The Cheerful Giver (Joe)

“God loves a cheerful giver.”  Anytime I’ve heard that phrase, I’ve pretty much known what was coming next.  Someone at some religiously affiliated gathering, or working on behalf of some religiously affiliated organization, was going to ask me to cough up a donation.   I don’t mind so much the giving part.  In fact, more often than not, I’m eager to give.  I just wish people of faith weren’t so cheesy and predictable about it.

Exhibit A would be the annual stewardship campaigns that have become familiar to me after worshipping in mainline Presbyterian congregations for years now.  When congregation members drop pledge cards in the basket for stewardship Sunday, the battle for precious dollars is considered mostly done, and if enough money is raised, just about won.  But if we are concerned about the wider implications of giving and charity, then the act of pledging is just the beginning.  And as I want to contend, it really shouldn’t even be the beginning.

I was pleasantly surprised by the way Edgewater Presbyterian ended their stewardship drive a couple weeks ago.  The congregation, encouraged by their African immigrant members, incorporated elements of traditional African church worship and harvest time activities.  People were invited to parade and dance as they brought their offering and yearly pledges to the communion table.  The festive rhythms and smooth sway of an African praise song boomed out from stereo speakers.  Those who knew the tune spontaneously began to sing along or respond with shouts of “Amen” and “Hallejulah” as they would clap or strut their way forward.   I couldn not help but be swept up in the mood.  It made me wistful- as I’m sure it did others -for the kind of worship I experienced with Nigerien Christians in West African. What struck me during these acts of worship, whether in Chicago or Africa,  and the bountiful meal held afterward was the pervading sense of triumph.  I heard triumph in the tone of those voices and  shouts.  I heard victory in the tapping of feet and the clapping of hands.  The theology behind the moment seemed resoundingly clear:  we have made it through this year.  No matter our condition we have arrived at this moment and in this season we will rejoice.  I give because in Christ ‘we are more than conquerers’.  I give because my graciousness toward a church or a community in need reflects the almighty hand that has steadied me through the perils of the year.  Giving as perserverance is indeed cheerful giving.  Even more encouraging, no one seemed to be expecting anything in return.  This was no quid pro quo with God performance akin to a prosperity gospel.  But they sure weren’t the kind of stoic, dutiful but gloomy givers that often characterize mainline Christians. 

The whole experience has me wondering if there is a deeper way that churches need to engage the issues of stewardship, giving and money in general.  Besides cheerleading our own cause and doing our own salespitch, should we not be addressing the more foundational issues that cause or prevent people to give, no matter the cause or purpose? 

Does our insistance about giving have any theology behind it or is it merely to keep the lights on?  The kind of worship I experienced seems to say there is indeed something more going on.

Presbyterian blogger Drew Tatsuko gets at the heart of the matter in a recent blog post.  Dissatisfied with the lack of theological attention to financial issues, he asks:

How can the church raise assets for local economies rather than find ways to break even in order to maintain payrolls and property costs? How does the church add value to local economies rather than absorb value from those economies?

These are the same types of questions I find myself struggling with a lot these days.  They are the kinds of questions that get raised when you hope the Church will more vigorously engage the surrounding world.   But this is also so far from where many church folks are at that to ask them will produce many blank faces.  It’s not that they don’t care about money matters, or care about learning how to deal with their own money.  Presbyterians in particular have a lot of financial assets and large incomes as American Christians go.  They just don’t talk about it in church.  Culturally, they’d rather talk with their financial advisor or banker about money matters.  Sometimes they even play these roles for other people.  And let’s face it, the average person would rather trust a favored media personality, HR Department, or just rely on whatever mom and pop told them, before they would even think to ask what any of this has to do with God.  So religious leaders (pastors, elders and trustees) just stick to requesting assistance rather than offering it.  We assume you have done the home work of figuring out how you should budget or spend your money and then cast out our sales pitch, just like a dozen other non-profits to see if you’ll bite. 

Let me say that there is nothing necessaryly wrong with this story, not every issue has to be discussed in Church.  But let’s be honest that it is indeed a minimalist approach.  There is a wealth of untapped theological knowledge and personal histories that are ignored in the clamor for pledges and keeping the lights on.  The pledging system within mainline religious circles is a second order institution that, having left first order issues unaddressed, is increasingly unstable atop its cracked foundation. 

The foundation I’m speaking of is comprised of those first order issues hardly ever discussed in a religious setting.  Let’s name them: what is the value of money? How much should I try to make? Why and how should I go along sharing my financial resources?  What should I regard as an important life asset? (Property? Business?) What is the most effective way to give?  … The list could go on, but I think you see the point. 

Most charities don’t spend their time explaining the whole financial system.  Understandably they just want to focus on their enterprise and why you should help fund it.  But what a difference it would make if we knew how to answer these larger, more basic questions first, or at least stop assuming everyone else does.  The truth is, among Americans there is a frightening low rate of financial literacy not just among  young adults, but the society as a whole.  The financial crisis and recession we’re currently in offers ample evidence of how ignorant many of us are about money and how poor our decision making has become. 

What if we began offering more financial literacy opportunities as worshipping communities?  What if we began to share in circles of trust, the causes and people we give to and why?  What if we agreed to hold one another more accountable in our giving and encourage one another to be more creative in maximizing the value of what we give?  These can be more than what ifs, they can be a concerted effort to build the foundation both intellectually and spiritually for growing charitable and cheerful givers, whose parade of joyful giving will not be limited to a worship service or pledge drive, but fan out at every junction of their lives.

fresh reminder of what activism is…

I’m at a conference in Philly for work with a co-worker of mine. It’s been interesting getting to know her- we have something in common, we’re both PKs (Pastor’s Kids).

 Jean’s father, Rev. Fujiu, was a United Methodist pastor in the 1960s in Chicago. He started out as a pastor of a majority Japanese American church which then became a multi ethnic church. Then UMC decided that, in the spirit of activism and desegregation of the 60s, that it would be a great idea to uproot Jean’s family and plop them in the middle of Northbrook where just weeks earlier there had been fire bombs thrown at a home of the first non-white family to move in the neighborhood.

 Jean and I shared stories of the challenges of growing up as PKs- like living in fishbowl etc. Among many topics we talked about how, despite our difficult circumstances, that our parents are still inspirations to us. Rev. Fujiu was a committed activist pastor in the 1960s and Jean saw her family commitment as the bases for her continued commitment to social justice and her community. 

 The one thing that really challenged me was that Rev. Fujiu gave so much of his income to charity that he got audited because IRS thought he was lying about how much money he was giving away just to get tax benefits.  All I could think of was, how much of his salary did he give away that they would audit him AND given his pastor’s salary- what was he feeding his family on if he was giving away such significant portions of his salary!? That really challenged me to think about what it means to engage in this world as activists. It is not just going out and picketing. It’s not just giving AFTER you’ve bought everything you’ve ever wanted.  It’s about committing your life and resources in a way that is significant- maybe to the point that IRS will audit you because they think you’re lying about how much you give.

 Now, that’s activism.

 

Alie Aded

I jump into cabs once in a while and when it’s in the wee hours of the morning (like this morning) I usually want to just sit there and not talk too much.  However when I got into the cab this morning I was greeting with a warm hello and then got into a conversation with Alie, mostly because Alie did not know how to get out of my neighborhood to head to the airport. So as I was helping him navigate we started talking about Chicago’s cold weather and how it’s foreign for both of us, having grown up in warmer climates.  Alie then began to tell me his story.

Alie is Somalian, who lived in Uganda as a refugee for 6 years. Alie was allowed to go to Kampala, the capital of Uganda with a refugee ID and work permit and he worked and lived there with his wife. One day he was told by some UN staff that he had to return to the refugee camp because they were taking him to the United States. Alie and his wife arrived in Syracuse, NY in dead middle of winter. He says that was the coldest winter of his life- he has been living in the States for 9 years now. Alie and his wife moved to Chicago because there were no job opportunities in Syracuse for him. The U.S. government provided subsidies for the first 6 months after they arrived and then he was supposed to be fluent in English and have a good job to pay all his bills and be completely self-sufficient.  He says working as a cab driver is better than some other jobs he has had but it is rough these days. No matter how much or little money he makes a week, he has to pay the cab company owner $575 a week for renting the cab. He says these days, there are many weeks when he doesn’t even make the $575.

The part of his story that really made me sad was the fact that Alie and his wife were hopeful that when they came to the United States, they would be able find a fertility doctor and finally have children.  No one told Alie and his wife that working 16-18 hour days 7 days a week as a cab driver will not get you health insurance thus will never be able to afford a fertility doctor.

He says he’s gone to a few doctors with his wife but after initial checks up, he cannot afford any further follow up appointments so they have given up.

I think it is so sad that someone who has suffered and survived in a war torn homeland and worked his way over to the United States, that the best he can do is drive a cab for 120 some hours a week that may just get him enough money to pay the $575 to rent his cab that he drives and has no health care for his family.

What an irony is that. Alie has gone from living in one of the poorest countries in the world to the richest country in the world and he still faces the same problems. When I hear stories like Alie’s it makes me sad and angry. It makes me sad because it is such a tragic situation, and then it makes me angry that this country cannot do better but waste millions of dollars prioritizing things only rich and powerful people care about and leave people like Alie in hopelessness. Alie isn’t asking for millions, he just want a chance to raise a family.

shame on you NPR!! (Sung Yeon)

So as I was commuting in yesterday morning, I was doing what I usually, do, driving and listening gto NPR. During the news update I was upset with what I heard. They were giving an update about the Ft Hood shooter and all they could say was “He is a devout Muslim, whose parents were immigrants from Palestine” and” People close to him noticed that he started wearing traditional Arab clothing days before the shooting”. 

Okay- I totally expect some other news outlets (who will go unmentioned) to do something like that. But NPR?! Here’s why it made me mad:  The matter at hand is that an INDIVIDUAL committed the acts. Does it have anything to do with the fact that he was a Muslim and an immigrant? Maybe- but we don’t know that.  This country is obsessed with faulting the “outsider” finding something that is not white, or Christian to fault when something like this happens. 

Even when the Virginia Tech shootings happened, the shooter was names as a “Korean student”. The kid moved here when he was 6. What he became, and what lead to the unfortunate acts he committed was a product of the United States of America, not because he was Korean, an immigrant.

We see these high profile news stories keep using the word “immigrant” as well as other words to describe the perpetrator that can lead people to make conclusions that whatever they did was because they were not American.  What upsets me most is that when white people do such things, rarely do their religious back ground or their ethnic heritage get mentioned.  For example, Steven Kazmierczak, the shooter at Northern Illinois University. When that incident happened, no one was talking about his ethnic heritage or religious background; even if he didn’t believe in anything- they could’ve said, Steve, who is devout atheists… I even googled his name and ethnic background and I checked the first 5 pages of Google search and nothing comes up.

As someone who is working to advocate on behalf of immigrants, and being an immigrant myself, I find these news clips to be damaging and hurtful to our communities.  The news is constantly feeding people this idea that when something so terrible and unthinkable happens, its because they were outsiders, they came from somewhere else. This just feeds into hostile anti-immigrant sentiments when MOST of us are here working hard and living as responsible residents. It is because of news clips like the one on I heard on NPR that makes people say “Immigrants are criminals” and “Immigrant make our country unsafe”.

And shame on you NPR because I though I pay to get unbiased, honest, ethically, independent reporting but you did just want the mainstream media did about this story.

Ft Hood… (Sung Yeon)

Yes, it seems very cliché to respond/write about news items. But this brought back some memories… First, of let’s all remember to pray for the community in Ft. Hood and family members of those who have been killed and wounded. It is a horrific, tragic event that hurt and killed innocent people.

Having said that, Joe has been sitting in our living room the last few hours reading various blog post and comments about the tragic event. We cannot believe how reactionary people are, and how fear driven our society still is.  Yes, it’s a tragedy, let’s not forget, but let’s not jump to conclusions about Muslims and Arabs etc.  I think it’s unfortunately that various Muslim communities and Imams feel the need to speak publicly and condemn the event. I think all religious leaders should condemn the event, but I think the fact that so many Muslim leaders are publicly condemning the event says something- they feel like they have to- they don’t respond when there are other random, tragic shootings but because the shooter has an Arab name- they HAVE to respond, least they be accused of being one of “them”.

There were blog comments that alluded to sending “these” people to concentration camps etc. That took me back to right after September 11, 2001 where on my college campus I overheard a conversation… “We should’ve just killed off all the Arabs- this wouldn’t have happened- hey we should still just get rid of them.” Serious or not, I wasn’t about to ask. But that was one moment when I realized how ignorant people were. Well, mostly white people.

You see, the privilege of being white in this country is that when you are white, you’re not just a white person. You are your own person. You are an individual. You never hear white people talk about “oh those white people” (well most white people don’t say that), while it’s more common to say “oh those Asians” or “oh those Arabs” “oh those Blacks” or “oh those____”. 

This incident reminded me, and I wanted to share with you all- that, when a tragedy happens, it’s not “oh those ____ people”.  Sometimes it’s an individual with some serious issues, and let me remind you, they come in all colors- lots of white ones too.  Some times it’s a group of people lead to believe lies, believe in false illusions- that’s not just the Muslim extremist. There are other religious extremist that do the same.

So, I just wanted to drop a note and say, let’s pray for folks who are affected by the tragedy, let’s not be so quick to jump to conclusions about committing genocides or locking away a whole race of people when such unfortunate events occur.

Home?

Today, someone asked me an interesting question: You are well educated and probably have a lot to give back to your community- why don’t you go back home and contribute to your community?

I realized that by home, they didn’t mean my home here in Chicago but wherever it was I came from. I wasn’t quite sure what to say to that- but I thought of a quick answer- I said, I’ve spent the last 9 years of my life in or around Chicago, this is my home, this is my community.

Home, community- we love these words. I think it gives us a sense of belonging, gives us an identity. As someone who works in the nonprofit sector, with a job titled Community Organizer, I use the word community ALL THE TIME. It gives us the fuzzies when we use that word, doesn’t it. But in reality, what do we really mean by community?

As a TCK (for definition read my bio), I never was really comfortable with the word ‘home’.  It didn’t really mean anything to me given that every time I used the word as a child; I had over 15 different houses and apartments we lived in flash before my eyes.  Home was not going back to the backyard with the swing set dad built for me when I was five. Home usually means familiar, but not for me. So, rather than home, I cling on to the word community more. I think it has a sense of me contributing to the formation of it.

But let’s be honest- community is also an overrated, overused trendy term in many progressive circles, of which I am very guilty of myself. But as I had this person ask me this question- I realized that the power in community (and even home), is that community is not something others define for us, but what we define it to mean for ourselves.  People can tell me to go back home or back to my community because their sense of community and home does not include people like me. It probably is filled with people who look just like them and have childhood stories just like theirs but just because they exclude me, it does not mean I do not have a home or a community- I define that for myself.

Fortunately, even as unfortunately as it is that the word community is so overused, we are beginning to take back that word and own it.  Many of us are trying to create meaning of our lives by the interactions we have with our friends, neighbors and family- those who physically or emotionally live close to us.

But it is also important to beyond just getting the warm fuzzies about the word community- we have to move beyond just identifying as a member of a community to taking on the responsibilities of that belonging.  I find that in some places I see the biggest paradox- individualistic communities. People think they are in a community because they dress similarly, or having similar political/theological/or any other -ical position, but when you don’t take on the responsibilities of being a part of a community seriously, you just become like a bunch of people who all sit in a room and watch the same TV show without ever talking to one another.  When we start taking on the responsibilities of a community seriously, things get messy- and yah, sometimes living in community can suck. It’s messy and hard- dealing with people can be hard. But real community does not happen until we start rolling up our selves and getting into the mess.

So when I meet people who tell me that they just love living in community with others and have a star-eyed, or googley-eyed mentality about it- I usually wonder if they’ve really rolled up their selves and gotten themselves involved in their community.

Lakshmi and Me: A Review (Joe)

Sung Yeon and I went to view Lakshmi and Me, a short documentary by @@ last weekend.  We found it and the discussion held after to be a fascinating account of not only one slice of Indian life, but also of filmmaking as social commentary.  Some of my thoughts on film follows.

Our first glimpse of Lakshmi, whose name is featured prominently in the documentary’s title, is of her crouching body on the floor. Her prostrated form might otherwise be mistaken for someone at prayer.  But the furious, somewhat graceful sweeps of her hands do not appear like the stillness of contemplation. She draws wet arcs of soap and water upon a gleaming white tile floor.  Only her hands and arms, along with the back of her feet are we allowed to see in these first images.  Her face is as hidden to us the audience as her thoughts, her hopes, and her fears.

Lakshmi’s boss is Indian filmmaker Nashtha Jain.  As Jain chronicles Lakshmi’s life those features of her once hidden come sharply into view.  Yet the images of her living her life close to the ground, whether cleaning, sleeping, or eating, are pervasive.   The camera’s focus on the ground becomes a metaphor for Lakshmi’s condition, and the difficulty that we as the audience and Jain as the filmographer have in ever seeing her world as more than half.  Jain documents Lakshmi’s daily work, not only for her, but for other clients who seek the assistance of a maid.  Jain eventually meets Lakshmi’s family and documents a fascinating cultural ritual that is shall we say, not for the faint of heart.  Jain pries into Lakshmi’s love life and uncovers a forbidden interest of hers.  Halfway through the film, we discover Lakshmi has been missing for several weeks.  Her relationship has led to a pregnancy, the knowledge of which she kept from Jain.  The filmmaker is puzzled.  ‘Why not come to me?’ she asks in so many words.  But her question begs another in reply,  why should Jain’s self-proclaimed role as matron and protector allow her access to Lakshmi’s life?

Jain is not unaware of how her presence complicates the picture we have of Lakshmi.  In commentary available on the PBS website, she notes,

At the very outset, it was clear that I would not be an observer in this film. I was also one of the protagonists, and that raised the additional problem of self-representation. How do I film myself, especially as the director and the camera person?

There’s a reason this film is entitled Lakshmi and Me.  It is just as much, if not more so, about Jain as it is about her maid.  With Jain’s narration and careful selection of images, we get a deeper insight into the strictures of economic class and caste that pervade Indian culture.  At the same time, we see how the filmmaker eventually becomes their own best subject.  She is a perfect example of liminality in storytelling.  The documentary format puts her in the role of director, but her influence cannot be kept behind the camera.  We get very little sense of whether Jain operates inside or outside of the caste and economic systems which so circumscribe Lakshmi’s daily life.   Jain and Lakshmi are in a sense both liminal personalities who transcend the space created for them in this film.  They both inhabit the world of caste and class that is portrayed in the film, and yet much of their personality and character remains off screen and out of view.  In that sense, it appears Lakshmi is the more comfortable in this dual identity, this inbetween space.  In large part this is due to her more honest presentation of what she does and does not want to reveal about herself.  Meanwhile Jain seems genuinely unsure of her place in Lakshmi’s ongoin saga.  Once the narrator and questioner of this story, she eventually raises more questions about her own culpability, her own struggles with identity.  This documentary begins asking the question, who is Lakshmi, and it concludes with a new and equally interesting question, who is this “me”?

The National Conversation Revisited (Joe)

 

I was hesitant to mention the Gates-Crowley episode.  In some ways it is complicated example  amongst many more obvious examples of racial profiling throughout the country.  But as one of a number of recent events that have popped the perennial question about race relations in this peculiar ”age of Obama” perhaps its worth consideration.  Whether its this arrest, or the nomination of Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, or the Affirmative Action case involving Boston firefighters, clearly there is public concern and confusion about what to do with issues of “diversity” in 21st century, recession laden America. 

Let’s briefly look at the swirl of attention given the Gates-Crowley incident.  The arrest of Professor Gates by a Cambridge office on his own property caught the attention of the nation.  For African Americans who have a storied and infamous history with police forces throughout the country, the arrest aroused suspicion, understandably so. 

 For those Americans who do not harbor such supicions, this story felt like much ado about nothing.  The usual suspects raised the usual issues of racial profiling, racial weariness, and police power.   These are certainly not frivolous concerns.  They may indeed have played in this unfolding drama.  But they are not the whole story.  One thing that strikes me when you consider the two men’s professional profiles is that beyond their racial identification, they are both men of power and privilege.  My guess is neither a tenured Harvard professor or a decorated police officer that carries a loaded weapon are used to having their authority or decisions questioned.  However what is a privilege in one setting and easily be a liability in another, especially when concerns about a possible crime heighten the anxiety. 

Another angle to this story that was underreported was the position of Lucia Whalen.  The tapes from her 911 call on the suspected break-in called into question Crowley’s police report.  While the police commissioner said the report was simply a ’summary of events,’ most people expect a police report to be thorough, substantiated and without error.   Whalen openly and through her attorney denies Crowley’s report that she identified the subjects as black.  Of course you don’t have to be DWB to realize police officers don’t always get it right, just watch a few episodes of Law & Order. 

While it may not have been the his most erudite statement or brightest political move, President Obama’s reponse was from my perspective uncharacteristically dull, falling back on our national propensity to have conversations about race. 

Obama’s conversational tone highlights some growing generational differences to dealing with issues of race/ethnicity.  

A Plethora and a Biblical Principle (Joe)

In one of my favorite comedies, “Three Amigos”, the villanous El Guapo asks one of his henchmen about the largess of his criminal domain.  The loyal sycophant enthusiastically replies, “El Guapo you have a plethora!”  To which El Guapo after pondering that big fancy word asks, ‘well what exactly is a plethora?”  At this point his right hand man admits he doesn’t know.  Then El Guapo pursues the issue further asking, ‘why do you tell me I have a plethora if you do not know what a plethora is?’ 

Often I hear people sling around big words or phrases without having much of a grasp as to the meaning or implication of what they say.  Lately, I’ve begun to wonder if “biblical principle” is just such a word.  I’m not saying we should retire the phrase from the Christian lexicon, but to paraphrase El Guapo, ‘why do we talk about biblical principles when I’m unsure we really know what a biblical principle is?’ 

Just start off trying to name one.  “Love thy neighbor” immediately comes to mind.  But how does this become a principle?  Let’s think about how large the Christian Scriptures are.  ## books that span across eons in the time span of the world, human history, and the history of a specific people.  The word love is referenced ## times in what most Protestant Christians consider to be the complete Bible.  How do we scoop up a phrase like Love thy neighbor and attribute to it the weight that we do?  Maybe because its in the first ten commandments of Torah.  Then we cross-reference it with Jesus’ recounting of the most important commandment.  Later, the Apostle Paul gives his ‘Amen’ when in 1 Corinthians 13 he tells us how great love is.  It’s a plausible route, but admittedly circuitous.  I mean it seems to fit together, but how many passages offering counter testimonials have I overlooked in hopping from Torah, to Jesus, to Paul?  To mention a few, I wonder if Cain’s “Am I my brother’s keeper” just a foil to this Principle.  I wonder if love thy neighbor extended to the Egyptians who in Israel’s exodus drown in the waters of the Sea of Reeds.  I say these things not because I’m against loving thy neighbor, even if that person ends up being thy enemy.  But I raise it to ask if we know what we are doing when we try to read the Bible and sift some practical insight from it. 

Recently I heard a sermon that I felt quite fairly dealt with the issue of biblical interpretation.  In it the pastor cited biblical precepts, patterns and principles.  But the more I examine the categories, I realize how hard it is to divide up the biblical narrative in such a artificial way.  What if, as Soong-Chan Rah’s recent book The New Evangelicalism suggests, our surefire ways of reading the bible are part of our cultural conditioning?  We will be reviewing the book on this blog soon.  But for now I present this thought.  Perhaps chasing after precepts, patterns and principles is a perculiarly Western mode of reading sacred Scripture, or reading any book when you think about it.  Is it just me, or have you noticed how captivated Westerners, particularly Americans are by putting numbers and bullet points in front of ideas.  We hunger for 5 habits, 6 minute abs, 7 ways to please your man, 8 ways to lose him, and the ubiquitous top ten list.  These pithy ways of organizing ideas come about when we necessarily comb through and choose knowledge from a chaotic world full of information.  But are the kinds of ancient narratives we find in the Bible, or our life stories today, amenable to this kind of treatment?

I’m not sure.  I’ll give you another example.  A recent conversation brewed up on Scot McKnight’s blog about whether policing or soldiering is a genuinely Christian vocation.  This is a difficult and easily contested issue.   Both those who favor and support those vocations and those who do not feel they are upholding valuable tenants of the Christian faith and tradition.  What surprised me was the confusing and sometimes convuluted way in which Scripture was used in that conversation.  Yet again I saw how inherently difficult it is to know that we know what we are talking about when we start searching the Bible for a solution.  John the Baptist’s warning to potential soldiers and Paul’s words concerning the Roman authorities were cited in contrast to Jesus’ ’turn the other cheek’ in sermon.   But should all these passages be weighed equally?  I wrestle with whether we should assume John, Jesus and Paul are on the same page, or necessarily agree with each other all the time.  Alittle exploration into 2nd Temple Judaism, and the riffs and tensions between John’s movement and Jesus’ movement come into view.  Should we therefore take John’s approach with a grain of salt when it differs with Jesus? 

The conversation also turned towards an examination of biblical characters whose positions or actions, regardless of their violence or distastefulness brought about blessing.  But just because the Centurion was a soldier, Rahab was a prostitute and Jacob was a John, does that mean these professions are to be commended or preferred?  None of this is to say there is a simple answer to the question of violence and vocation.   In this case, as in many others, I get the feeling we are somehow chasing the wind if we’re seeking the last word on the issue. 

We desperately need some ways to break these impasses, but where are they? Sorry to end this with more questions, but I certainly hope we find them.

We’re Back! We’re Married!

This blog has been on hiatus since Sung Yeon and I began our wedding festivities.  Over the past month we have traveled from Chicago to Hawaii and back again to celebrate with friends and family.  We have begun settling in after what has been a whirlwind of a time.   We are back though and have brought with us new questions, observations and topics to explore.  Stay Tuned. 

In the meantime, here’s alittle poem celebrating the life journey we have begun together and the kind of household we hope to build.  With God’s Grace!

No speed of wind or water rushing by
But you have speed far greater. You can climb
Back up a stream of radiance to the sky,
And back through history up the stream of time.
And you were given this swiftness, not for haste
Nor chiefly that you may go where you will,
But in the rush of everything to waste,
That you may have the power of standing still–
Off any still or moving thing you say.
Two such as you with such a master speed
Cannot be parted nor be swept away
From one another once you are agreed
That life is only life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar.

~Robert Frost