I’m sayin, to you check it

All over the world hearts pound with the rhythm
Fear not of men because men must die
Mind over matter and soul before flesh
Angels for the pain keep a record in time
Which is passin’ and runnin’ like a caravan freighter
The world is overrun with the wealthy and the wicked
But God is sufficient in disposing of affairs
Gunmen and stockholders try to merit my fear
But God is sufficient over plans they prepared
Mos Def in the flesh, where you at?, right here
On this place called Earth, holdin down my square
‘Bout to represent in your whole atmosphere
‘Bout to represent in your whole atmosphere

(* - means In the Name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate)

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Wise. Now replace “hip-hop” with “church.” Read again.
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True.

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It was the line about the giant living in the hillside that got me. How often do we say or hear things like “What’s happening with the church?” or “I wonder what the church will be like in… years?” or “Why doesn’t the church do such-and-such?” as though the the church is something other than you and me. Mos is great, turning the question around; what’s happening with you? What will you be like in X years? Why don’t you do such-and-such?

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Like church, hip-hop isn’t the sound of the music, the look of the fashion, or any of the multitude of things you can point to. Hip-hop is a spirit; a way of being in the world, a lens through which we view everything else. A culture. A frame. If I’m in the spirit, anything I can do can be hip-hop.

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Now replace “hip-hop” with “church.” Read again. -h

Not Orthodox

by Merrill

@Duck and Decanter

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I posted a new thread on the message board I mentioned last week. The post is in the welcome section. As a non-Christian I can’t post just anywhere but the welcome section is OK. Here is a copy of the post.

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Iwojimakid

Member

Are you a Christian?: No, I am not a Christian.

Join Date: Jul 2008

Posts: 1

iwojimakid is a new member, showing promise.

Hello you all

I ran into this forum last week while researching for a blog I write and decided to join. I registered and without thinking placed myself in the “Yes, I am a Christian” category. I am after all a follower of Jesus as I have been for 54 years after “making a decision for Christ” at the age of 12. Over the course of those 54 years I have had occasion to revise my theology from my original fundamentalism (although we did not call it that at the time) to what I believe is a more accepting, loving, and reasonable Christianity. Never in those 54 years have I found it necessary to identify as a non-Christian. Until now. So here I am. Hi you all.

Merrill

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Iwojimakid is my screen name for this message board. I suppose I could have mentioned that I later changed to “No, I am not a Christian” but since all posts are labeled under the member designation I thought it unnecessary. So far there are three comments to the thread. They are all pretty generic and just welcome me. No comments about me being a non-Christian. Just in case you are wondering their definition of Christian is:

Definition of “Are you a Christian?” in profile

For the purpose of posting as Christian on this board, we believe:

A Christian is a follower of Jesus of Nazareth, referred to as Christ or Messiah. Christians believe Jesus to be the only Son of God, who lived a sinless life. He is eternal, uncreated God, and has always been and will always be God, the creator of the universe. At the end of his earthly life He was crucified, on the third day He rose from the dead, and later ascended into heaven.

Christians further believe that Jesus alone offers salvation, and that it is only possible through and by Him. Apart from Jesus Christ, there is no salvation. Ephesians 2:8-9 states that “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God that no one should boast”. Humans cannot save themselves through good works, only Jesus can save them. Good works, however, are a result of living according to the Word of God.

Christians identify themselves as monotheistic, believing that there is one God

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When I first read this I immediately thought of Martin Luther (Yes, I am STILL working through the lectures) who would have agreed that with the “It is by grace you have been saved…”. But he would also have had something to say about “Have you made a decision for Christ?” (which is a question that was posed where you checked your choice on the Christian thing). I believe that Luther would have labeled that asking or answering that question as “works” of man!

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It is worth noting that the message board has some specific rules regarding some Christians:

IV. Specific Rules

Unorthodox teachings or discussing specific doctrines of ANY of these religions will be moved to the “World Religions” Forum:

Teachings of ANY of these religions and discussion of specific doctrines may be discussed only in the World Religions forum in the interest of seeking factual representation and refuting any doctrinal differences from mainstream Protestantism:

1. Seventh Day Adventist (SDA)

2. Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW)

3. Latter Day Saints (LDS)

4. ANY non-Christian religion, such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Wicca, etc.

5. Roman Catholicism.

6. ONENESS (DENIAL OF THE TRINITY/DEITY of Christ)

7. Universalism of any sort to include Universal Reconciliation

This is not just for posting messages on the open board. If you use the various systems on the message board to promote these doctrines (such as Private Messaging or Rep system etc.) then we will take appropriate action.

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I think it is kind of funny that Roman Catholics are included with the non-orthodox (in that in previous centuries – and even today - they fought to define being a Christian almost exactly the same as the message board’s definition). Of course they also would have narrowed the field by excluding all non- Roman Catholics.

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How many points in the definition do you think a heretic, like me, might disagree with?

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PS Howie’s sacrilegious post probably would not have been appreciated on the message board but I appreciated it. Thanks, Howie.