Confidentiality

Another quote from Mark Driscoll which speaks, once again, to the fact that I am completely mystified as to why 5000 people are willing to sit through hour long sermons by him every week (this is from the sermon at Mars Hill on 3/18/07)

Some people, they believe in this thing called confidentiality. I’ll just say
this as an excursus. We don't believe in confidentiality at Mars Hill. Like I’ve
had people come to meet with me and say “I’m cheating’ on my spouse and I think
I’ve got AIDS” I’m like well I’m gonna tell them." They’re like “Well, I thought
we had confidentiality.” No, we have heaven and hell. We don’t have
confidentiality. We don’t. “Well I thought you were supposed to keep it secret.”
No I’m not gonna keep it secret. If you’re molesting your kid, if you’re
cheating on your spouse, if you’re ripping off your employer, I’m pulling the
fire alarm. That’s how we do it. We walk in the light as he is in the light. We
tell the truth. I had one guy “I think I got AIDS. Don’t tell my wife.” You know
what? I need to tell your wife. You’re gonna go home and sleep with her. You’re
gonna maybe give her AIDS then she’s gonna call me and say “I’ve got AIDS”. Then
I’m gonna go visit her in the hospital and preach her funeral and get up and say
“Well hey I kept a good secret for Jesus.”

Didn’t ya’ll wear a bike helmet as a kid? Of course that’s not how we do it. We tell the truth, and we encourage people to repent. And sometimes if they fail to or refuse to, they just get furious. It’s like water on a cat man—they’re just freaking out. That’s cool though (pause…laughter)--water on a cat.

This makes a certain sense from the perspective of Mars Hill. I mean it makes sense to me that if someone is harming someone else who is clearly under their power, like an adult harming a child or a developmentaly delayed person, then it is totally right for another adult who learns of that to ... go to the appopriate authorities and see that the harm stops. And Mars Hill, as far as I can tell, does definitely see women as being in this position with regards to men. Please correct me if I am misunderstanding.

But ... isn't this ... taking away the opportunity for the offender to face the challenge of being an adult, of realizing and facing up to and trying to make amends for their own wrongs? It feels much more like a parent dealing with two children here, protecting one from the other. God doesn't do that with us! He lets us hurt each other, if we must, and then he lets us realize the extent to which we have hurt each other, and experience reconciliation in ... his time, not the pastor's.

I remember Amy Carmichael writing about doing this even with children. Challenging them to do the right thing, and then allowing them to make their own choice, even if that meant another child was being hurt.

This Mars Hill method feels a lot more like the method used in the sect I grew up in. What I have seen looking back at my experience in that sect, and looking at the lives of those I know who are still part of that sect, is that it nearly completely shuts down forward progress for the members. I and they were/are treated as children, and thus progress toward adulthood is never made until one gets out of that system. This was enormously damaging to me as I've had to make up for years of very little growth in maturity.

what do you think?

Friday Video

These are freaking awesome. This is number 9. Watch them all!
Mr. Diety and the Book

Alpha and What is the "bad news"?

So last night I attended week ... 5 of the alpha course. The subject was prayer. Here's some of the things that Nicky Gumble said--sorry it's all a bit disorganized.

He said we must pray "To the Father, through the Son, and by the Spirit" Under the "through the Son" vein, he specified that "We don't have a right of ourselves to come to the creator of the universe." I don't buy that. It's so ... connected to annihilating self hatred, which Brennan Manning says is far and away the foremost problem which he has needed to help people deal with in 30 years as an itinerant evangelist.

Plus it's *so* exclusive! Saying prayer only works *through* Jesus *could* be (and I suspect by *many* Christians *is*) understood to mean, for instance, that more than one billion Muslims have totally ineffective prayer lives. I just don't buy that. It strikes me as ludicrous.

In the "by the Spirit" vein, Nickey very briefly (and typically out of context) quotes the passage from Romans (8 or 9?) where Paul says "the Spirit helps us" in our prayer. But Nicky leaves out the monga kewlness of this passage, he just moved right on!

N.T. Wright gets it much better: From "Simply Christian"

God himself is groaning from within the heart of the world, because God himself, by the Spirit, dwells in our hearts as we resonate witht the pain of the world.

Intriguing, isn't it, that Jesus Christ is not mentioned at *all* in the model prayer which he himself gave us, commonly called "The Lord's Prayer"

Listed under Nicky's "reasons to pray section": To get rewarded, joy in god's presence, peace.

Nicky said of God "He satisfies the spiritual thirst and hunger in every human heart" Which is observably untrue. (but Nicky, along with a host of other Christian leaders, say this sort of thing all the time!) (One of the reasons, for instance, that I find Dr. Dan Allender so refreshing: "Is Jesus enough?" he asked at one conference I went to. "NO, of *course* Jesus isn't enough in this world!" (Benjamin sighed with enormous refreshment at that point))

He talked at some length about answers to prayer. He (agreeingly) quoted someone who said "The power of prayer depends on the apprehension of who we pray to" He rhetorically asked "Does God always answer prayer?" and replied to himself "YES, but God cannot act against his own nature." He used an example of two children asking their parents for permission to have a fight with the carving knives. the implication was that of course good parents wouldn't allow such a fight for the sake of the children's protection. I thought this story actually operated against Nicky's constructions because in reality, God refuses to stop the children from playing with the carving knives, otherwise known by the lovely military euphemism "conventional weapons" (as in, well, yes, we've killed 600,000 extra iraqi's, and we're still dropping cluster munitions that will be killing and maiming Iraqi children in 2045, but hey *at least* we're not using *nuclear* (oops, I mean "nucular") weapons!!!)

The thing that bothered me *most* of all was the way that Nicky was propogating a very western, very me-centric, very scopeless version of christianiy. Nicky's version of christianity is very very focused on the private, individual relationship with God. You don't even have to pray the prayer out loud, for fear you might be embarrassed. It's all about "my personal relationship with God." And so prayers become about my life, what I want for my life, what I want for my relationships, and what I want for a smallish handful of people that I love. Nicky spoke of seeing god's kingdom come to England and explained that by this he meant "seeing people come to christ, and thusly seeing people be set free" So he mentioned for instance, a prayer he made for a ride to London, which got answered. (I was sitting there thinking "what if we were to pray, and encourage other christians to pray, instead of for personal internal joy and peace and rides to London and parking places and healing of their marriages and reconciliation with their mothers and so forth--what if instead we were to pray, and teach other christians to pray "please god, could you do something about thirty thousand children who will die today from lack of potable water and enough calories?" "Please god, could you do something about 25 million internally displaced persons, many of whom have been living in horrific conditions in camps for generations!" Please god, could you do something about places in africa where an entire generation has been completely wiped out by aids, leaving only the very old and the very young to try to carry on.?" what could maybe happen then?)

He completely left out the phrase "on earth as it is in heaven" when he was going through the Jesus model prayer. And I think he seriously tweaked the meaning of the central phrase in that prayer "Forgive us as we forgive our debtors". Nicky talked about how this happens *becaus* we have experienced god's forgiveness, and thus we ... can't help but forgive those who have hurt us. "If God has forgiven me of all that, how could I not turn around and forgive others". Nikki called it at least twice by the name "a virtuous circle" (which really honestly just sounds *so* nauseating). I like Tom Wright's take on this phrase, and on Jesus model prayer in general, *way* better. He says "Notice how remarkable it is that, at the heart of the prayer, we commit ourselves to live in a particular way, a way we find difficult." (clearly Mr. Wright has a gift for understatement, but this is *so* much more tenable than Nicky's take on it.) Wright says, in his chapter on prayer, "We are called to live at the overlap of heaven and earth ... We are caught on a small island near the point where these tectonic plates--heaven and earth, future and present--are scrunching themselves together. Be ready for earthquakes!

It seems to me that Nicky and that whole brand of Christianity construct, in a sense, a bad news that I find doesn't really work for me, and so their take on "the good news", followingly doesn't work for me either.

Tuesday Videos: Cluster munitions.

We dropped *millions* of these little fuckers in Laos and Vietnam way back in the 60's and 70's, and little kids and adults in their agricultural subsistence economies still find them and get killed or maimed by them every year. The government of Laos (understandably) *won't* have any U.S. government help to continue the massive cleanup that is still going on 3 decades later, so it's all being done on the relatively tiny budgets of the government of Laos and handful of extremently kewl, extremely dedicated NGO's.

The completely fucked thing is that we are still making and still dropping these little horrors *this* year! So in 40 years, we can still be killing innocent civilians with the unexploded bomblets.

bus conversation

In Seattle, it is ... enormously difficult to start or maintain conversations on the bus, which is the main mode of public transport. People sit in their seats, and by and large they don't interact with or talk to or even look at each other. Trying to overcome this cultural coldness, one feels rather like one of those bugs you see skating around on the surface of a pond or lake. The bug is certainly heavier than water, but they don't sink because they're not heavy enough to break the surface tension of the water.

Breaking the surface tension on the bus to engage in conversation is often too difficult for me, despite my good intentions and actual desire. It takes a certain amount of emotional and psychological energy which I often can't muster.

Sometimes, however, I have these amazing and brilliant conversations. Today I met and chatted with one Charles Jackson, formerly of Oakland. He is 86 years old and has been in Seattle for 16 years. He was the first black man in the United States Maritime Service. I'd never even *heard* of the U.S. Maritime Service. Charles looks about 60 years old, fit as a fiddle, but he told me he looked a lot better two years ago, and he hasn't been able to sleep lately. He still has very lively eyes and a face very full of character. I hope I see him again on the bus.

The Alpha course

My computer's hard drive crashed, and they put a new one in it, and then *that* crashed, so now I ended up with a faster computer with more RAM and a bigger hard drive. Kewl.
But it's also pretty annoying, since I had to reinstall all my software, *uninstall* all the unbelievably annoying boomph they install at the factory, and generally tweak and fiddle to get it into the shape I like to have it in. but that's mostly done now, and I kinda like it, although I'm still having one issue that I sense is going to take more work than I want to give.

Anyway, I wanted to tell you about the Alpha course. It's a introductory course on christianity which lots of churches all over the world do. It originated at Holy Trinity Brompton, which I've been to! Lovely Megs grew up helping out on Alpha courses, and since we got married, I guess it was inevitable that I would end up attending at least one.

the way they work is thus: there is a meal, generally quite yummy, and everyone sits down and eats. And then everyone watches a video (or sometimes an actual live speaker) talk about that week's topic. And then we sit around the table and talk about the topic, or whatever else we may want to talk about. The leaders are trained to *not* preach or teach, but rather to encourage and facilitate questions and discussions, and in my experience they do rather well with that.

so I attended my first alpha course some 2 years ago. It was kind of a strange experience because I was going through the process of unbecoming a christian, and the alpha course is kind of intended to facilitate the opposite process. But it worked relatively well.

Now I find myself doing the course again. Meg got invited to be a conversation facilitator at one of the tables at the alpha course which is being run by Union Church, whose pastor, Renee, Meg has gotten to know lately. And the church offered to provide babysitting if I wanted to come, and I thought, ah well, why not.

So I went the first week, and as in the fist time I found Nicky Gumbel, the speaker on the videos, unbelievably annoying. he just constantly says these things that don't work for me at all.

And then I skipped week two for E's birthday. And then week three was the first week when there was actually discussion (that is, there is no discussion time the first week, for some odd reason). And again I found Nicky really obnoxious, and then I found myself at a table with 7 other Christians, and no other non christians, and I felt a bit surrounded, and just generally with low level psychological discomfort, and I said to myself "Why am I doing this?" Finding no good answer, I decided to stop.

But a guy at my table who I kind of connected with a little bit expressed disappointment at my imminent non-return. He said "It's going to be pretty boring without you!". And I said "Well, maybe you and the rest of the table, if you get too bored, can put your heads together and come up with an incentive to convince me to return" To which he replied "How about a six pack?" To which I replied ".... Let me think about it. Ok! Deal!"

So I attended again tonite, and again found Nicky obnoxious. He reminds me of a slick car salesman. Tonite he talked about how there's no catch to Christianity--it's a free gift. That is such a half truth. yes, it's true, but it's only half the truth. The other half is that one is required to take up one's Roman death by torture device and follow me. One is required to lose one's life to find it. One is required to undergo the chastening promised to every son. Etc. etc. etc. There's no catch, except this one freaking enormous catch. Nicky generally absolutely refuses to talk about the dark side of Christianity, and I find this amazingly unpleasant.

But the discussion around the table tonite was a bit better. Nicky talked about how one of the ways one knows that one is a Christian is "The Holy Spirit's witness", included in which, he said, are the "fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, faithfulness, kindness, goodness, self control". So I asked my fellow diners if they thought there was any evidence that Christians possessed these items, on average, to a greater degree than non christians. And they more or less agreed that that wasn't really the case (emphasis on "more or less" here)

Anyway, I guess I've carried on at some length.

I think I shall continue to post each week about this course.

Unfortunately, the six pack didn't show up tonite. But my friend says he owes it to me and will make good on it shortly.

Saturn eclipsing the sun

I think this, wiki's picture of the day for today, is beautiful! Taken by Cassini on 15 September 2006 (See how I gently bow to the Aussie way of stating the date =). I guess Galilieo would be so astounded to see this.

argh!

So it's finals week, and our laptop broke and is in the shop.


argh.

At least there's free food at the hub tonite.

so I suggest watch Eugene Jarecki's Why We Fight, and discuss it with us on Friday at JaC.

Simplicity

This via Deanne:

“Simplicity means a return to the posture of dependence. Like children we live in a spirit of trust. What we have we receive as a gift.” — Richrard J. Foster

Wanted: Your first gut reaction to the quote.

Wanted: Your reaction upon further contemplation.

=)

The "Great Moral Issues of Our Time"?

So there appears to be a bit of a foofoorah brewing on the internet around a recent letter written by James Dobson and his friends from the religious right to the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE)

In the letter, Dobson and co. criticized Rich Cizik, an NAE leader, for focusing on global warming as a moral issue. They said

"More importantly, we have observed that Cizik and others are using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time, notably the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children."

Now Jim Wallis of Sojourners has challenged Mr. Dobson to a public debate on "What are the great moral issues of our time for evangelical christians?"
What do think? Are ...

1.The sanctity of human life
2.The integrity of marriage, and
3.The teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children

... the top three great moral issues of our time? Or could perhaps ...

4.16,000 children die of starvation every day
5.What the U.S. government has called "genocide" in Darfur
6.800,000 people, (including 14,000 into the U.S.) being trafficked every year

... be equally or even more pressing moral issues?

Indeed, if, as NOAA suggests, global warming may lead to increasing occurrence of highly destructive category 5 storms (i.e., more Katrina like events--more people dying, more internally dispaced persons, etc.), then doesn't that make global warming a great moral issue?

Justice and Compassion.com

Rachel and I are hosting a newly launched blog over at Off the Map called Justiceandcompassion.com. It's already quite an interesting conversation. I'd love for you to join us over there. Today's post is about the good news in Liberia--long awaited good news!

Yesterday the U.S. State Department released their 2006 Report on Human Rights, detailing human rights violations in 193 countries.

So can anybody explain to me why the United States isn't one of the countries reported on? I just don't get that.

huh?

The site of the bombing in Kapisa Province, northeast of Kabul.s


two headlines from today's new york times:

1.U.S. Airstrike Kills 9 in Afghan Family
2.Bush Approves Aid Programs for Latin America

From the first story:

Nine members of a family were killed in an American airstrike in central Afghanistan, including five women and three children during a battle with militants, Afghan officials said today. The United States military acknowledged it had dropped two 2,000 pound bombs on a compound Sunday night. ... United States forces would work with the Afghan authorities to “investigate and identify those responsible,” the statement (from the U.S. military) said.

From the second story:

''The United States of America is committed to helping people rise out of poverty,'' the president said. ... ''In an age of growing prosperity and abundance, this is a scandal and it is a challenge,'' Bush said.

I'm confused.

tough question of the week

So there seems to be a bit of a conversation going on over at Conversation at the Edge about abortion, growing out of a recent Time magazine article. In that conversation, Jennifer shared the link to her story on Imnotsorry.net. In Jennifer's story, a priest was trying to convince Jennifer not to have the abortion, and Jennifer asked him

If God kills babies why can’t I?

I think that's a reasonable question for all the christian pro lifers out there.

Friday Video

The Lord's Resistance Army: therapy for former child soldiers.

(warning--this might be difficult for some to watch. Compared to what is actually happening, in Northern Uganda, it's fairly gentle, but that's relative)

By the way, aren't African people physically beautiful? I hope it's not racist for me to say so. But especially ever since hanging out for a while in West Africa, I've had this sense of envy about that--wishing I were that beautiful.

Jerry Falwell and public schools

"I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!"

– Rev. Jerry Falwell

That's from his book America Can Be Saved, written in 1979, according to multiple internet sources (now there's lousy citation for you)

But ... the thing is, I rather suspect he still thinks this.


I guess he wants to see a United State where:

• no one has any body piercings except women can have ear rings.
• no men have hair longer than their collar
• all students are taught that the earth is 6000 years old
• students are not allowed to have unapproved demonstrations
• no one is allowed to watch R rated movies
• students are required to tattle on their classmates or else be considered guilty of whatever they didn't tattle about.

All from Liberty Universities rules and regulations
(except the 6000 year old earth bit, but to the best of my understanding that is what is taught at Liberty)


So 15,000 people are currently paying $80,000 for the privilege of going to Liberty University for four years and earning their undergrad degree from an institution whose chancellor and founder (as best as I understand) has never actually earned a doctoral degree

I don't get that.

Pray for Uganda

A nearly miraculous 6 month ceasefire between the Lord's Resistance Army and the government of Uganda is set to exprie Wednesday, February 28th (that is, today). This is enormously heartbreaking, as it means that a situation has been *so* bad for so long for so many children, and which looked to be getting better, may now be getting worse again.

Read more

62% of children living in displaced persons camp in Northern Uganda are victims of sexual abuse (The Monitor)
At least 66,000 children are thought to have been forcibly recruited into the Lord's Resistance Army (AllAfrica.com)

If I think about this too much, I start crying.

See also World Vision's Synopsis
See also Invisible Children
See also Juba Talks

Does god hate africa more than he hates the rest of us?

Quote from Leo Tolstoy

A single execution carried out by prosperous educated men uninfluenced by passion, with the approbation and assistance of Christian ministers, and represented as something necessary and even just, is infinitely more corrupting and brutalizing to men than thousands of murders committed by uneducated working people under the influence of passion.

Every war, even the most humanely conducted, with all its ordinary consequences, the destruction of harvests, robberies, the license and debauchery, and the murder with the justifications of its necessity and justice, the exaltation and justification of military exploits, the worship of the flag, the patriotic sentiments, the feigned solicitude for the wounded, and so on, does more in one year to pervert men's minds than thousands or robberies, murders, and arsons perpetrated during hundreds of years by individual men under the influence of passion

--Leo Tolstoy, from The Kingdom of God is Within You.

Found this photo today

from a while ago, with a very small girl number one peeking over my shoulder from her backpack perch.

Friday Video and Invitation

Megan and I went to see Amazing Grace today, and IMO it was a really great movie. So here's the trailer. And I want to invite you to see the movie this next week. Then join us to discuss it starting next Friday on the brand spanking new Off-The-Map Blog which Rachel and I are hosting starting in March, JusticeandCompassion.com You can find movie times near you here

Let me just also say that the fact that Wiblerforce's efforts led to the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire doesn't mean that slavery ended. In fact, there are 27 million slaves in the world today. To learn more, and how we can help, you can start at Free The Slaves.

25 Points to identify this protein

Hint: You'd die without it.

what is emergent--a peeve

So Mark Driscoll announced on his blog this week the publcation of a new book by zondervan "Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches" edited by Dr. Robert Webber. It is a "counterpoint book", in which 5 so called emerging church pastors write on the issues of the trinity, the atonement, and the scripture, and then respond to each others' writing. The writers are Doug Pagitt, Karen Ward, Dan Kimball, John Burke, and Mark Driscoll.

So here's my peeve: what [the hell] is emergent about Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill? I mean I know a little about Karen Ward and Doug Pagitt, and they are both definitely emerging. I mean their churches are .. emerging *out of* the boring, painful, etc. mainstream church. It doesn't look to me like Mars Hill is emerging from anything. They are totally typical. In fact they are ... quintessentially typical of the 'church' which I find so painful and can no longer bear. Not that I have anything against them personally. I'm sure they are somewhere in the range upon which typical churches fall--not really *that* far off in toward one extreme or the other. So how come they keep getting called emerging? I mean really, is that like a marketing campaign they did early on, and it stuck, or what? I really don't get it. Is it because they have such a youngish demographic? Is it because they are numerically successful in Seattle? Do people who call them emergent or emerging just mean something very very different from what I mean when I use those terms? If so, what is the meaning that these others are assigning to the term? don't get it don't get it don't get it. It's concerning because I ... sort of think of myself as emergent, or emergent, or at least ... I think of myself as feeling good around and understanding/connecting with emerging/emergent people. But *not* with Mars Hillish places. I feel totally and completely out of place and creeped out at Mars Hill services. So if we are going to wrest the word like that, or push the meaning to be so enormously broad, then perhaps I have to stop using it, or else explain every time, or something.

On the other hand, I think the book should be fascinating because of the authors in it that I do like.

pancake day and mardi gras and shriving

So today I learned that today, the day before Ash Wednesday, the last day before Lent starts, is called both Pancake Day and Mardi Gras for the same reason. Language is so fascinating to me.

Mardi Gras, French for "Fat Tuesday", is the last day of Carnival, which is a two week celebration before Lent begins. The biggest Carnival is held in Rio de Janeiro, Portuguese for "January River" (thus named because it was found by Portuguese explorers on January 20th, 1502).

Pancake Day is what today gets called in UK and Australia, because, apparently, it is common to eat pancakes on this day. And why is it common to eat pancakes? Because theoretically people are giving up "rich" foodstuffs such as eggs, milk, sugar and flour for the 40 days of Lent. So why not use up all those ingredients, and have a little last minute celebration at the same time? Hence pancakde day.

Also today is called Shrove Tuesday. "Shrove" is past tense of "Shrive". "Shrive" means to obtain absolution for one's sins by confessing and doing penance. It has been traditional, apparently, people used to shrive on Shrove Tuesday in preparation for lent. But this term is apparently not common or familiar in the U.S., whereas it *is* common in the U.K. and Australia

Other names: "Tuesday of Carnival", "Martes de Carnaval", "Terca-feira de Carnaval", "Terca-feira Gorda", "Martedi Grasso".

So in U.K., apparently, they have pancake races in which the contestants run to the finish line holding a frying pan and tossing the pancakes as they go.

anyway, doesn't one get the feeling of the ... Christian empire, as it were? Or perhaps the European Empires? Back in the day, Europe was colonizing everywhere, and the Christian church was very much tied in with that, so we get people all over the place doing their own iterations of "Last day before lent".

And don't you also get the feeling of the ... sense of the sacred, the sense of the numinous, that people used to have? It seems like the life of the church, the calender of the church, used to be much more intertwined with the life of the whole culture. People had a sense of connection with god and with each other that perhaps we now lack, now that ... all the old gods are dead, and all we are left with is modernism and scientism. I mean who really does any proper fasting during lent anymore? Who gets rid of all their eggs and flour and sugar and chooses to try to connect on purpose with the brokenness of the world and the brokenness of themselves for 40 days? We are much too busy and tuned out to do such a thing across the culture, and anyway, it would probably hurt the economy, and we can't have that. At one level we have an innate need to shrive, but it's more convenenient to watch 24, or blog. or maybe I'm just projecting, and most people do participate in these excercises , and I'm the only one who is so busy and so disconnected.

50 thousand American casulties in Iraq

Yes, it's month old news. But there it is. No one has managed to do a bloody thing about it yet--the carnage continues. already over 100 wounded and 60 killed this month.

Counting dead, wounded, seriously sick, and injured, according to Iraq Body Count and Wikipedia and Alter Net

media fast and mindfulness

Friday the Seattle Times ran a story on a new course with professor Mara Adelman at Seattle University, "Restorative Solitude". The 12 upper level communications students were originally asked to undertake a one week media fast. No ipod, cell phone, email, television, radio, car stereo, etc. etc. etc. The students protested and the fast was reduced to four days. As it turns out, however, even with the reduced time period, none of the students were able to completely abstain. From the story...

Adelman believes her new upper-level course "Restorative Solitude" is unique. It explores the importance of quiet time for clarity, creativity and spirituality, and touches on techniques ranging from long-distance running to meditation. It also explores the darker side of solitude: loneliness and isolation

This seems related at some level to the concept of mindfulness which I am currently starting to learn about in connection with the Addictive Behaviors Research Center (ABRC) at University of Washington. Mindfulness has been shown to be effective in relatively recent therapies which have been developed for stress reduction and chronic pain reduction. It seems that (from my understanding so far anyway), that at least certain streams within buddhism may have the best grasp on mindfulness of anyone in the world, in terms of learning and practicing it. So right now ABRC is just starting up a big project, the first of it's kind, I'm pretty sure, to see whether teaching mindfulness to those with addictive disorders can significantly reduce relapse outcomes.

So...

-Do you think you could fast from all media for a week? Why or why not?
-Lent begins on Wednesday. What do you think about the idea of a partial media fast for lent?

Friday Video

I really like these Mr. Deity videos. Here's #5: Mr. Deity and Lucifer

Guest blogger--A different perspective on Iraq

So my uncle steve recently posted his thoughts on the war in Iraq, and he gave me permission to repost here with comments. So just to be very up front, I sort of largely disagree with most of what he says. The thing is, his views seem to me to represent: A. The views of some sizeable group of Americans. and B. The views of a rather large proportion of my mother's family, which makes up most of my extended family. So it would perhpas behoove me to react with curiosity and respect and gentleness. Following are excerpts from Steve's Blog

After listening to a couple of hours of debates in the US Congress tonight, I have formed some opinions about the ongoing war in Iraq.

#1. I don't believe we can cut & run in any way shape or form. There's too much evidence from history to show what will happen if we do. Al-Queda ready considers us weak, and for sure that is how we will be viewed in the eyes of every significant nation in the free world. With the dangers looming in Iran, N Korea, Venezuala, Syria, we can't afford to take a weak posture at this point.

It seems to me like the evidence goes the other way--I mean it seems to me that the lesson we apparently failed to learn in vietnam is that getting too involved in someone else's civil war is pointless and if/when we do so, our best bet is to realize our mistake as quickly as possible and extract ourselves ASAP--a kind of cutting one's losses. (Read more ...)

#2. We need a solid plan. I've heard that mostly from the Republicans, and I agree. The Democrats, for all their impassioned rhetoric about saving American lives, failed to provide any plan. The closest think I heard to a plan was at the end, when one of the Democrats said their plan would be to "put a fence around the funding" (for the war). Great plan, right.

I kind of agree with you about the democrats lacking a solid plan. I would love to hear the democrats saying "Here's our plan--we need to get our soldiers out of Iraq, ASAP, and the way we are going to make sure that happens is we are going to radically cut military expenditures."

#3. I don't think sending in additional troops is going to make a difference in the long run either. (Perhaps now you're wondering what political party I belong to? Read on). It seems evident that, especially with proven Iranian involvement (and this from the liberal media that has come out so vocally against the war), that this thing is going to get bigger & bloodier as time goes on. I think I heard a quote from one of the soldiers, stating something to the effect that whenever they get one area cleaned up, someone wants to kill them in some other area they are going into.

Again, I sort of agree with you. It seems to me that the whole thing is just going to continue to be bloody and a mess, and our best bet to remedy that situation is to *deescalate*, which is to say, to start bringing troops home immediately.

So where am I going? What is my solution? Here's my take, take it or leave it.

This is not a "winnable" war in the sense that our enemys will one day surrender & a truce will be signed. Nor is it a war we can retreat from. That would be nationalistic suicide. No, this war is unlike any other war, because the enemy is not who we think they are.

Are you still with me?

What we are fighting here has been definied as a clash of "civilizations", "ideologies", "doctrines", "religions". Pick your buzz word. This aspect of the war doesn't get talked about enough in the mainstream media, but I believe it is at the crux of the solution in Iraq. Sadly, I don't think it will ever be taken seriously, while men and governments continue to up the ante' - more funding, more money, more soldiers on the one hand, more suicide bombers, more IEDs, more kidnappings, terrorism, US & British Media Exploitation on the other. The stakes get higher and higher.

What if people all around the world started praying hard, very hard, for a solution? And what if they prayed to the God that created this world? What if people started really digging into the book of Revelation, Daniel, and other end-time prophecy books. What if we looked at it through the eyes of Jesus, as he gave his discourse to the apostles in Matthew 24? What if we took seriously news stories like the one out of Florida recently in which a man claimed to be Jesus Christ himself? What if we looked at what's happening in Jerusalem & the Temple Mount & started comparing it to what is written in scripture? Could we make some connections? Are we getting close to some HUGE event in World History? I would say so. And in fact, I think it's knocking right at our door this very hour.

I don't think the war in Iraq is going to end in a way either Democrats or Republicans think it could. Things will escalate. This is just the beginning of something much bigger. So what's my point? Where's my plan?

Pray baby, pray hard. Pray for the eyes & ears of the nations to open to the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Pray that our leaders will get down on their knees and start making decisions based on wisdom from God. Pray that America, once a mighty Christian Nation, get back to her roots, and mostly pray for God's grace. I love my country, and for sure we are the most blessed country in the world, but we are also the most vile and decadant country in the world (yes, I said those both in one breath). Lots of people look at the Muslim religion as a religion of hate that breeds more hatred & violence. Can we get our eyes off the religion & start looking at what's behind the religion? Some Muslims look at America as the land of immorality, weakness, decadence - a nation filled with vileness. A land in which freedom has lost it's moral compass. We are the strongest military force in the world, yet we can't contain a miniscule country like Iraq (remember, the battle is the Lords). There are many lessons from the Bible we could learn from that will help us understand why, if our leaders would just listen.

So while the debate goes on all around us about what to do in Iraq, how to make our nation more secure, how to stop the terrorists before they stop us - I have one solution, and it's not my solution at all. It was written several thousand years ago, and it is still applicable today. Praise be to God. Here it is:

"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, & pray, & seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, and forgive their sin, and HEAL THEIR LAND" (2 Chron 7:14).

It sounds like you are saying that you think its possible to map the book of Revelation onto current world events and make appropriate decisions based on that mapping. Is that what you are saying?

It also sounds like you identify very strongly *both* with being American and with being Christian, and that indeed you see the two identities as being very strongly interconnected. Am I getting that right? Do you find this consistent with the way that Jesus interacted with nationhood and kingdomhood in the Bible stories? It seems to me that Jesus and the early church saw their being part of "The Way" as ... antithetical to their strongly identifying with/being loyal/committed to to a particular nation or kindgom or empire or people.

Do you think it's at all accurate to think of or look at the current Unites States as an empire? You kind of reference this when you talk about "the strongest military in the world not being able to contain a miniscule country like Iraq". This statement very much seems to be grounded in an imperialistic paradigm.

Jim and Caspar go to Church

So last summer Jim Henderson, co founder of Off the Map, hired Caspar, an atheist, to go on a road trip with him to visit 20 churches across America, and they wrote a book about the experience--"Jim and Caspar Go to Church", which will be out later this year.
And Dr. Gary Gilley, pastor of southern view chapel, got hold of one of the galleys for the book, and wrote a review--the first review of the book.
And Caspar responded to the review here.
I had a bit of a hard time not just writing off "Dr." Gilley. The university where he got his doctorate has a flat rate of $4500 for a doctorate, and their accrediting agency is referenced *nowhere* on the web except on their own web page (according to google)! That sounded a bit iffy to me. Plus he attacks the 12 steps and psychology (the discipline) as being unchristian and unbiblical and scary, and finds Dr. James Dobson, of all things, too ... liberal.
But I am learning this brilliant lesson from Jim and Helen, who both help run Off the Map's five blogs. The lesson is that it's more important to be kind than right, and part of that is being willing to engage people as human beings with innate dignity, no matter how off the wall they seem. So Jim and Caspar totally engage with Dr. Gilley, based on what he says in his review of their book. They warmly and curiously and genuinely invite him into dialogue. I think that's awesome. I want to be more like that.

Healed!?

In an email to members of his former church, Ted Haggard announced this last week that, after three weeks of "intense spiritual conselling", he is convinced he is "completely heterosexual."

Randy Thomas, vice president of the United States' largest ex-gay group, Exodus international (and can I just say that is a bummer of a name for someone in that position? But only people who speak British or Aussie English know that, so it's not as bad as it could be, I guess), said

"Sexuality is very complex. So, for many people, depending on what issues they deal with … it could be months, it could be years," said Thomas. "So for someone to claim complete healing … I find that remarkable."

I found this fascinating. What does it mean? Here are some of my ideas about what Ted might have meant:

1."I intend to never have homosexual sex again"
2."I intend to never have homosexual lustful thoughts again"
3."I think it's important for the cause of New Life Center and the National Association of Evangelicals that I say this"
4."I think it's important for my wife and kids that I say this"

I'd love some clarification. Anyone have any idea what he meant? What do you think?

Friday Video

Compassion for sex offenders.
Are sex offenders the modern equivalent in the the United States of lepers, publicans and sinners? If they are, then who would Jesus be hanging out with? Your thoughts?

correction on Firestone, and the Pledge of Allegiance

Two posts ago, I suggested not buying firestone tires as a response to firestone's abuse of their employees in Liberia. Upon further reflections, this may not be the best course of action.

Perhaps not buying the tires will deprive these worker's of even the infinitesimally meager wages they earn. Perhaps the better thing is, buy whatever tyres you would otherwise buy, and *if* they are bridgestone firestone--be aware of this issue, and be vocal about it to the company as one of the their valued customers. That way we don't deprive the worker's in Liberia of their wages by driving Firestone out of business. Maybe there is hope for change from the inside. Hmmmm....

Today the American Pledge of Allegiance was mentioned in a CNN report (which I saw on YouTube) on atheists in America. One religious journal editor claimed that atheists are partly to blame for their bad image in this country, because of things they do like ... suing to have the words "One nation under God" removed from the pledge of allegiance.
For those not from this country, my understanding is that most schoolchildren in this country are led in 'the pledge of allegiance to the american flag' every school day. I certainly said it regularly in school as a child.
I now find this very very strange. Why are children being taught to ritualistically pledge their allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands? I don't get that. I don't want my daughters making such a pledge. It seems eminently un Christian and jingoistic and insular and a bit scary. And yet it is seen as so normal to so many americans. Even at the preschool classes at a really big mainstream eastside church called Westminster Chapel in bellevue, the children were putting their little hands over their hearts and saying this pledge. I don't get that.
For Americans: Does the pledge seem normal to you? If you are a Christian, does it seem reconcilable with Christianity? why or why not?
For non, half, or some other proportion Americans: Is there something like this in other countries? How does it strike you?

R.I.P. Reggie

I recently learned that my lovely sister Kat's beautiful and highly intelligent horse, Reggie, died unexpectedly this past week. I didn't know Reggie very well, but I appreciated the way he helped take such good care of Kat for a number of years, and I know she will miss him greatly. Katness--I'm sorry for your loss. I hope Reggie is enjoying far greener pastures and that someday you two will meet again

Bridgestone/Firestone and Liberia

I learned today that my ex employer, also largest tyre and rubber company in the world, Bridgestone/Firestone, is in some public relations trouble for the slave like conditions under which their workers eke out a living on their enormous rubber plantations in Liberia, one of the world's Least Developed Countries. This was fascinating to me on three counts: I used to work for Firestone, I'm interested in social justice and related issues, and I once hung out for a week with a bunch of rubber plantation workers and their families in rural Liberia.

So my suggestion for the time being is: next time you have to buy tires (see, now I've used both the Commonwealth and the American Spellings in this post. Very mulitcultural of me), don't buy from firestone or Bridgestone, and don't buy tyres manufactured by firestone/bridgestone.

I have more proactive ideas about this issue in my idea mill and shall post about them soonish.

By the way, totally as an aside, it was fascinating to learn firsthand where the rubber in our tires actually comes from, and to see it being harvested from the rubber trees. I have at least a couple good stories I shall share over the next coupla days about the lovely people I met there in Liberia.

Influenza

From the Italian influenza or "influences"--originally thought to be the result of bad astrological influences, and later called influenza di freddo or "influence of the cold" It's at least 2400 years old, and it's most infamous iteration was "The Spanish Lady", which killed 50 to 100 million people world wide in 1918-1919, and was recently reconstructed by (completely off their rockers) scientists right here in Seattle in a Biosafety Level 3 Lab. Doesn't that make you feel safe, that they were reconstructing it in a biosafety level 3 lab? I feel totally okay about, considering the amazing record of the scientific community at large to keep us all safe.
Anyway, I digress. The virus is 80 to 120 nanometers in diamter (a nanometer is 10^-9 meters-very very tiny). That's still bigger than the (correct me if I'm wrong here you technological ones) the size of transistors currently being (printed, etched, ....put) on integrated circuits (microprocessors), which will be moving downward in size to a mere 45 nanometers later this year. I'm pretty sure this size is actually impossible to get one's head around. I mean you can't *see* it, so how do you visualize? It's all happening *way* down there on the size scale.
So anyway, I'm pretty sure Megan and Eowyn and Coco all have influenza. Wiki says "common symptoms of influenza infection are fever, nausea, vomiting, sore throat, muscle pains, severe headache, coughing, and weakness and fatigue" My poor three girls have had and continue to have, between the three of them, every single one of these symptoms. I, on the other hand, have only felt mildly yucky. I think I might have gotten some milder iteration earlier in the winter and so my immune response this time was quicker.
If you pray, please pray for Megan and girl number one and girl number two (who just turned 3, bless her!). It's been 10 whole days now with these nastly little horrors replicating in their cells, and it hasn't been fun for them. Thankyou.

quote of the week

Found on Banzai's blog, buried way down in the comments on one of his posts:

Seattle is such a great place. We have two Mars Hills: one to smack us around and the other to spend the next decade examining what it means.

This won't mean much to non-insiders. But to those who know both seattle mars hills, it's quite funny. Here's Mars Hill #1, and Mars Hill #2 (not neccesarily in that order). You figure it out. Good luck.

Friday video

Mr. Deity and The Evil

Carl Rogers, Vispassana and February U.S. executions

My recentish thoughts:

I. I want to be more like Carl Rogers--I want to have these three things at the top of my list of ways of relating to people: 1. Genuineness (both being aware of my moment-by-moment thoughts and feelings in the relationship, and choosing to appropriately communicate those moment by moment) , 2. Warmth (unconditional positive regard), and 3. Empathy (being able and willing to see and interact with the world as the other sees and interacts with the world).

II. I want to do a Vispassana 10 day meditation course. The lab I am ... entering at UW is very much (and increasingly) interested in mindfulness, and mindfulness, of course, is just the westernization of a lot of really great stuff from so called "Eastern religions", including this course. Learning this seems to have almost universal positive results, and Dr. Marlatt and his fellows are using it, for instance, to significantly help alcoholics to recover.

III. The United States is set to execute three people in February, all in Texas. There are 129 nations which pretty much no longer use the death penalty, while there are 69 which still maintain it in law and practice. In this latest group are both the United States and the three countries which George named "The axis of evil" a few years ago: Iraq, North Korea, and Iran. Of course all irony regarding George and co has pretty much already been exhausted, hasn't it?

Read more and take action here

Pikelets

Today I ran into the term "pikelets" describing a food item in a Pamela Allen book I was reading to chiquitita #2. I never heard or read it before, so I looked it up. Apparently it's the Australian term for something the British call a drop scone, another food item of which I've not heard. Another word which has been tossed around in the definitions I've read is "crumpet", to which pikelets and drop scones can be compared, and with which they both have similarities. Alas, I also have no idea what a crumpet is, although I have heard of them.

Now from the pictures in google image search, it looks to me like a crumpet looks like a sort of cross between what we call a pancake and what we call an English muffin, but leaning toward the pancake. Of course the wiki definition for pikelet also calls it a "Scottish pancake".

Wiki says in the U.S., pancakes can be referred to as hotcakes, griddlecakes, or flapjacks, all terms with which I am familiar. It goes on to point out that the difference between American and British or Australian pancakes is that we Americans use a raising agent (usually baking powder), while Brits and Aussies don't, so American pancakes are thicker/fatter, while the Commonwealth pancakes are thinner/flatter. This is why Megan tends to tell our girls that we are having, depending on the day, "funny", or "fat" "American" pancakes.

Moreover, says wiki, the American topping of choice is maple syrup, and they are served mainly at breakfast. In Australia, on the other hand, they can be topped with lemon and sugar, or they can be wrapped around savory ingredients and served as a main course.

Apparently the Scottish/Irish variation, called pancakes, drop scones or girdle cakes in those two countries but known elsewhere as Scottish or Scots, add sugar to the eggs, milk, and self raising flour of the American variation, The Irish ones apparently opt for buttermilk.

So having gone through all that, I learned that pikelets are known in this country as silver dollar pancakes, and the chief difference between them and "regular" pancakes (if one can any longer use such a term) is their diminutive size--they are about 3 inches across. Now next time I make pancakes, I shall have to make them quite small and serve them up as pikelets, an Australian treat! goody.

Fretting

Fret:

From OED:

7. intr. for refl. To become eaten, corroded, or worn; to waste or wear away; to decay, become corrupt. Also with asunder, off, out. Obs. Cf. FRET v.4 2.

8. trans. To chafe, irritate. Chiefly with regard to the mind: To annoy, distress, vex, worry. Also, to fret oneself; and to bring into or to (a specified condition) by worrying. Cf. FRET v.4 1.

9. a. intr. for refl. To distress oneself with constant thoughts of regret or discontent; to vex oneself, chafe, worry. Often with additional notion of giving querulous and peevish expression to these feelings. Also, to fret and fume, and fret it out, and const. about, after, at, over, upon.

Today I was fretting, and I had two thougts about it. The first was an old gospel song which I learned in Sunday Morning Church®. The lyrics were

Fret not, he's watching over you,
Fret not, the Lord knows what to do.
Fret not, you're sure to stand the test.
Commit and trust, delight and rest.

The lyrics are from the first 7 verses of Psalm 37 in the Authorized Translation. Here are the same verses from the Message:

Don't bother your head with braggarts
or wish you could succeed like the wicked.
In no time they'll shrivel like grass clippings
and wilt like cut flowers in the sun.

Get insurance with God and do a good deed,
settle down and stick to your last.
Keep company with God,
get in on the best.

Open up before God, keep nothing back;
he'll do whatever needs to be done:
He'll validate your life in the clear light of day
and stamp you with approval at high noon.

Quiet down before God,
be prayerful before him.
Don't bother with those who climb the ladder,
who elbow their way to the top.

If you read the rest of this psalm, you will encounter something which occurs all over the place in the bible and which absolutely mystifies me, namely, an extremely simple and clear dichotomization between "the righteous" and "the wicked". This is something I simply cannot see in "the real world".

My second thought about my fretting was in regards to my very recent learnings about mindfulness. I realized I could somehow regress a little and rather than fret about what I was fretting about directly, I could observe myself fretting about it, as a sort of wise, compassionate, yet somewhat detached observer "Look at that--I am all worked up about ________. I'm feeling ___________ right now, and it's affecting me in the following ways. I am loved, and isn't this fascinating. I can bring my love of learning, one of my major character strengths, to bear on this fascinating phenomenon. Etc. Etc.

I found the mindfulness thing a ton more helpful than the Bible thing.

two quotes and a new word

Two quotes and a thought.

From Suzanne Wolfe

Art and literature "enrapture us," Suzanne said. "It's the last real presence of God in a consumer-crazy world. It kind of returns us to a sense of what is real and what is good and what is true."

From Dr. M. Scott Peck

In a letter to her sister, Saint Theresa of Lysieux wrote, "If you are willing to serenely bear the trial of being displeasing to yourself, then you will be for Jesus a pleasant place of shelter." To define a "true Chrisitan" is a risky business. But if I had to, my difinition would that that a ture Christian is anyone who is "for Jesus a pleansant place of shelter." There are hundreds of thousands who go to Christian churches every Sunday who are not the least bit willing to be displeasing to themselves, serenely or otherwise, and who are not, therefore, for Jesus a pleasant place of shelter. Conversely, there are millions of Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, atheists, and agnostics who are willing to bear that trial."

I think Dr. Peck does touch on a reasonable definition for "true Christian", and I find it disturbing from both sides. I mean that from one side, I no longer think it's such a great idea to be displeasing to myself. I mean that Christianity was the place where I developed the toxic self negativity which I am now learning to give up/grow out of. From the other side, if this is the definition of "true Christian", then it has seemed to me that a solid majority of those who call themselves christians certainly don't fulfill the meaning of the definition--neither the "serenely bear", nor the "being displeasing to yourself." Or maybe I guess I mean mostly the "serenely bear" part--"they" tend to be very very busily avoiding and escaping their dislike of themselves.

And in a lecture this week on Relapse Prevention,Dr. Alan Marlatt introduced me to the idea of drawing a distinction between "lapse" and "relapse", and he talked about how this distinction has helped addicts in recovery. This struck me as amazingly useful and sensible.

friday video

This via Shari

this made me laugh

I also found out that the cartoon I posted a couple days ago is from the same guy: Dave Walker.

The sect I grew up in--realization

I often tell people, when they are discussing elements of popular culture of which I lack knowledge, specifically popular music or movies, that I grew up in a box. The box was largely associated with a sect--to use their own language, an "indepedend fundamental Bible believing church". Not that we were ever educated in what these words might mean, except for the "Bible believing".

One thing that was often repeated at the sect was that it was important not to take an "ark" mentality. By this, it was meant that, unlike many of "those churches" (and by implication all those wrong, unsafe churches), we must not not think and act as if the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket (not that anyone in the sect would have so casually and profanely used the word "hell"), and the only safe thing to do is to "circle the wagons", "come inside the four walls of the church", and be safe, like Noah and co. did with the Ark, while the rest of the world drownded (I think "drownded" just works a lot better than "drowned".) Instead, we must "go outside the church" into "the marketplace of ideas" and "engage the culture!". We must not have a "hold the fort" mentality! The Bible says of the church "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it", and that means the church is on the attack, because, of course, gates are *defensive* hardware. And so forth.

So my realization this week is that in spite of all this ... ongoing talking along these lines, the sect was by and large doing exactly what it was saying we must not do. And so I grew up in a box, or an ark, if you will. Here's item one from the sect's statement of faith, pulled today from their web site. This is the item which perhaps strikes me as the strangest of the eight tenets in said statement, and perhaps also most represents the relative smallness of the ark/box.

We believe in the verbal plenary inspiration of the scriptures, and that the Bible is the absolute authority in all matters of doctrine and practice. We believe the King James Version is an accurate and trustworthy English translation of the original text

I can see now that in many (and toxic) ways, the main guy in charge at the sect thought of and acted towards the members, both children and adults, as if they were children, and they in turn acted toward him as if they were children, so that no one ever really made much progress toward ... maturity.

Jonathan Edwards' resolutions

Ran across these again recently. I last saw them some 20 years ago. I find them completely and utterly obnoxious. There are 70 of them. Here are numbers one through ten. I don't think I could stand to be long in the company of Mr. Edwards, if his resolutions are any indication of his personality. I'd get too exhausted (I mean, he's dead, of course, so that's not exactly going to happen.) What is your reaction? Is it generally more positive or more negative?

1. Resolved, that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God' s glory, and my own good, profit and pleasure, in the whole of my duration, without any consideration of the time, whether now, or never so many myriads of ages hence. Resolved to do whatever I think to be my duty and most for the good and advantage of mankind in general. Resolved to do this, whatever difficulties I meet with, how many soever, and how great soever.
2. Resolved, to be continually endeavoring to find out some new contrivance and invention to promote the aforementioned things.
3. Resolved, if ever I shall fall and grow dull, so as to neglect to keep any part of these Resolutions, to repent of all I can remember, when I come to myself again.
4. Resolved, never to do any manner of thing, whether in soul or body, less or more, but what tends to the glory of God; nor be, nor suffer it, if I can avoid it.
5. Resolved, never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.
6. Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.
7. Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.
8. Resolved, to act, in all respects, both speaking and doing, as if nobody had been so vile as I, and as if I had committed the same sins, or had the same infirmities or failings as others; and that I will let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself, and prove only an occasion of my confessing my own sins and misery to God. July 30.
9. Resolved, to think much on all occasions of my own dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death.
10. Resolved, when I feel pain, to think of the pains of martyrdom, and of hell.

Procrastination

this via Byron. god it sort of ... hit me between the eyes.

Doomsday Clock

In recent news, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists advanced their doomsday clock two minutes closer to midnight, so that it now stands at 11:55 PM. This is intriguing to me. It seems to me that ... more people in the west, and perhaps in the world, had a stronger sense of impending disaster from nuclear warfare back in the 60's, 70's, and 80's than do now in the 00's.

What do you think? Do you have a sense of impending danger/doom from either nuclear profileration/warfare, or from global warming/climate change?

My own sense is that though I do have a lot of fear, my fear is generally unjustifiable/irrational--it's not based on things which are actually dangerous or deadly, at least not at the same levels as the fear seems to indicate. This irrational fear tends to drown out the sense of reality based fears which I otherwise might have.

Recommended Event

So if you are planning to be in or around Seattle April 21 this year, May I suggest registering for The Neighborhood Mission Learning Day, an emergent church event: Reimagining Congregational Mission in Today's Culture with Brian McLaren, Karen Ward, Eugene Cho, and Randy Rowland, and MC'd by Dwight Friesen.
For more info or to register follow this link

happy!

happy happy joy joy. =).

Friday Video

Found at Ordinary Attempts: A video about Scott, the Nametag Guy. I guess Scott, who is 27, took to wearing a nametag all the time seven years ago. He wants to help people be friendlier. He estimates that over the last 7 years he has spoken to or with 80,000 people he would have otherwise never met.

32 hours

32 hours 'til I see my loved ones.


This painting by Joel Pelletier, entitled "American Fundamentalists, (Christ's entry into Washington in 2008)" caught my eye today. Click on it to see a bigger version. It's from here. Your reaction?

New nephew

I have a beautiful new nephew. Stokish! Sebastian Ardley Jones is his name. Congratualtions, Tom, Anite, and Eddie!

victim vs. perpetrator

I went to The Kindling's Muse live radio program yesterday with my friends Chris and Laurel. They had a panel discussion of various stories pulled from yesterday's New York Times chosen by Dick Staub, the host. It was fun. I really like Dick's insights and commentary, and I also really like Bill Hogg's insightful comments (there's a little redundancy for you, to make up for the recent oxymoron). One question Dick asked, which I'd like to ask here, was

1. Is peace in the Middle East possible?

Bill Hogg pointed out the magnificent irony of George Bush's repeated use, in his recent Iraq Policy (non) Update Speech, of the phrase "peace in the Middle East". I responded to this question with a question of my own during the "questions from the audience" segment. I shall ask that here as well:

2. Can question "Is peace in the Middle East possible" be rephrased as:

3. "Is it possible for me, for us, to choose to be the victim rather than the perpetrator?"?

Question three, I guess, feeds into the whole area of nonviolence. Is it possible for us to respond to the perpetrator with love? Is it possible to overcome violence with more violence? For me the answer to question three is generally "no". I am too often the perpetrator. I can see that as I mature, this is less often true--more often than before I can answer "yes" to question three. However, I still far too often must answer "no". And if the answer to question two is "yes", then I guess from my perspective the answer to question one is (by implication) also more often than not "no".

What are your answers?

Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Tomorrow (already today for most of the world), Monday the 15th of January, is Martin Luther King Jr. day in the United States. I think Dr. King was pretty kewl, and if being a christian means being a bit like him, overall, it makes being a christian a bit less unattractive.

Two quotes from Dr. King

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

"The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood."

thought for the day

Addiction sucks worse than
(The Crimson King + Sauron)^infinity.

A whole WEEK!?!

Wow--been a whole week since I posted. This week I learned about: sarcomeres, probability, Taylor series, actin, myosin, Na/K pumps. This week it snowed, and stuck, and all the side roads are still slick and icy in Seattle, and it's *very* cold. This week I *almost* completed a big secret project. Yay! This week I read part of Stephen King's Insomnia. This week I made 4 contacts about getting into the psych honors program at UW.

Can I also say that I strenuously disagree with Mark Driscoll's recent article on Bible Translation? Not that it really matters, since I mostly can't read the Bible anymore anyway. But "word-for-word translation" is very near (equal to, if you take the limit as n goes to infinity) a, well, (hehe), an oxymoron. Can't be done with any grace/beauty/joy ... most of all, can't be done with any trace of postmodernism/emergent churchishness. It's just a very bad idea all 'round. Translation isn't so much chemistry (in the post-enlightenment sense)--it's more alchemy, and this can't be done from an annoying modernistic point of view. Translation can't be done with pure science. It's got to involve a rather largish proportion of art, or it just sucks, like the mother of all vacuums. Furthermore, I think pastors should be barred from writing papers or speaching sermons on bible translation until they have become at least little "f" fluent in some living language besides their first language. And if it's Hebrew, it has to be more than just using the language to interact with texts. It has to include using the language to interact with people. BICBW.

Here's the Friday Video, Silent Star Wars, stolen from Siamang at eBay Atheist. If you've never been to see a silent movie in a theatre with live organ music, you should see if you can find a chance to sometime. It's fun.

Friday Videos

The New Democratic Congress started this week. Here's Colbert's take on their win.



And here is the rational response squad's blasphemy challenge, which has generated a bit of a stir recently.



To see some of the responses videos, see here.

Mandelbrot Set

This is extremely freaking kewl, and beautiful. Not that I begin to approach understanding the mathematics. The kewl thing is the mathematics is simple enough for me to have some remote clue what it means. Anyway, it's a fractal, and it never stops being complex no matter how far in you zoom. And if you have a good computer, you can zoom *way* in (like 60 billion times, if you start with a typical computer monitor, it's like zooming down to what you are seeing on a typical computer monitor is part of the original image blown up to 20 million kilometers wide). And if you click on the photo, or here, you can see a series of shot of such a zoom. Or click here for the actual wiki article, which has the same series, but with more explanation. This is featured on Wikipedia's featured pictures page, which has some other nice shots on it.

Here's the end of the zoom series at wiki--having zoomed in 60 billion times the original. Remember, it just keeps going.

Help stop the execution of Ronald Chambers

Click here to write a letter to the governor of the state of Texas to help stop the execution of Ronald Chambers, one of six individuals scheduled to be executed in the U.S. this month.

Does it make sense to execute a 50 year old man who has been in prison for 30 years for a crime he committed when he was 20 years old? The idea of this being a deterrent is ludicrous.
He had just become a father, and now he is a grandfather. Do we honestly so completely and totally reject any hope of redemption or reconciliation? This man could conceivably live for another 20 or 30 years, and in that time he could do and say things that could have profound positive impact in the lives of his family and in the lives of many others. Execution seems to me to be the antithesis of hope, and thus the antithesis of christianity.
Your thoughts?

The anti should campaign

What would it look like if everyone stopped using the words "should", "ought", "behoove", and related words which express the same thing? Megan and I undertook this experiment early in our marriage, and have both found it enormously helpful. For me, most of all, my tendency is to use these words on myself, and I call it "shoulding on myself". Since my self concept is so overwhelmingly negative anyway, I find that just cutting out these words actually helps me move in the direction of experiencing the accepting of myself. As my sponsor says "It is what it is", or "I am what I am". But other people regularly attempt to use these words on me as well. If I didn't have this little campaign going, I think I would miss it a lot of times, and just instantly internalize what they were saying. Instead, it has become my habit to instantly reject it. So for instance I was talking to my very lovely and lovable Nana this last week, and telling her how down I have been, and how I have such a depressive personality. She said, quite naturally,

Nana: "You need to work on that and get over it"

Benjamin: (in my head) "Aha, she said 'need to'. That's a 'should' word! Danger! Danger! Danger!."

Benjamin: (out loud). "Well, actually, Nana, I've kind of come to accept myself as being this way. I think God just made some people with melancholic personalities, and I'm okay with that. It actually feels relatively comfortable being me."

(did you catch that whole "in my head" versus "out loud" thing? Pretty kewl, huh? 10 years ago I was utterly incapable of such amazing sophistication (hehe). Here's to crawling and creeping toward maturity.)

My lovely Nana was rather accepting of this take on things, and just said something like "Oh. Ok."

Benjamin published at Porpoise Diving Life

The January '07 edition of the Porpoise Diving Life E-zine is out, and it contains an article by me! Yippee. You can read it here.

Grey areas

In case you can't read the labels, the left one says "Satan's Kingdom", and the right one says "God's Kingdom". I relate a vignette relating to this diagram on CatE, here. The questions are:

1. How far does Satan's Kingdom extend?
2. How far does God's Kingdom extend?
3. Are either of the first 2 questions relevant, and/or more important than the other question?
4. Does this diagram represent reality in any way? Why or why not?

american military death toll in iraq passes 3000

Replacements needed has been producing these posters every week for quite a while now. I think they speak very eloquently. The more significant number, perhaps, is the 22,000 american military wounded. Or ... how about this question: How is the death or injury of 25,000 americans in iraq related to the US$28 Billion in revenues and US$1.6 Billion in profits in 2006 of the biggest arms producer in our nation, Honeywell International, which is ranked 71 in the country by Fortune 500? Hmmmm... Do Bush and co. own any honeywell stock?

We've spent $400 billion to figure out what the French could have told us for free--you can't fix centuries old civil wars in 4 years, no matter *how* much money or military power you can bring to bear. period.

On a similar note: How would you like to have this guy's nightmares, or responsibility? This is Dan Murphy, CEO of Alliant Tech Systems, the biggest small arms ammunition manufacturer in the country. ATK had sales of US$3.2 Billion in '06. As producer of ~90% of the small arms ammunition for both the US military *and* the "sports enthusiast and law enforcement" markets, they produced the ammunition which killed around 27,000 individuals who died through the use of firearms in 2004. That's based on approximately 30,000 firearms related deaths in 2004 reported by the CDC. They also no doubt produced the ammunition which killed some significant percentage of the 57,000 dead iraqi military mentioned in the poster above, whom you will probably never hear talked about on mainstream american media. You can check out their annual report here (You'll need high speed connection--it's big)

about Saddam

The Vatican joined Human Rights Watch today in calling for clemency for Saddam, saying that executing him would simply be responding to crime with more crime. I suspect there's not really much chance this will have any effect, and that come jan 31 2007, saddam hussein will be dead.

As I understand it, average evangelicals believe he will experience "eternal conscious torment" in hell. George Macdonald would argue that he'll eventually repent and get out of hell. I haven't read Brian Mclaren's latest book, but it is my understanding that he would argue against the eternal consious torment position.

I wonder what the average Muslim belief is as to Saddam's experiences after death?

I honestly wonder how *anyone* can ascribe to the eternal consious suffering position and at the same time claim to experience communion and love for and with and from god.

thoughts?

Quote of the week

This from Byron's post Fearless Service III. For me, it captured perfectly and instantly what it feels like to be human

We are all dying, giving birth astride a grave.

Blog Tag

I've been tagged in a game of blog tag by Helen Middenhall of Love is the Most Excellent Way (although I know her from conversation at the edge, which is closed for a week for the holidays). The way the game works is if you get tagged, you have to post five things about yourself that people probably don't know. Here's my five.

1. I used to spend time playing the guitar and singing, and even wrote some songs quite a while ago.

2. I was the acting associate manager of a domino's pizza store for a little over a year back in the 90's, and we were held up at gun point and all bound with duct tape. Fortunately, no one got hurt. They never found the bad guys or the money.

3. I have a 4.0 grade point average over my most recent 60 credits (I can hardly believe it). I'm expanding my undergrad degree from bachelor of arts in psychology to bachelor of arts in psychology and international studies.

4. My favorite type of schoolwork is mathematics--I find it beautiful and orderly and it just works really well for me.

5. I've travelled to 25 countries in my (still relatively short) lifetime.

(I'm tagging Jim at Doable Evangelism, Jonathan at The Nautical File, Paul at People Against Fundamentalism, Banzai at The Banzai Chronicles, R at Dragons Fly and Monkey Tea, Megan at Bag End and Justin at Ramblin' Again)

Stop the execution of Saddam Hussein!

Human Rights Watch today called for Iraq to reverse it's decision to execute Saddam Hussien (scheduled to be implemented in less than a month). Rick Dicker, director of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch, was quoted as saying

Imposing the death penalty, indefensible in any case, is especially wrong after such unfair proceedings. That a judicial decision was first announced by Iraq’s national security advisor underlines the political interference that marred Saddam Hussein’s trial.

This seems to me to be a case where Christians could try to take steps to stop something which their founder also stopped at least once! Jesus words about the death penalty, if I remember correctly, run along the lines of the idea that we should only execute someone if we ourselves are free of guilt.

Moreover, would you want to be executed after a mockery of a trial like the one Mr. Hussein underwent?

Your thoughts?