I have way too many great things running around in my head right now...I just got back from the Jesus For President tour in Raleigh, and as I fully expected, it was awesome! There were about 600-700 people there, and the amazing thing to me was that all of them were somewhat like-minded with me, a conclusion reached simply because they were all there at such a strange event. (At least, I think most might call it strange...or at least, very different.) Anyway, tragedy above tragedies, I don't know any of those people! And it's not like you just go up to people and say, "I need a connection with a like-minded person...would you be friends with me?" ...Just doesn't work that way. But I did meet a man involved with the Triangle Emergent cohort who is going to help me find out if there are people who want to start one in Greenville. And I found out about a magazine called Conspire that the Simple Way is creating.
I hate the feeling of being alone in a crowd.
I've concluded that when I am more of a fully-formed person, have further solidified my beliefs and views, I'm going to be incredibly odd. I'm already becoming rather odd...and a lot just over the summer. Look out ECU, I'm coming back different! (Wait, maybe that should be "Rejoice ECU! Rebecca's coming back different!"...there are things about who I was last year I am hoping will be improved now.)
I think I want to go to a Mennonite church...they really have it straight on reconciliation not just with God but with the world, and on peace and social justice, and being against war and the death penalty. (Get this - it's from a poster I got tonight - : Jesus was once asked for his support of the death penalty. His reply: let one who is without sin cast the first stone.)
And I want to copy the Free Hugs campaign at busy-lunch-time in Wright Plaza. Anyone wanna help? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4
I think I might be really weird...
And I think I might be really wound up, and really tired at the same time.
And, and I think I like writing blog posts like this! :D
I think I should go to bed now...
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
I like reading blogs better than writing one...
yeah, that's what I've figured out. I've recently been spending more time on my laptop because I've been reading blogs, but I definitely haven't been doing a good job posting on mine. :-l In particular, I've been reading the leader of my church, Derek's (www.desertfather.com), and Brian McLaren's (www.brainmclaren.net), in addition to checking up on the Jesus For President tour (www.jesusforpresident.org/blog) and Sojourners (www.sojo.net).
I'm not quite sure what to publish in a post on my blog right now because I have a lot running around in my head. I could chronicle my daily life this summer and all my babysitting experiences, but that would be boring to read for most people...or I could write about my rather difficult, but somewhat enjoyable weekend up in Pennsylvania for my great-grandfather's funeral...or I could try to summarize all that I've been learning and how I've been growing and changing this summer, but that would take forever, plus, I would never be satisfied with what I could write about it. I can never distill those kinds of things to writing...there's too much mystery...things I'm still wondering about. And I know that I should be able to articulate my basic, foundational beliefs (and I can), but I'm not sure that it's a good thing to be able to write down or express with words everything you hold dear and are passionate about, because most of that passion just can't be expressed with mere words, and it gets cheapened when you try, or at least when I do. So I'll probably just finish this post with one of my current favorite quotes...it's from G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy, but I read it in Brian McLaren's book A Generous Orthodoxy when he quotes it in the chapter "Why I am Mystical/Poetic":
Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad, but chess players do...
Poetry is sane because it floats easily on an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion...
The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits...
The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who had lost everything except his reason...
Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have the mystery, you have health; when you destroy the mystery you create morbidity.
And by Gregory of Nyssa:
Only wonder understands,
Concepts create idols.
I'm not quite sure what to publish in a post on my blog right now because I have a lot running around in my head. I could chronicle my daily life this summer and all my babysitting experiences, but that would be boring to read for most people...or I could write about my rather difficult, but somewhat enjoyable weekend up in Pennsylvania for my great-grandfather's funeral...or I could try to summarize all that I've been learning and how I've been growing and changing this summer, but that would take forever, plus, I would never be satisfied with what I could write about it. I can never distill those kinds of things to writing...there's too much mystery...things I'm still wondering about. And I know that I should be able to articulate my basic, foundational beliefs (and I can), but I'm not sure that it's a good thing to be able to write down or express with words everything you hold dear and are passionate about, because most of that passion just can't be expressed with mere words, and it gets cheapened when you try, or at least when I do. So I'll probably just finish this post with one of my current favorite quotes...it's from G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy, but I read it in Brian McLaren's book A Generous Orthodoxy when he quotes it in the chapter "Why I am Mystical/Poetic":
Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad, but chess players do...
Poetry is sane because it floats easily on an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion...
The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits...
The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who had lost everything except his reason...
Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have the mystery, you have health; when you destroy the mystery you create morbidity.
And by Gregory of Nyssa:
Only wonder understands,
Concepts create idols.
Friday, June 20, 2008
babysitting, baking and other stuff
…I’m just gonna say it: I’m tired. I think it’s because I’ve been pretty busy the past couple of days, and I haven’t been doing a good job getting enough sleep. I got about 6 hours (not enough for me) on Tuesday night, took a two-hour nap on Wednesday afternoon because I wasn’t fit for anything else by two o’clock in the afternoon, but then – of course – proceeded to have trouble falling asleep on Wednesday night! Then I had to get up early yesterday morning to go babysit, babysat until 2:30, and then took 2 ½ hours of ballet classes last evening. So, even though I got about 8 hours last night, I’m still catching up.
I’ve been babysitting my four-year-old cousin for the past two days from 8:30 until 2:30, and it’s been going really well. It’s nice for me that he’s introverted, because he pretty much plays by himself. So considering that I’ve been tired these past few days, I basically got to read while he played. Now, don’t get me wrong, I did play with him some, but I didn’t have to be at his beck and call all day. :) Now, starting next week, things will be much different because my nearly-six-year-old cousin will be there to for me to take care of, so I will have to juggle the dynamics of two brothers playing together. I better make sure that I’m well-rested by Monday afternoon, because I think it’ll be pretty much non-stop with the two of them together.
As the second topic of this post’s title states, I’ve been doing a good bit of baking recently as well. Yesterday evening, I made poppy seed muffins (or more like cupcakes) to go with the rest of some lemon cream cheese frosting we made for my dad’s birthday cake. (I made one recipe, my mom looked at it and said, “This won’t be enough for a layered cake,” made another half-recipe more, then it was too much! Hehe. :) Today when I got home from babysitting, the urge to bake seized me again, so I settled on trying to make some scones for an afternoon tea for me and my dad (we’re the only ones home until late tonight). So I found a recipe for oatmeal raisin scones in The Joy of Cooking – wonderful book! – but of course, I changed the recipe a bit. :) Why use all white flour when you can use some whole wheat flour? And why use only raisins when you have dried cherries and apricots too? So I whipped those up, along with some mock Devonshire cream – cream cheese, sour cream, and confectioner’s sugar…mmm :) – and cranberry-apple iced tea, in under an hour, and my dad and I had a nice snack. I have to admit that I am proud of myself for being able to make everything quite efficiently, and I’m also very happy with how the scones turned out. I can’t claim much credit for that though, because when the recipe contains more than a stick of butter and you follow it closely, how could you go wrong? :)
In other news, I was trying to accept my financial aid this evening, but for some odd reason, my scholarship is not showing up as a financial aid award this year like it did last year, and my university is offering me loans to cover my expenses like I don’t have a scholarship! Aaaaaaaaah!! I’m a little aggravated that I won’t be able to figure out what’s going on for three more days, considering that it is already past close-of-business for the week. Another annoying thing is the fact that my uni’s website is so badly organized and infrequently updated that I can’t figure out exactly how much my tuition and room for this year will cost me and my parents. I can figure out how much they cost last year, but that’s not as helpful as it could be, now is it? Everyone knows that tuition and room always increase… :P
So, I guess that’s pretty much it…I get to have special time with my dad tonight :) because my mom and sister are on their way back from visiting a university that my sister is considering for grad school, and my little brother is on a Boy Scout beach camping trip this weekend. So we are having appetizers for dinner, and watching the rest of Two Towers that we couldn’t watch last night. Really, we only started it last night…I think we watched maybe 45 minutes, so we still have about 3 hours to go! The Lord of the Rings movies are some of my favorites, but since my mom doesn’t like them and my brother is still too young for them, I don’t get to watch them very often. (Plus, they are so long!) So I am planning to enjoy my evening immensely and try to catch up on sleep. :)
May the grace of our Lord be with you all!
I’ve been babysitting my four-year-old cousin for the past two days from 8:30 until 2:30, and it’s been going really well. It’s nice for me that he’s introverted, because he pretty much plays by himself. So considering that I’ve been tired these past few days, I basically got to read while he played. Now, don’t get me wrong, I did play with him some, but I didn’t have to be at his beck and call all day. :) Now, starting next week, things will be much different because my nearly-six-year-old cousin will be there to for me to take care of, so I will have to juggle the dynamics of two brothers playing together. I better make sure that I’m well-rested by Monday afternoon, because I think it’ll be pretty much non-stop with the two of them together.
As the second topic of this post’s title states, I’ve been doing a good bit of baking recently as well. Yesterday evening, I made poppy seed muffins (or more like cupcakes) to go with the rest of some lemon cream cheese frosting we made for my dad’s birthday cake. (I made one recipe, my mom looked at it and said, “This won’t be enough for a layered cake,” made another half-recipe more, then it was too much! Hehe. :) Today when I got home from babysitting, the urge to bake seized me again, so I settled on trying to make some scones for an afternoon tea for me and my dad (we’re the only ones home until late tonight). So I found a recipe for oatmeal raisin scones in The Joy of Cooking – wonderful book! – but of course, I changed the recipe a bit. :) Why use all white flour when you can use some whole wheat flour? And why use only raisins when you have dried cherries and apricots too? So I whipped those up, along with some mock Devonshire cream – cream cheese, sour cream, and confectioner’s sugar…mmm :) – and cranberry-apple iced tea, in under an hour, and my dad and I had a nice snack. I have to admit that I am proud of myself for being able to make everything quite efficiently, and I’m also very happy with how the scones turned out. I can’t claim much credit for that though, because when the recipe contains more than a stick of butter and you follow it closely, how could you go wrong? :)
In other news, I was trying to accept my financial aid this evening, but for some odd reason, my scholarship is not showing up as a financial aid award this year like it did last year, and my university is offering me loans to cover my expenses like I don’t have a scholarship! Aaaaaaaaah!! I’m a little aggravated that I won’t be able to figure out what’s going on for three more days, considering that it is already past close-of-business for the week. Another annoying thing is the fact that my uni’s website is so badly organized and infrequently updated that I can’t figure out exactly how much my tuition and room for this year will cost me and my parents. I can figure out how much they cost last year, but that’s not as helpful as it could be, now is it? Everyone knows that tuition and room always increase… :P
So, I guess that’s pretty much it…I get to have special time with my dad tonight :) because my mom and sister are on their way back from visiting a university that my sister is considering for grad school, and my little brother is on a Boy Scout beach camping trip this weekend. So we are having appetizers for dinner, and watching the rest of Two Towers that we couldn’t watch last night. Really, we only started it last night…I think we watched maybe 45 minutes, so we still have about 3 hours to go! The Lord of the Rings movies are some of my favorites, but since my mom doesn’t like them and my brother is still too young for them, I don’t get to watch them very often. (Plus, they are so long!) So I am planning to enjoy my evening immensely and try to catch up on sleep. :)
May the grace of our Lord be with you all!
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
blogging again...
...and hoping to become more consistent. :)
I'm having quite a nice day today. I had a car to myself, so I got to go to ballet and do some shopping. I thought that the ballet class started at 9:30, so I arrived at the studio at 9:15, but discovered that the class times for this week had been shifted to 10:30. So, I left and made a bank deposit, bought a headband for my short hair :) , and also bought a book called DragonLight that is the fifth and last book in a fantasy/allegorical series called the DragonKeeper Chronicles. I've been so busy that I've only read the first 3 pages, but I'm really looking forward to sitting down later this evening to read it. I'm supposed to go with my mom and sister to my aunt's house to visit with my grandmother tonight, but I'm sort of tempted to stay home with my dad and brother to read! :-l I shall resist that temptation though...have to value personal relationships over fantasy worlds contained in books, however lovely it is to retreat into them! I'll have plenty of time for reading tomorrow, so I shall exercise patience through the Holy Spirit for a while longer. :)
Ballet class was lovely...there was a guest teacher (Alexis Borovik) from the Pennsylvania Ballet here, and he gives a simple class, but one that will still tire one out because it provides the time and mental room to focus on executing movements correctly, which is always harder than doing them the wrong way. :) In addition to a regular class, we also had an hour of partnering, which I really, really enjoyed. We had four guys for about ten girls, but one of the guys was a boy who's just nearly thirteen years old. So, Mr. Alexis put me with that boy, Chandler, which was really fun, because I got to coach him and show him what a girl needs from her partner to keep her balanced. I also got to dance a little with the older, more experienced guys, so overall, it was great. Now I suppose that's enough of ballet for those of you reading who don't really have a clue as to what I'm talking about. ;)
After partnering class was over, I relaxed at the studio to eat the lunch I had packed, then went to the Christian book store and found a new Bible. (Yay!) I've had my last Bible for several years now, and it has been well-loved (the binding is broken and it's got some water damage), so I figured I could justify the purchase of a new one, especially since I had a good coupon. :) I also wanted a copy of the English Standard Version since Derek is always using that during his teaching, and something smaller. Two extra bonuses are the concordance, which, for a pocket-sized Bible, is rather large, containing about 12,000 references, and the fact that this copy is a red-letter edition...I guess some might find that unnecessary, but I find it quite practical to be able to tell at a glance if a verse is something Jesus said in person or not. Although, on second thought, I suppose it doesn't really matter, since every word that comes out of God's mouth is Jesus, the Word, anyway. (That was for you, Derek ;)
So now I'm at the library, posting from the internet connection here, since ours at home isn't working. I was telling my best friend yesterday that I actually like having to go out of the house to get on the internet. It's kept me off of my laptop a lot more, and it limits the amount of times per day I check my email and Facebook since I have to make the extra effort to drive over here (even though it's not more than five minutes from my house). After this, I'm going to grab some necessities for our dinner from the grocery store, and hopefully my mom will let me put dinner together, because she's really tired this evening, for some reason unbeknowst to me. I've been truly enjoying helping with the cooking this summer, and I'm excited that I changed my meal plan yesterday to just $400 on my meal card and that I'll be able to do more of my own cooking in the fall since I'll have a kitchen. As a friend so aptly put it, dining hall food is "dead." Thank you, Mrs. Grose, I couldn't agree more! :)
Well, it's off to the grocery store with me now...I hope that you have enjoyed my newsy ramblings! :)
I'm having quite a nice day today. I had a car to myself, so I got to go to ballet and do some shopping. I thought that the ballet class started at 9:30, so I arrived at the studio at 9:15, but discovered that the class times for this week had been shifted to 10:30. So, I left and made a bank deposit, bought a headband for my short hair :) , and also bought a book called DragonLight that is the fifth and last book in a fantasy/allegorical series called the DragonKeeper Chronicles. I've been so busy that I've only read the first 3 pages, but I'm really looking forward to sitting down later this evening to read it. I'm supposed to go with my mom and sister to my aunt's house to visit with my grandmother tonight, but I'm sort of tempted to stay home with my dad and brother to read! :-l I shall resist that temptation though...have to value personal relationships over fantasy worlds contained in books, however lovely it is to retreat into them! I'll have plenty of time for reading tomorrow, so I shall exercise patience through the Holy Spirit for a while longer. :)
Ballet class was lovely...there was a guest teacher (Alexis Borovik) from the Pennsylvania Ballet here, and he gives a simple class, but one that will still tire one out because it provides the time and mental room to focus on executing movements correctly, which is always harder than doing them the wrong way. :) In addition to a regular class, we also had an hour of partnering, which I really, really enjoyed. We had four guys for about ten girls, but one of the guys was a boy who's just nearly thirteen years old. So, Mr. Alexis put me with that boy, Chandler, which was really fun, because I got to coach him and show him what a girl needs from her partner to keep her balanced. I also got to dance a little with the older, more experienced guys, so overall, it was great. Now I suppose that's enough of ballet for those of you reading who don't really have a clue as to what I'm talking about. ;)
After partnering class was over, I relaxed at the studio to eat the lunch I had packed, then went to the Christian book store and found a new Bible. (Yay!) I've had my last Bible for several years now, and it has been well-loved (the binding is broken and it's got some water damage), so I figured I could justify the purchase of a new one, especially since I had a good coupon. :) I also wanted a copy of the English Standard Version since Derek is always using that during his teaching, and something smaller. Two extra bonuses are the concordance, which, for a pocket-sized Bible, is rather large, containing about 12,000 references, and the fact that this copy is a red-letter edition...I guess some might find that unnecessary, but I find it quite practical to be able to tell at a glance if a verse is something Jesus said in person or not. Although, on second thought, I suppose it doesn't really matter, since every word that comes out of God's mouth is Jesus, the Word, anyway. (That was for you, Derek ;)
So now I'm at the library, posting from the internet connection here, since ours at home isn't working. I was telling my best friend yesterday that I actually like having to go out of the house to get on the internet. It's kept me off of my laptop a lot more, and it limits the amount of times per day I check my email and Facebook since I have to make the extra effort to drive over here (even though it's not more than five minutes from my house). After this, I'm going to grab some necessities for our dinner from the grocery store, and hopefully my mom will let me put dinner together, because she's really tired this evening, for some reason unbeknowst to me. I've been truly enjoying helping with the cooking this summer, and I'm excited that I changed my meal plan yesterday to just $400 on my meal card and that I'll be able to do more of my own cooking in the fall since I'll have a kitchen. As a friend so aptly put it, dining hall food is "dead." Thank you, Mrs. Grose, I couldn't agree more! :)
Well, it's off to the grocery store with me now...I hope that you have enjoyed my newsy ramblings! :)
Thursday, June 12, 2008
it's been too long...
Well, I had kinda given up on blogging for a while, but thanks to a reminder from Pablo, I'm back. I was wondering what to do with my free time today, so now I have an answer. :)
So what happened: I must not have had anything that I really wanted to blog for about a week and a half after my last post, and then I got pretty sick about 2 weeks ago. I had a bad viral sore throat, and the doctor prescribed me a broad-spectrum antibiotic because other people had gotten worse without it. But the problem is that I didn't know what broad-spectrum antibiotics do, or I might not have taken the darn thing. You see, it wiped out all the good bacteria in my intestines. We normally have a 80%/20% ratio of good to bad bacteria living in there, but all mine, good and bad, got lysed, i.e. killed. When I quit taking the antibiotic, the bad bacteria started repopulating first, and this really nasty breed called Clostridium difficile overpopulated. Guess what that gave me...diarrhea. Bleck, yuck, and major misery. :P So I got it about two Tuesdays ago, and by Sunday the first of June, it was so bad I came down with a fever. I was laid out from Sunday afternoon through Thursday on the couch, basically just sleeping on Monday and Tuesday, and reading on Wednesday and Thursday, and not eating much of anything at all. Finally got the test results back from the doctor this Monday saying that it was C. dif. not rotavirus like he initially thought, which is a problem, because I had been taking anti-diarrheal meds, which is exactly what NOT to take when you have C. dif...way to go doc! Needless to say, my mom is a bit fed up with him for the two boo-boos he made, and when he prescribed me another antibiotic to get rid of the C. dif. she wasn't willing to take that answer, so did some sleuthing and decided to call a friend who knows a lot about natural medicine. So we got up with her on Tuesday morning, and she set us straight about what I should eat and take to get my intestinal bacteria back in balance. So I'm much better now! :) The prominent God-thing in all this is that I had put on about 5 extra pounds for some reason in the past month (never could really figure out why), but God knew I needed them: I lost about 7 pounds while I was sick because I couldn't eat/didn't feel like eating. I'm pretty glad I lost them, so I'm going to watch what I eat carefully and get a lot of exercise so I can keep at my current weight.
Alrighty, so that's probably much more than anyone wanted to know about intestinal bacteria, but I'm a nerd, so I just had to explain it all. :)
As for other interesting developments in my life, I've been enjoying being my best girlfriend's confidant on her developing romance :), and I've discovered I love snail-mail letter-writing, so if anyone wants a pen pal, let me know and I'll write you epistles as long as you can make interesting conversation! ;) More seriously, I've been reading two more really provocative books that are changing my whole way of thinking and the way I'm living my life/going to live my life. The one that I've finished is Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope by Brian McLaren, and I'm about half-way through Jesus For President: Politics For Ordinary Radicals by Shane Claiborne & Chris Haw.
Everything Must Change was a great follow-up to Claiborne's Irresistible Revolution because it is more structured and less anecdotal and lays out a whole new theory of viewing the world and the Gospel as a first-century Christian would see it...kinda a "what Jesus really meant in His own political/historical/social/economic context" thing. McLaren explains the world's system is built on "the imperial narrative", a narrative being the framing story the people use to view their lives. The big lie of the imperial narrative is that we as human beings are unlimited; that is, we don't have to live within the limits of our environment, and we can consume as many nonrenewable resources as we want and produce as much waste as we want and live however we want, without having to deal with the consequences, whether they be things like global warming or things like an unplanned pregnancy. McLaren also explains that a way to understand our world is to break it down into three system that are all interconnected: the prosperity system, the security system, and the equity system. The way our world does things, these three systems interact to form what McLaren calls "the suicidal system" because it's in a rapid downward spiral that can't be changed using the world's own remedies. The prosperity system has created a gap between rich and poor that keeps widening because the rich use the security system to keep their wealth safe from the poor, who are oppressed and jealous of the wealth of the rich and resort to violence to get it. And thus, the equity system doesn't really bring equity at all. We keep living under the illusion that we don't have any limits, so we keep consuming resources and producing waste to increase our wealth, exploiting the poor to do so, and then continually building bigger and bigger weapons systems to protect our wealth from the poor, who then turn to violence and crime to get what they want/need.
There are other narratives too: the counterimperial narrative that runs opposite to the imperial narrative, but still uses the empire's methods, i.e. violence and dominance; the dual narrative, in which people keep their faith in their "private life" and use the suicidal system to their advantage in their "public life"; and the withdrawal narrative, in which people retreat from "public life" because they think it is hopeless to try to change things with their faith. Needless to say, Jesus rejected all these different narratives - imperial, counterimperial, dual, and withdrawal - to propose the Good News.
And all that being said, one of my favorite songs remains Derek Webb's A King and a Kingdom:
~
Who's your brother? Who's your sister?
You just walked past him, I think you missed her
'Cause we're all migrating to the place where our Father lives
Because we married into a family of immigrants
So my first allegiance is not to a flag, a country, or a man
And my first allegiance is not to democracy or blood...
It's to a King and a Kingdom
There are two great lies that I have heard:
The day you eat of the fruit of that tree you will not surely die
And that Jesus Christ was a white, middle-class Republican
And if you want to be saved, you have to learn to be like Him...
So my first allegiance is not...
~
And I've been listening to a lot of other Derek Webb too...his lyrics are very cut-and-dry and prophetic, but loving...and I like the folk style of the instrumentation and harmonies...great music!
Oh, and one more thing - I just got on the Emergent Village website today, and I'm poking around to see if I'll be helping start a cohort in Greenville...there were some people from eastern NC going to the Raleigh/Durham one, but they were interested in one closer to them, so I suggested Greenville, 'cause I'd love to be a part of a cohort, which is basically just a group that meets to discuss new, creative ways of following Jesus in a different way than conversations in the church normally occur...check it out at www.emergentvillage.com
So what happened: I must not have had anything that I really wanted to blog for about a week and a half after my last post, and then I got pretty sick about 2 weeks ago. I had a bad viral sore throat, and the doctor prescribed me a broad-spectrum antibiotic because other people had gotten worse without it. But the problem is that I didn't know what broad-spectrum antibiotics do, or I might not have taken the darn thing. You see, it wiped out all the good bacteria in my intestines. We normally have a 80%/20% ratio of good to bad bacteria living in there, but all mine, good and bad, got lysed, i.e. killed. When I quit taking the antibiotic, the bad bacteria started repopulating first, and this really nasty breed called Clostridium difficile overpopulated. Guess what that gave me...diarrhea. Bleck, yuck, and major misery. :P So I got it about two Tuesdays ago, and by Sunday the first of June, it was so bad I came down with a fever. I was laid out from Sunday afternoon through Thursday on the couch, basically just sleeping on Monday and Tuesday, and reading on Wednesday and Thursday, and not eating much of anything at all. Finally got the test results back from the doctor this Monday saying that it was C. dif. not rotavirus like he initially thought, which is a problem, because I had been taking anti-diarrheal meds, which is exactly what NOT to take when you have C. dif...way to go doc! Needless to say, my mom is a bit fed up with him for the two boo-boos he made, and when he prescribed me another antibiotic to get rid of the C. dif. she wasn't willing to take that answer, so did some sleuthing and decided to call a friend who knows a lot about natural medicine. So we got up with her on Tuesday morning, and she set us straight about what I should eat and take to get my intestinal bacteria back in balance. So I'm much better now! :) The prominent God-thing in all this is that I had put on about 5 extra pounds for some reason in the past month (never could really figure out why), but God knew I needed them: I lost about 7 pounds while I was sick because I couldn't eat/didn't feel like eating. I'm pretty glad I lost them, so I'm going to watch what I eat carefully and get a lot of exercise so I can keep at my current weight.
Alrighty, so that's probably much more than anyone wanted to know about intestinal bacteria, but I'm a nerd, so I just had to explain it all. :)
As for other interesting developments in my life, I've been enjoying being my best girlfriend's confidant on her developing romance :), and I've discovered I love snail-mail letter-writing, so if anyone wants a pen pal, let me know and I'll write you epistles as long as you can make interesting conversation! ;) More seriously, I've been reading two more really provocative books that are changing my whole way of thinking and the way I'm living my life/going to live my life. The one that I've finished is Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises, and a Revolution of Hope by Brian McLaren, and I'm about half-way through Jesus For President: Politics For Ordinary Radicals by Shane Claiborne & Chris Haw.
Everything Must Change was a great follow-up to Claiborne's Irresistible Revolution because it is more structured and less anecdotal and lays out a whole new theory of viewing the world and the Gospel as a first-century Christian would see it...kinda a "what Jesus really meant in His own political/historical/social/economic context" thing. McLaren explains the world's system is built on "the imperial narrative", a narrative being the framing story the people use to view their lives. The big lie of the imperial narrative is that we as human beings are unlimited; that is, we don't have to live within the limits of our environment, and we can consume as many nonrenewable resources as we want and produce as much waste as we want and live however we want, without having to deal with the consequences, whether they be things like global warming or things like an unplanned pregnancy. McLaren also explains that a way to understand our world is to break it down into three system that are all interconnected: the prosperity system, the security system, and the equity system. The way our world does things, these three systems interact to form what McLaren calls "the suicidal system" because it's in a rapid downward spiral that can't be changed using the world's own remedies. The prosperity system has created a gap between rich and poor that keeps widening because the rich use the security system to keep their wealth safe from the poor, who are oppressed and jealous of the wealth of the rich and resort to violence to get it. And thus, the equity system doesn't really bring equity at all. We keep living under the illusion that we don't have any limits, so we keep consuming resources and producing waste to increase our wealth, exploiting the poor to do so, and then continually building bigger and bigger weapons systems to protect our wealth from the poor, who then turn to violence and crime to get what they want/need.
There are other narratives too: the counterimperial narrative that runs opposite to the imperial narrative, but still uses the empire's methods, i.e. violence and dominance; the dual narrative, in which people keep their faith in their "private life" and use the suicidal system to their advantage in their "public life"; and the withdrawal narrative, in which people retreat from "public life" because they think it is hopeless to try to change things with their faith. Needless to say, Jesus rejected all these different narratives - imperial, counterimperial, dual, and withdrawal - to propose the Good News.
And then Claiborne & Haw's Jesus For President is another great follow-up because they take the whole imperial narrative theory back to Scripture and do a short exposé of the theme of empire throughout the whole Bible, and show how Jesus' message was neither counterimperial nor withdrawal, but a third way...neither resisting imperial violence with violence nor retreating from it, but responding with a creative nonviolence that forces your persecutor to acknowledge your humanity...responding with love and peace, not with dominance and violence, because it does no good, affects no change, to deal with the imperial system on it's own terms. We are to disobey the empire when it runs counter to God, but we are to be subordinate to it when it seeks to punish us for our disobedience. We are to live in God's economy of love, never responding to anything with bitterness or hatred, and living in God's system of jubilee - debt cancellation, unprecedented generosity, extending the love of family to everyone. Claiborne & Haw show just how political Jesus' message really was: words like "Christ" and "Lord" and "Good News" and "kingdom" and "Son of God" and "faith" were all used to refer to the emperor and emperor worship during Roman times, and Jesus took them and was using them subversively to refer to Himself. No wonder people got so mad and wanted Him to shut up...and eventually did shut Him up...or so they thought. So essentially, when Jesus is talking about not being able to serve two masters, He is saying that our allegiance to one must should destroy our allegiance to the other. So here comes the clincher: today, we as followers of God in the Way of Jesus, should place our allegiance to a King and His Kingdom, to the Slaughtered Lamb, not to our nation-state, because the community that we have been reborn into is so much bigger than our country, and why would we want to pledge allegiance to an empire that is part of an unjust, violent suicidal system anyway? Maybe the patriotism that we've been taught growing up in the church isn't very important after all...maybe it's actually wrong, partially because we make it more important than our allegiance to His Kingdom of love that doesn't have borders of nation, race, age, sex, or socio-economic status, and partially because we are pledging allegiance to a nation that operates counter to the Kingdom of God.
I have to admit that all of this really appeals to me, because I've never been interested in politics and government and power. So for someone to show that it isn't necessarily my "Christian duty" to be involved is nice. What I'm not saying is that I won't work for justice in our country and my community, but what I am saying is that I'm not going to work for justice on the system's terms...I'm going to do it lovingly, peacefully, creatively on God's terms, not just working respectfully through the system for change - like trying to change unjust legislation - but doing things creatively outside of it - like having lunch weekly with a homeless person and hopefully using some of my own resources to effect equity between us...now that's a revelation! sharing my wealth in common to work to eradicate inequity! :) But honestly, I'm more interested in loving the people than being involved in politics...but if loving people means getting involved in politics, I will, but I'm never going to make or let politics be my focus.
That being said, I'm not really sure if I going to vote or not...regardless of whether I do or not, one thing's for sure: I'm not going to let politics rule my life during the election process; I'm not going to live my life in a way that pledges more allegiance to the nation than to my King, because I know that I'll affect more change working in creative ways outside of the system than trying to put new wine in the old wineskin of the flawed system.And all that being said, one of my favorite songs remains Derek Webb's A King and a Kingdom:
~
Who's your brother? Who's your sister?
You just walked past him, I think you missed her
'Cause we're all migrating to the place where our Father lives
Because we married into a family of immigrants
So my first allegiance is not to a flag, a country, or a man
And my first allegiance is not to democracy or blood...
It's to a King and a Kingdom
There are two great lies that I have heard:
The day you eat of the fruit of that tree you will not surely die
And that Jesus Christ was a white, middle-class Republican
And if you want to be saved, you have to learn to be like Him...
So my first allegiance is not...
~
And I've been listening to a lot of other Derek Webb too...his lyrics are very cut-and-dry and prophetic, but loving...and I like the folk style of the instrumentation and harmonies...great music!
Oh, and one more thing - I just got on the Emergent Village website today, and I'm poking around to see if I'll be helping start a cohort in Greenville...there were some people from eastern NC going to the Raleigh/Durham one, but they were interested in one closer to them, so I suggested Greenville, 'cause I'd love to be a part of a cohort, which is basically just a group that meets to discuss new, creative ways of following Jesus in a different way than conversations in the church normally occur...check it out at www.emergentvillage.com
Sunday, May 18, 2008
I'm praising God for Ed!
I just read Derek's second blog post about his lunch with a homeless guy named Ed, and he ended it with the idea for people at Harmony to pair up with homeless people and treat them to lunch once a week like Derek will be doing with Ed. I am so excited that God led Derek's path to cross with Ed because this is exactly the type of thing that I want to see Harmony doing: bringing the Kingdom of God to earth by reaching out and loving those that our society marginalizes.
And by the way, if anyone wants a really good book to read over the summer that goes along these lines, go get Shane Claiborne's "Irresistible Revolution: living as an ordinary radical."
And by the way, if anyone wants a really good book to read over the summer that goes along these lines, go get Shane Claiborne's "Irresistible Revolution: living as an ordinary radical."
Monday, May 12, 2008
thoughts on "Irresistible Revolution"
This book is amazing, but summarizing the whole thing would take too long, so I'm just going to highlight the things that God has made stand out to me especially, the things that I feel He's calling me to change...
The biggest thing that has caused the most dramatic change in the way I think is summed up in this quote: "I began to understand what it meant when the curtain of the temple was torn open as Jesus died on the cross. Not only was God redeeming that which was profane, but God was setting all that was sacred free." (emphasis mine) Shane goes on to explain what this implies: "I knew that I had not just looked into the eyes of some pitiful leper in Calcutta but that I had gazed in to the eyes of Jesus, and that he had not seen just some rich, do-gooder white kid from American but that he had seen the image of God in me. That is nuts. What would the world look like if we truly believed, as the apostle Paul figured out, that we no longer live, but only Jesus lives in us?" Back on campus after break, I tried to see Jesus in everyone I interacted with or made eye contact with, and not just those people who I knew to be Christ-followers, but everyone. And it breathed a whole new meaning into "whatever you did to the least of these, my brothers, you did unto me." I have to admit, it's not a conscious thought now all the time anymore, but it still affects the way that I interact with people - I treat them with more value, for sure.
The second thing that I've come to realize through this book is that I need to be doing something about poverty in the world...and my community, Greenville, is the very best place for me to start. I've read Shane's debunking of the excuse "the poor will always be among you" and run across so many examples of how we as Christ-followers are supposed to treat the poor. Like I already said, "whatever you did..." means so much more to me now. And I think the most arresting quote that I have read about poverty so far is, "Ask the poor. They will tell you who the Christians are." ~Gandhi ....Ouch. What am I doing to end poverty in my community, to bring the Kingdom of God "on earth, as it is in heaven"?
And ending poverty isn't the only aspect of bringing the Kingdom of God to earth - which is the mission that we join with God in accomplishing when we start to follow the Way of Christ...war is another biggie. I had never given serious thought to that issue until I read the chapter Shane titles "Pledging Allegiance When Kingdoms Collide". He points out how much patriotism and the American flag area part of the church, and questions if that is a good thing. After reading what he has to say about it, I think it's not a good thing. Patriotism has already been getting on my nerves for some time now, ever since I heard Derek Webb's song "A King and a Kingdom", the chorus of which goes My first allegiance is not to a flag, a country, or a man/my first allegiance is not to democracy or blood/it's to a King and a Kingdom. My question became why should I take pride in and pledge allegiance to a nation-state that God can bring down a whole lot faster than He raised it up, when my true allegiance should lie with a Kingdom that will never fade away, a Kingdom ruled by a perfect Savior-King? Shane's bigger point about how tragic it is that the American church puts so much emphasis on being American is that it blinds us to our bigger family around the world and pits us as enemies to our nation's enemies. And this is so tragic because we have been reborn into a new system where we should love our enemies and seek peace with every man through Christ, and that's almost opposite of the way the American church lives and operates.
Shane goes on to question redemptive violence, something which I am still questioning, but I haven't quite been able to reconcile a completely pacifist stance with the God who annihilated so many thousands of people through war in the Old Testament...but I do know that I agree with this statement of Shane's: "I have pledged allegiance to a King who loved evildoers so much he died for them, teaching us that there is something worth dying for but nothing worth killing for." And here is a quote by an Iraqi woman about the war in Iraq that should really cause us to rethink our traditional, conservative, Western Christian take on the "War on Terror": "Your country is declaring war in the name of God and asking God's blessing, and that is the same thing my country is doing. What kind of God is this? What has happened to the God of love, to the Prince of Peace?"
The biggest thing that has caused the most dramatic change in the way I think is summed up in this quote: "I began to understand what it meant when the curtain of the temple was torn open as Jesus died on the cross. Not only was God redeeming that which was profane, but God was setting all that was sacred free." (emphasis mine) Shane goes on to explain what this implies: "I knew that I had not just looked into the eyes of some pitiful leper in Calcutta but that I had gazed in to the eyes of Jesus, and that he had not seen just some rich, do-gooder white kid from American but that he had seen the image of God in me. That is nuts. What would the world look like if we truly believed, as the apostle Paul figured out, that we no longer live, but only Jesus lives in us?" Back on campus after break, I tried to see Jesus in everyone I interacted with or made eye contact with, and not just those people who I knew to be Christ-followers, but everyone. And it breathed a whole new meaning into "whatever you did to the least of these, my brothers, you did unto me." I have to admit, it's not a conscious thought now all the time anymore, but it still affects the way that I interact with people - I treat them with more value, for sure.
The second thing that I've come to realize through this book is that I need to be doing something about poverty in the world...and my community, Greenville, is the very best place for me to start. I've read Shane's debunking of the excuse "the poor will always be among you" and run across so many examples of how we as Christ-followers are supposed to treat the poor. Like I already said, "whatever you did..." means so much more to me now. And I think the most arresting quote that I have read about poverty so far is, "Ask the poor. They will tell you who the Christians are." ~Gandhi ....Ouch. What am I doing to end poverty in my community, to bring the Kingdom of God "on earth, as it is in heaven"?
And ending poverty isn't the only aspect of bringing the Kingdom of God to earth - which is the mission that we join with God in accomplishing when we start to follow the Way of Christ...war is another biggie. I had never given serious thought to that issue until I read the chapter Shane titles "Pledging Allegiance When Kingdoms Collide". He points out how much patriotism and the American flag area part of the church, and questions if that is a good thing. After reading what he has to say about it, I think it's not a good thing. Patriotism has already been getting on my nerves for some time now, ever since I heard Derek Webb's song "A King and a Kingdom", the chorus of which goes My first allegiance is not to a flag, a country, or a man/my first allegiance is not to democracy or blood/it's to a King and a Kingdom. My question became why should I take pride in and pledge allegiance to a nation-state that God can bring down a whole lot faster than He raised it up, when my true allegiance should lie with a Kingdom that will never fade away, a Kingdom ruled by a perfect Savior-King? Shane's bigger point about how tragic it is that the American church puts so much emphasis on being American is that it blinds us to our bigger family around the world and pits us as enemies to our nation's enemies. And this is so tragic because we have been reborn into a new system where we should love our enemies and seek peace with every man through Christ, and that's almost opposite of the way the American church lives and operates.
Shane goes on to question redemptive violence, something which I am still questioning, but I haven't quite been able to reconcile a completely pacifist stance with the God who annihilated so many thousands of people through war in the Old Testament...but I do know that I agree with this statement of Shane's: "I have pledged allegiance to a King who loved evildoers so much he died for them, teaching us that there is something worth dying for but nothing worth killing for." And here is a quote by an Iraqi woman about the war in Iraq that should really cause us to rethink our traditional, conservative, Western Christian take on the "War on Terror": "Your country is declaring war in the name of God and asking God's blessing, and that is the same thing my country is doing. What kind of God is this? What has happened to the God of love, to the Prince of Peace?"
the story of how God led me to Harmony
so I've been reading Shane Claiborne's book "Irresistible Revolution: living as an ordinary radical" since Christmas break...started it on break, and then haven't really picked it up again until now, but I can see how that timing was/is divine. Back during Christmas break, I had already decided that I was dissatisfied with the campus ministry that I had been going to during first semester, and knew that I was going to be looking for a new place to fit when I went back to campus - either a campus ministry, a church or both. And then I started reading "Irresistible Revolution", and it prompted a revelation of sorts that clearly defined what I was looking for in a prospective campus ministry/church: a group of people whose sole focus was loving God and people, and doing what Jesus taught.
So I went back to campus knowing what I was looking for, but didn't find it right away. I visited one campus ministry that I got all excited about at first - which is my way - but when I stepped back to consider it from all angles, I realized that it would really be a problem that I sat during the speaker's message disagreeing with just about every other word. :) I visited two other campus ministries after that, but they were both the same as the one I attended first semester and the one I visited: same format - what the Western church likes to call "worship" which is a tragically narrow definition of a word that is supposed to express the whole of a Christ-follower's life; a pretty mediocre message that I often found inapplicable because I had heard the same simple teaching so many times before; and announcements for Bible studies and fellowship gatherings for group members...same people - in a word, pretty cliquey...same activities - weekly meetings, Bible studies, and scheduled hang-out times for people who already knew each other...all-in-all, ministries very much focused on meeting the needs of people already involved in the ministry, and evangelism that centered on sharing your testimony to bring people in so that they could conform to the standards of Western Christianity - something that I'm starting to think bears little resemblance to the life Jesus lived. In short, after attending one campus ministry and visiting three more that were very well-meaning but didn't resemble Jesus very well at all, I was beginning to get frustrated.
Enter a sign on a....TRASH CAN....(think about that one for a minute) outside the Student Rec Center, reading "Harmony Church: no judgment, no hypocrisy, church as Jesus intended it, Dr. Unk's Oasis"....and I think Well now! I think I might go just to see if they can back up these claims...especially since it's in a bar...should be interesting. But I was also thinking that if Harmony could back up the claims with actions, God had just shown me the place I was supposed to be.
But that divine appointment with a trash can wasn't enough for God...no, He took me on a joy-ride on the Minges bus to find a place that wasn't where I thought it was, just so He could put a postcard that Miranda had left in the little bus stop shelter in my hands. The postcard had more info on Harmony, like where Dr. Unk's was (because I had forgotten the intersection by this point) and just more stuff that completely made up my mind that I was going. This was the end of January, right before Harmony's first Sunday morning meeting at Dr. Unk's. So I went, found nearly exactly what I was looking for, and it's been awesome ever since. I've grown so much from the conversations that we have had about theology, and I have found brothers and sisters in Christ that are very special to me. Truth be told, for the first time in my life, I have wanted to NOT be at home...and that is on Sunday mornings when I'm wishing I could be at Harmony with my family there.
So that's the story... :)
So I went back to campus knowing what I was looking for, but didn't find it right away. I visited one campus ministry that I got all excited about at first - which is my way - but when I stepped back to consider it from all angles, I realized that it would really be a problem that I sat during the speaker's message disagreeing with just about every other word. :) I visited two other campus ministries after that, but they were both the same as the one I attended first semester and the one I visited: same format - what the Western church likes to call "worship" which is a tragically narrow definition of a word that is supposed to express the whole of a Christ-follower's life; a pretty mediocre message that I often found inapplicable because I had heard the same simple teaching so many times before; and announcements for Bible studies and fellowship gatherings for group members...same people - in a word, pretty cliquey...same activities - weekly meetings, Bible studies, and scheduled hang-out times for people who already knew each other...all-in-all, ministries very much focused on meeting the needs of people already involved in the ministry, and evangelism that centered on sharing your testimony to bring people in so that they could conform to the standards of Western Christianity - something that I'm starting to think bears little resemblance to the life Jesus lived. In short, after attending one campus ministry and visiting three more that were very well-meaning but didn't resemble Jesus very well at all, I was beginning to get frustrated.
Enter a sign on a....TRASH CAN....(think about that one for a minute) outside the Student Rec Center, reading "Harmony Church: no judgment, no hypocrisy, church as Jesus intended it, Dr. Unk's Oasis"....and I think Well now! I think I might go just to see if they can back up these claims...especially since it's in a bar...should be interesting. But I was also thinking that if Harmony could back up the claims with actions, God had just shown me the place I was supposed to be.
But that divine appointment with a trash can wasn't enough for God...no, He took me on a joy-ride on the Minges bus to find a place that wasn't where I thought it was, just so He could put a postcard that Miranda had left in the little bus stop shelter in my hands. The postcard had more info on Harmony, like where Dr. Unk's was (because I had forgotten the intersection by this point) and just more stuff that completely made up my mind that I was going. This was the end of January, right before Harmony's first Sunday morning meeting at Dr. Unk's. So I went, found nearly exactly what I was looking for, and it's been awesome ever since. I've grown so much from the conversations that we have had about theology, and I have found brothers and sisters in Christ that are very special to me. Truth be told, for the first time in my life, I have wanted to NOT be at home...and that is on Sunday mornings when I'm wishing I could be at Harmony with my family there.
So that's the story... :)
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
"...THIS is American Idol"
okay, so I've never really followed a TV show faithfully until the last few weeks of American Idol, and I have never voted, not even remotely considered it, until this week. But Simon couldn't have put it better when he said to David Archuleta, "You didn't just beat the competition...you crushed the competition." Not only did he sing two songs that I know and love - "Stand By Me" and "Love Me Tender" - he completely nailed them. Aah! They were awesome/beautiful! And I can't forget to mention the fact that he is just...cute! I'm not talking screaming-teeny-bopper-girls "oh-he's-so-cuuuuuute!-I-wanna-go-out-with-him!"...no, no, I'm talking about the "you-sure-I-can't-claim-you-as-my-little-brother" kind of cute. He's humble and unassuming, always nervous about what the judges'll say and so thankful when they say good things...which has been basically every week since the beginning, as I look back and do some research. So anyway, I probably called and got through 20-25 times...just wanna make sure this boy WINS!! :)
a start
I thought it would be a good discipline for me to blog over the summer about the books (including the Bible) I'm reading and the things I'm learning and reflecting on because of them. I'm not particularly motivated to journal normally, since hand-writing things takes forever and you can't easily edit them, but knowing that other people can see this site will motivate me, I think, to post relatively often, and to be more articulate about my thoughts, for sure. Another reason for blogging is, hopefully, sharing my thoughts with other people and dialogging about them, so long as people visit the site and comment!
I pray that this will be a good discipline for me and glorifying to my Father in Heaven.
I pray that this will be a good discipline for me and glorifying to my Father in Heaven.
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