whatever you do.

Warning: Below results may not reflect the truely paralyzing sissiness of the quiz taker.

25%

Tags: gandhi, gardening, soil, earth

About a month ago I announced that I would be blog-journaling through Don Postema’s Space for God. I believe that will most likely actually begin soon. Bear with me! I’ve also recently received an advance copy of Scot McKnight’s soon-to-be-released The Blue Parakeet. It’s a really great read and I’ll be blog-reviewing that in the next week. Already I would love to recommend it to you all. It is a wonderful help for anyone with questions about how we can read the Bible more fully and responsibly. Sort of a How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth for our post-modern context. Tonight I’m continuing to read through a couple other fantastic books. Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline and Donald Whitney’s Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life. These are required reading for my Spiritual Formation class but I am thoroughly enjoying them. Especially Foster. Similar to Henri Nouwen, Foster has a way of writing that gets into your fingernails and makes you feel like you haven’t finished reading him until you have put it into practice.

I don’t know where my recent love of books has come from. When I was a child I read constantly, but from adolescence through till I was about 25 I hardly read a thing. I am very glad that I have been re-energized to engage with the written word. I feel so much richer for it. A very good kind of rich.

Anyway… nose back in book!

Tags: reading, mcknight, foster, postema, journaling,

“God made man simple; man’s complex problems are of his own devising.” Ecclesiastes 7:30

What if I were to say that I yearn for this poverty? We must fight against poverty that is not simple. We should strive for poverty that is simple.

Perhaps embracing a poverty of simplicity is the answer to ending systemic poverty. My frustrations all circle around the issue of my affluence. I’m rich enough to be a magnet that attacts all kinds of garbage.

Richard Foster says, “Experiencing the inward reality [of simplicity] liberates us outwardly. Speech becomes truthful and honest. The lust for status and position is gone because we no longer need status and position. We cease from showy extravagance not on the grounds of being unable to afford it, but on the grounds of principle. Our goods become available to others.“ ¹

Jubilee, Redistribution, Ending Your Affluence, Simplicity, Freedom.

(This is an addendum to my previous post for Blog Action Day. I just could not end with simply complaining about my lacking. Now I’m going somewhere!)

Tags: poverty, simplicity, blog action day, affluence, jubilee

This post is part of Blog Action Day. Thousands of bloggers and millions of readers are participating in an attempt to make the landscape of poverty change, diminish and become manageable. Today I’m not feeling up to the task of taking anything on. I’m using the day to confess some stuff that has been clogging up my life like cholesterol in an artery…

This morning I went to the bank to take advantage of some student rates. I also took the opportunity to grab myself a lower interest rate credit card. After growing my financial empire I drove over here to the coffee shop where I sat down with a gourmet fair-trade organic coffee, turned on my mac and began to use the café’s free wireless connection. I am a king. Seriously. And so are you.

I slept in today. I had a hot shower inside my house. Water and electricity and natural gas flow into my home uninterrupted. Most likely there is food rotting in my fridge. And I will no doubt even have a second coffee today before I leave the cafe.

Even when I’m busy it is not because I am walking a tightrope between life and death. At no point during the last 24 hours have I walked any distance farther than my kitchen for drinkable water, killed an animal with my own hands for food, washed my clothes in a river, or wondered if I would even be able to eat tomorrow.

I am a king. And I don’t know how to handle it. What I mean is, I don’t know how to make it just be OK. It’s extraordinarily easy to just not think about it. I have a hundred thousand options available to me that can help me ignore this inequality. I can watch Steve Jobs with his blue jeans and keynote presentation and salivate at “uni-body construction” and led screens. I can watch Lost or Survivor and fantasize about how white, privileged society would act if it was “tribalized” (aka – trivializing the tribal)… I’m not going to continue…

Ignoring it is easy, but when forced to consider the situation I get uncomfortable. I’m reminded of how horrid it is that I ignore it. Imagine: My sister is sitting on the street – hungry, cold, dying. I could see her if I looked out the window beside me if only I dared to look. I’m uncomfortable with it so I pretend it doesn’t exist. And in the process I kill my sister.

I’m guilty of murder. I don’t say that to be dramatic. I believe it. In my own life I have killed hundreds and hundreds of people that I have encountered. I justified my murder by accusing THEM. “If I give this dude the change in my pocket he’ll just misuse it. It’s better misused by my hands than his.”

Wow. So I think I’m done with the purge. I could go on but I’m certain I would violate some blog etiquette or something.

It’s time to get constructive.

Tags: poverty, blog action day, confession

Only a couple more days until Blog Action Day. Sign up and participate or just read and comment, and help change (and start) the conversation on poverty!

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

Tags: poverty, blog action day

MY GOD,

Thou hast helped me to see,
that whatever good be in honour and
rejoicing, how good is he who gives them,
and can withdraw them;
that blessedness does not lie so much
in receiving good from and in thee,
but in holding forth thy glory and virtue;
that it is an amazing thing to see Deity
in a creature, speaking, acting,
filling, shining through it;
that nothing is good but thee,
that I am near good when I am near thee,
that to be like thee is a glorious thing:
This is my magnet, my attraction.

Thou art all my good in times of peace,
my only support in days of trouble,
my one sufficiency when life shall end.
Help me to see how good thy will is in all,
and even when it crosses mine
teach me to be pleased with it.
Grant me to feel thee in fire, and food and every providence,
and to see that thy many gifts and creatures
are but thy hands and fingers taking hold of me.
Thou bottomless fountain of all good,
I give myself to thee out of love,
for all I have or own is thine,
my goods, family, church, self,
to do with as thou wilt,
to honour thyself by me, and by all mine.
If it be consistent with thy eternal counsels,
the purpose of thy grace,
and the great ends of thy glory,
then bestow upon me the blessings of thy comforts
If not, let me resign myself to
thy wiser determinations.

From The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions

The church read this together today. Such a powerful statement of our
receiving and giving all to God: from Good, to Good, for Good. This, I
think is maybe what folks really mean when they assure you that “It’s
all good.”

Tags: prayer, thanks, good, blessing, puritan

I don’t know how long this will be available for browsing, but it gives a great picture of the online world from approximately January 2001. Google has made accessible for searching, their oldest available index. Try it out. It provides a peak into the topography of the internet just before it truly exploded. T1 and cable access was still prohibitively expensive for most people. Napster had just recently had its free mp3 sharing curtailed. Believe it or not, Emergent Village did not yet exist… Strangely though, the church emerging was already alive and well

…And being the egomaniac that I am, I attempted to search my name and found that 2001 predates any google-able web presence for myself.

Edit: This is incredible!

Tags: google, search, history, 2001