why the "eat your brains" song appealed to me...a story of excommunication

So over the weekend I found and posted on this blog a video with the song by Jonathan Coulton: re: Your brains, which I found ... evocative.

What did it evoke? Well, it took me a little while to realize that. It evoked a memory for the way in which my lovely wife and I were ... excommunicated from Logos II. How did that happen, pray tell? Well it was like this ....

(no names have been changed to protect anyone)

... so I spent two years working for a huge international missions organization called Operation Mobilization as a volunteer on board their (lovely, although somewhat trashed, from a technical point of view) (actually I could digress here and point out that when we were in West African ports, Logos II was generally the most beautiful looking ship in the harbor of any given major port city in which we happened to be moored. However, in Italy, she was generally the ugliest and dingiest looking one) 5000 ton (now I know I've really gone ... native, in the sense of speaking English rather than American, because in looking back over this paragraph, that "z" in "Mobilization" is really annoying me, and very much seems to want to be changed to an "s". Ah well....)

Okay, I see I must begin again. Now where was I? Ah yes, aboard the 5000 ton motor vessel M.V. Logos II. She has an all volunteer crew of 200 from approximately 40 different nations, all committed Christians (well, almost all. sometimes one or two slipped through the screening process and ended up serving onboard as a non-believer, like, for instance the very personable and brilliant Martin, a plumber from Holland, who often couldn't be bothered to go to all the trouble of signing all the paperwork and getting all the permissions to get the smoke alarms turned off in a cabin where he needed to do hot work (welding, for instance). So instead, he would simply carry around a plastic bag and two rubber bands, and nonchalantly cover the smoke detector in the cabin with them. Then after he was done with his hot work, he would nonchalantly have a smoke in the same cabin. My god, the "leadership", both technical and personnel, would have *freaked*. This makes me smile enormously just thinking about it (actually, I have another funny story about Martin I could tell you sometime)).

Alas, I must again begin again. Where was I? Ah yes. These volunteers have generally committed to serve onboard for two years and have raised the monthly support from friends, family, and church to help offset the costs of Logos II's operation during that two years.

Logos II is a very ... rule oriented community. That is, there are just lots and lots of rules about community life. One rule, for instance, which I and my lovely wife Megan (along with our delightful friends Matt and Laurel) found almost impossible to keep was the curfew. This rule required that everyone be back on board by 11PM (unless you had a signed curfew extension from your department head, in which case you could be back as late as, but no later than, 12:30), and in the cabins with lights out by 12:30. This was of course unless you were one of the "special" people, the "leaders", who could (but generally didn't) stay up as late as they wanted. There were various ... punishments assigned for breaking this rule, along with a rather wiggly system of warnings, demerits, etc. (or some such). A couple of the punishments (they kept changing, in an attempt, I suppose, to more or less rigorously see the rule kept) during the time we were on board, for instance, included spending time cleaning the bilges, doing an extra shift of work in some department other than one's own (for instance, in the pantry or galley, in my case), or being "grounded" to the ship for a week (this last was a stupid-ass idea in the extreme, as one of the psychological difficulties of living on board a ship is a waxing and waning sense that one is ... kind of trapped inside or on board.)

Another rule that was a real biggie was called "SP", which stood for, at various times, either "Social Policy" or "Social Permission" (or, perhaps, "Stupid-Ass Pain"). The way it worked was this: People who were not romantically connected when they came onboard made a promise to not begin a new romantic relationship during their first year on board. And social policy also required that a romantic couple not be engaged to be married during their first *two* years on board (some people serve *longer* than two years). Furthermore, if after having been on board for one year, you wanted to begin a romantic relationship with someone else on the ship (who would also have to have been on board for at least one year), then permissions were required. Permissions were required from onboard leadership, specifically from the personnel director, as well as from the home offices of Operation Mobilisation in the countries of both potential partners, as well as, depending on the culture of the potential parties of the potential relationship, of their immediate families and/or their home churches. No, I'm not joking. All this was involved. And of course all of it was to some degree or other warranted. That is to say that during 30 years of "ships ministry", this organization has learned a little bit about what works and what doesn't. They say relationship time is multiplied on Logos II, so that 2 years onboard is equivalent to 5 years in the so called "real world". This is because you are living and working in close proximity to a relatively small group of people who are all there with relatively similar religious beliefs, and relatively similar goals. And the average *age* of these people is quite young--I'm guessing ... 21/22? So they are ... for lack of a better term, generally horny, generally single, generally available, generally outgoing ... etc. etc. All the ingredients are very much in place for the beginning of lots of romantic relationships. And yet this is complicated by the fact that they are from very different backgrounds, very different cultures, very different languages. So any marriages that result are going to have all the stressors of .... "normal" marriages (whatever that means) plus, plus, plus. So it seems to me that it is entirely reasonable to take precautions.

On the other hand, the introduction of such a complex set of rules very much sets a community up for an enormous ... lack of reality--that is, a huge dichotomy between "what the rules say we are like and want to be like" and "what actually happens". So for instance while I was onboard, at least one couple (he from Sudan, she from Mexico) were caught having sex and then, in a sense, publicly shamed, after which *she* was sent "home" (that is, back to Mexico where she came from), while *he* got to stay onboard. Some claimed this indicated sexism, others ... a sort of racism--that she was blamed and shamed more somehow, both because she was a woman, and because there were *so* many latinoamericans onboard, and only 2 persons from sudan, and it was important to maintain our racial diversity quota. I think that while such claims didn't really get at the whole picture of the reality of the situation, they certainly touched on some portion of that reality. Rumors abounded, as well, of people (confidentially, one hopes, although I know of at least one case on board where such confidentiality was horribly violated) going to the ship's doctor to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancies.

I hope this isn't getting way too wordy already.

So anyway, I met lovely Megan, journalist, photographer midwife, nurse, australian. I met her in Argentina, when she joined Logos II in January '99. And I found out later she fell more or less in love with me, and knew it, during our 5 ports in brazil, or perhaps even earlier, in Uruguay. It took me a lot longer to figure out that I reciprocated. I mean I think I was reciprocating quite a while before I *realized* that I was. It took me until Ghana, in West Africa. Yes, the passage of time starts to be measured in ports when one is onboard--each port visit lasting approximately 1 to 3 weeks. Neither of us had been on board a year yet, and we both (I think) obeyed the spirit, if not the letter, of SP admirably well. We never talked about our relationship, or made romantic overtures (okay, well, not exactly never, but at least never overtly and consciously) etc. until after the one year date had passed.

Then (and this is another separate long story), we jumped the hoops, got the permissions, talked about it, and ended up with "Social Permission". The way it worked was this. When a couple got Social Permission, a notice got posted on the bulletin board in the kiosk, which was kind of the living room/central interior passage point of the ship. The notice simply announced that "Benjamin Ady and Megan Jones have received social permission". (Well, actually, ours was a bit more artsy and literary than that, but that's part of the separate long story). At that time there were, I think, .... perhaps 7 other SP couples on board. What this meant was that we were allowed to hang out alone together, allowed to be physically affectionate, and so forth, and that the rest of the ship's company could relax if they saw us doing that and not feel guilty for not turning us in (yes, this *was* part of the psyche of ship life). because we officially had social permission (Megan and I were apparently a bit *more* physically affectionate than some people were comfortable with. I know this because not too long after we got SP, a meeting was called for all the SP couples in which we were informed of a change in the social permission which meant that SP couples were no longer allowed to sit or lie in such a way that their head was resting on their partners lap. It wasn't acknowledged as such, but this was certainly directed at us, as none of the other SP couples had been spotted reclining anywhere in such a position. But I digress.)

I see that this has gotten rather lengthy. I'm almost up to the beginning of the part where we get excommunicated. More tomorrow... =)

One more video for Sunday

Sorry, but this is just too fucking kewl, both the music, Jonathan Coulton's Mandelbrot Set, and the video, a zoom on a mandelbrot set. It's infinitely complex, which means no matter how far in you zoom, there will still be complexity. It's a computer generated zoom using a relatively simple set of equations, from what I understand. Love the way Jonathan brings rorschach into it. Lyrics follow (technically, I'm supposed to be studying for my abnormal pscyh exam tomorrow, and instead here I am watching youtube videos. the abnormal psych is just *so* depressing. Another great reason not to go for the ph.d. in psych. At the master's level, I can (maybe!), hope to only be dealing with people who haven't got it *that* bad. This is actually an illusion, since the older and wiser (ha!) I get, the more I tend to suspect that we *all* more or less have it that bad. But I digress)




Pathological monsters! cried the terrified mathematician
Every one of them is a splinter in my eye
I hate the Peano Space and the Koch Curve
I fear the Cantor Ternary Set
And the Sierpinski Gasket makes me want to cry
And a million miles away a butterfly flapped its wings
On a cold November day a man named Benoit Mandelbrot was born

His disdain for pure mathematics and his unique geometrical insights
Left him well equipped to face those demons down
He saw that infinite complexity could be described by simple rules
He used his giant brain to turn the game around
And he looked below the storm and saw a vision in his head
A bulbous pointy form
He picked his pencil up and he wrote his secret down

Take a point called Z in the complex plane
Let Z1 be Z squared plus C
And Z2 is Z1 squared plus C
And Z3 is Z2 squared plus C and so on
If the series of Z’s should always stay
Close to Z and never trend away
That point is in the Mandelbrot Set

Mandelbrot Set you’re a Rorschach Test on fire
You’re a day-glo pterodactyl
You’re a heart-shaped box of springs and wire
You’re one badass fucking fractal
And you’re just in time to save the day
Sweeping all our fears away
You can change the world in a tiny way

Mandelbrot’s in heaven, at least he will be when he’s dead
Right now he’s still alive and teaching math at Yale
He gave us order out of chaos, he gave us hope where there was none
And his geometry succeeds where others fail
If you ever lose your way, a butterfly will flap its wings
From a million miles away, a little miracle will come to take you home

Just take a point called Z in the complex plane
Let Z1 be Z squared plus C
And Z2 is Z1 squared plus C
And Z3 is Z2 squared plus C and so on
If the series of Z’s should always stay
Close to Z and never trend away
That point is in the Mandelbrot Set
Mandelbrot Set you’re a Rorschach Test on fire
You’re a day-glo pterodactyl
You’re a heart-shaped box of springs and wire
You’re one badass fucking fractal
And you’re just in time to save the day
Sweeping all our fears away
You can change the world in a tiny way
And you’re just in time to save the day
Sweeping all our fears away
You can change the world in a tiny way
Go on change the world in a tiny way
Come on change the world in a tiny way

2 Sunday Videos

At great risk of being amazingly (by blogosphere standards) behind the times, I simply must post the video by Jen: Women in christianity. It speaks for itself, and Jen rocks, and I green with envy that she gets to start at MHGS next year.



I ran across this last week, HT to blogger. I just really like it, and did so almost instantly. He seems to be getting at something deeply true.

re: your brains, by Jonathan Coulton,

a truly brutal force

Results from the Pentagon's latest assessment of the mental health of U.S. combat forces in Iraq have hit the news in the last 24 hours. These statistics are generalizable to the entire 155,000 strong U.S. combat troop presence in Iraq. For instance, on these charts, if you see 10%, that means approximatley 15,500 U.S. troops in iraq believe or have done that category.


Can someone, one of the pro bush, pro war people, perhaps, Please explain to me how this leaves the iraqi populace better off than under saddam?

somalia too?

So have you been aware of the intense fighting in Mogadishu this last week, and this last month, with over a thousand killed in April?
Did you know that before a U.S. backed invasion in December 06 (4 months ago!), Somalia was the closest it had been to some sort of security since 1995?

Here's one article. and here's a quote:

On 6 June 2006, the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) after a two month long battle against the US-backed ARPCT, the UIC took control of Mogadishu, the Somali capital. Mogadishu's air and seaports were re-opened for the first time since 1995. The UIC expanded its control throughout Somalia and restored peace and security in areas under their control. For the first time since the fall of Siad Barre and the ugly Black Hawk incident in 1993, the people of Somalia were optimistic about Somalia’s future. But the celebrations would be dampened; their dreams and aspirations would be dashed by Washington’s Islam phobic “new strategy for Somalia”, Meles Zenawi’s, Abdulahi Yusuf’s and Ali Mohammed Ghedi’s illicit agendas for Somalia.

to learn more, just search "somalia" on news.google.com

Who is suffering over the Iraq War--a disconnect

This morning (April 24), Laura Bush told Anne Curry on the Today Show "No one suffers more than the president and I [over the iraq war]"

I honestly feel sorry for her. To have her experience of disconnect so ... publicly exposed must surely, eventually, be rather painful.

Recreating the Old Testament

Another 23 people were killed execution style in Iraq Sunday afternoon.

All Headline News reports:

Iraq was rocked by fresh violence Sunday when gunmen took 23 Kurds from a bus in northern Iraq and shot them execution-style just hours after two suicide car bombers set off explosives near a police station in Baghdad killing 13 people and wounding 82, authorities said.

According to police, the shootings near the northern Iraqi town of Mosul happened after a group of gunmen stopped a bus filled with Christians and members of a tiny Kurdish religious sect. The gunmen then separated the Kurds from the other passengers and took them away to be shot.

The 23 dead were mostly Yazidis, members of a primarily Kurdish sect that worships an angel figure considered to be the devil by some Muslims and Christians, the Associated Press reports. Police said the executions appeared to be in response to the stoning death of a Yazidi woman who had recently converted to Islam.

Now where I have read about a stoning death before ...

Do you care--does it matter to you in slightest, as you buy your coffee and go off to work or school on Monday morning, that 36 people were killed and 82 injured yesterday in a country which the U.S. and Britain illegally invaded and illegally continue to occupy?

Nah--surely not. Never mind. Sorry to be a pain in the arse. Go on now. Don't miss the baseball game this afternoon, whatever you do.

another 22 violent deaths in iraq this weekend

It seems reasonable to me to remember that since Iraq is a nation of 27 million, and the U.S. is a nation of 300 million, as a percentage of population iraq's losses are 10 times bigger than a loss of the same number in the U.S.

How is it that if 22 people had been killed in 4 violent attacks in the U.S. this weekend, it would have been at the top of both national and international headlines, but it did approach the tops of headlines when it happened in iraq?

How is it that 300 million americans are going to sleep in this morning, or get dressed up and go off to church, or do some outdoors acitivity, or go to work, or what have you, and mostly not know or care that in a nation across the world which we have invaded and occupied the violence is completely out of control?

death: in iraq, in Virginia, and way out of focus?--a british journalist in Kuwait

Wanted to draw your attention to this intriguing article written by British journalist Polly Toynbee today in the Kuwait Times, entitled "We need to focus on last week's deaths in iraq"

A couple quotes:

It was a good week for death. In Iraq, 200 people were blown to bits in what witnesses called "a swimming pool of blood" with "pieces of flesh all over the place". Remember that the dead are only part of the story: add to each of the war's hundreds of thousands of civilian corpses all those burned and crippled survivors, far beyond Iraqi medical facilities' ability to cope, breadwinners and babies lost. Few families are untouched by the sheer scale of slaughter. But it is hard for news media to find new ways to refresh repeat tales of daily carnage. The pictures and the thoughts tell the same dismal story day after day, raising the same terrible questions: what have we, the British, done, what have we unleashed, how can it end?

...

these 32 dead students follow in a cortege of identical tragedies: as soon as we knew this was just another deranged loner, what more was there to think? It happened in Dunblane, Germany, South Korea, Japan, Tasmania and elsewhere, routine school misfit revenges. The collective insanity of Americans about guns is an oft-reprised wonderment to Europeans. But there is nothing new about the National Rifle Association: even Al Gore in his Inconvenient Truth had to prove he was a regular guy by talking affectionately about his guns. The journalist Lionel Shriver made the best point in the London Guardian this week: why encourage copycats by giving these narcissistic fantasists the publicity they kill for? This boy's glory video means his name liveth for evermore - and a good deal longer than the roll call of fallen US soldiers.

...

Attitudes to death and mourning grow odder the rarer dying young becomes. There is less sense of proportion about the risks of dying, or about the inevitability of death itself, even when people die in old age. The temptation is to regard every death as avoidable, deny any accident is ever accidental, always find someone to blame, and hunt down that doctor in charge.

...

People no longer know how to approach death and its rituals. Abandoning religion doesn't necessarily mean resorting to reason. With no hereafter, body parts are gaining morbid significance in a strange new fetishism. The story of secret biopsies taken from dead workers at the UK nuclear plant at Sellafield in the 70s and 80s is interesting and potentially sinister for those who live and work there, since the reports were never published. But defying all sense, the focus of the story for relatives and the media has been on the "shocking" discovery that removal of mostly small slices and some whole organs from corpses means that loved ones buried less than whole bodies.

Read the whole article

basketballs and kitchen implements

This reminded me of the amazingly lovely rythym of the main engines on LOGOS II (320 HP per cylinder, max speed 300 RPM). I remember a friend of mine from Republica Dominicana dancing around the engine room on watch to that rythym.

racism violence fear and shame

Wikipedia define racism thusly:

Racism is a belief or ideology that all members of each race possess
characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially to distinguish it
either superior or inferior to another race or races. It is also the prejudice
directed against someone of a differet race based on such a belief.

So in the huge media frenzy over the violent deaths of 33 people in Virginia on Monday, I just have one question: Does it not prove we are racist?

What do I mean? Well, Tuesday, another 58 people were killed or found dead in Iraq, in violence which sans doute is related to the ongoing U.S. occupation and U.S. instigated four year old war.

So does the average American consider the violent deaths of Iraqi people less important, less cause for, as the Seattle Post Intelligencer put it today "Rage and Grief" than the violent deaths of American people? It seems fairly obvious to me that they do. Based on proportion of national population, Iraq's loss on Tuesday is 1700% bigger than America's loss on Monday.

In fact, I bet the average American is more disturbed emotionally, yesterday and today, about the violent death of 33 VT students than they are or ever have been about the deaths of 800,000 people in Iraq under U.S. invasion and occupation.

So does that make us racist?

Roy Barnsness pointed out the other night that we all, each and every one of us, have fear and shame, and that we must, in one way or another, live with the horror of the fact that we are constantly in both roles: victim, and perpetrator. How can we end the passive and active violence which we experience and perpetrate, perpetrate and experience? Can we choose to examine our fear and shame and ... de escalate the level this violence?

havoc and coulds/shoulds

One of my favorite people, whom shall rename nameless since I don't have their permission to quote, recently said to me in an email:

Perhaps you are right that we have the potential to wreak havoc on the rest of the world--but we haven't. Not even in nations we could/should have.

This intrigued me. So I tracked down this partial list of U.S. military interventions from 1890 to 2007.

Total countries since 1990?: 20! The list includes: Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Haiti, Liberia, Columbia, Philippines Afghanistan, Macedonia, Yugoslavia, Zaire (Congo), Bosnia, Albania, Sudan, Somalia, Kuwait, the U.S., Angola, and Saudi Arabia.

Push it back to 1980 and you can throw in Panama, Libya, Iran, Bolivia, Honduras, Grenada, Lebanon, Nicaragua, and El Salvador.

Quick--How many of these countries can you even place on their correct continent? Name their language?

Maybe we can amend the constitution so that A. To be elected president, you have to fluent in at least 3 languages, as determined by an objective panel of Ph.D.'s in those languages. and B. Before a president can authorize bombing any country or people group, he has to be at least ... conversant in their primary language, again as determined by an objective group of Ph.D.'s in that language.

Did you/do you have an idea about/knowledge of most of these "military interventions"? 50% of them? 20% of them? What is your reaction to this list? I was really surprised. I, (bleeding heart liberal antiwar peace loving freakazoid hippie that I am) had no idea about a lot of these.

By the way, what exactly would constitute a story where we "could/should have wreaked havoc on a nation?", IYNSHO?

(Further by the way, for a story where we *definitely did* wreak havoc when we could but shouldn't have, just google "secret war in Laos", and spend 20 minutes reading about this still "least developed country"

The list of countries above does *not* include:

• mobilizations of the National Guard
• offshore shows of naval strength
• reinforcements of embassy personnel
• the use of non-Defense Department personnel (such as the Drug Enforcement Administration)
• military exercises
• non-combat mobilizations (such as replacing postal strikers)
• the permanent stationing of armed forces
• covert actions where the U.S. did not play a command and control role
• the use of small hostage rescue units
• most uses of proxy troops
• U.S. piloting of foreign warplanes
• foreign or domestic disaster assistance
• military training and advisory programs not involving direct combat
• civic action programs
• and many other military activities.

Dan on reality

HT to Byron for this. Stolen from Dan. Read the whole post here on his blog

There was a time when I thought [...] that we could truly contribute and leave a mark on the world. But [...] I have only found that the world has marked me. Instead of bringing wholeness to others, I have found that the brokenness of others has become a part of me. Instead of bringing help, I have received helplessness. Instead of bringing comfort, I have received sorrow. Instead of being a light and a guide, I have found myself plunged into darkness. Instead of being an agent of salvation, I have found myself a member of the damned.

This is the hopelessness that I want my Christian brothers and sisters to be confronted with. Indeed, it is only after we have been confronted with the reality of this hopelessness that we can begin to understand the true nature of Christian hope. This hope speaks of a peasant who died abandoned and hopeless, marked by the world's whips, and thorns, and nails. And this hope continues to lead me into places where the world will, inevitably, mark me.
Dan (On Jounreying with those in Exile): always provocative, insightful, well-read and earnest. Check it out.

too busy for beauty?

Saw this fascinating article today. What would happen if one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made were to stand and play during Friday morning rush hour at a busy washington d.c. metro station? What if he put his violin case out for tips, and threw in a few dollars to start with as seed money? Would people stop and listen? Would he make any money? As it turns out, during 45 minutes of solo performance, only 7 of the 1077 people who passed by even stopped for a moment, and 27 gave money, many of them without pausing, for a total of $32 and some change.

I'm *so* one of the 1070 most of the time. Note to self: Must work on this.

HT to El Nellis

Friday video

For Megsie

the loneliness of technology?

Dick Staub and a panel of bloggers recently discussed the following fascinating question on their live radio show: Can The Inklings face-to-face pub experience be replaced with online interaction?

Various intriguing aspects related to this question arose. One that caught my attention was this: Does online interaction increase our (western, 1st world) isolation from community, from *real* others? Or does it decrease that aloneness?

Apparently there is an already large and growing body of research (for instance, check out this search on google scholar) on what is termed "computer mediated community" or CMC. Wikipedia has an interesting overview as well

"Michael Keren, who has written Blogosphere: The New Political Arena, suggests individuals who bare their souls in blogs are isolated and lonely, living in a virtual reality instead of forming real relationships or helping to change the world." (from this provocative article).

I remember Mother Teresa talking about how while the third world has a poverty of basic stuff like food/water, the 1st world has a poverty of community. In blogging about how to MTWABP, are we somehow exacerbating our separation from each other, and our separation from those in least developed countries (for whom internet access is fairly far down the list of "things we don't have which we'd like to get")?

Kat and Jim's wedding! Hooray!!

For those who don't know, my awesome sister Kat and her totally kewl husband Jim got married last Saturday, April 1. HT to Megan who took most of these photos.

beauty pageants

Do you think beauty pageants propogate evil cultural norms?

quote for the day

Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, carefree mistrust are signs of health; everything unconditional belongs in pathology.

--Friedrich Nietzsche

Friday Video

Somehow, these just don't get old for me.

What's up with that whole "spilling seed" thing anyway?

What are ...

The Catholic League has called the (now cancelled) display of a 6 foot tall, naked Jesus made entirely of chocolate an "attack on Christian sensibilities"

What exactly *are* "Christian sensibilities"? Did Jesus have them?

chocolate Jesus?

This past Monday a gallery in New York City (where else?) cancelled the exhibition of a 6 foot tall, anatomically correct, naked sculpture of Jesus make entirely of chocolate entitled "My sweet lord". They cancelled it due to outcry/protest/pressure from ... people who thought it outrageous, including Cardinal Egan of New York, who called the display "sickening" and "scandalous" The creative director of the gallery resigned over the cancellation, and apparently offers are "pouring in" to host the exhibition elsewhere. I think it would probably have generated a lot less foofoorah in Seattle.

Do you agree with Cardinal Egan? why or why not? What is your reaction? Do you think there would be more or less foofoorah over such a work of art in other western nations?

My sister's getting married!

Generally speaking I hate weddings. In fact, the only weddings I've attended and not hated have been my own and a couple weddings performed by Dave Sellers.

Why do I hate them? I guess I'm just shocking awful at compartmentalizing, at least in one particular way. If something amazingly good and beautiful and delightful is happening, I tend to see it in the light of it's future death. Yes, all things die, and entropy grinds on, and I find it hardest to forget this when most other people find it easiest. I'm wierd that way--it's part of my makeup, somehow.

So I'm supposed to say something at my sis's reception today, and I have no idea what. ... Certainly not the above. It will come to me.

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