Spreading the Word

Soft Landings

2010-11-07T08:33:00.003-05:00

"They weren't interested in learning how to land." Remember that tidbit, from the news coverage of the guys who flew planes into the Twin Towers?

"Overheated economy". "Market correction". The second is what inevitably happens-- as surely as a rock thrown up in the air will gradually lose speed, slow to a stop in mid-air, then come down, accelerating as it comes-- in the wake of the first. "Normal people" (read: the vast majority of human beings who don't have large reserves of money or "stuff" at their personal disposal) dread these "corrections".

Significant transitions, major changes to our surroundings, are as much a part of being alive, as is breathing air. Summer vacation -> fall semester. Unpleasantly hot temperatures -> pleasant temperatures -> unpleasantly cold temperatures. Married couple -> married couple with a child. Pastor John Doe -> no pastor -> interim pastor. Working at a job making $100K / year -> looking for a job making $100K / year. Having two perfectly good ankles and playing an intense soccer game every week -> not being able to put any weight whatsoever on your right leg, and working every day in bed with your laptop, for six solid weeks. Working every day in bed with your laptop -> gradually recovering use of your right leg with about 4 hours of physical therapy a week. And so on, and so on.

Making it even more interesting is that some people are hardwired to seek transition, while others avoid transition fiercely. Beginning a transition *together*, and arriving safely on the other side-- well, that's great stuff.

So anyway... it's possible that I've had a soft landing.

Back in the (Writing) Saddle

2010-10-30T07:24:00.001-04:00

Well, how about that-- it's been just over a year since my last post here. A few weeks before Election Day then, three days before Election Day today.

My decision, last October, to quit the radical politics business, enabled a consensus among myself, my wife, and my pastor, that I should join (i.e., accept nomination to) the leadership council (session, in Presbyterian lingo) of my church for my first three-year term. So that happened; I was nominated, the congregation elected me, and it has been a great time so far.

There are several things I have wanted to post to Facebook, over the last week or two; insights into practicing a different "mode" of being. In honor of my SF Giants-loving friend Forrest, I am going to call it the "jazz mode". Central to the definition of "jazz" (especially in its live performance mode) is the concept of improvisation. You have a plan, an idea, that is going to be worked out and expressed, through the "song". The "song" even has a title. There are portions of the song that stick more to the "script", and there are portions where one or another of the musicians in the group, "does what he feels"-- in the context of the "song" or "piece".

This has been a problem for me, for a long, long time. I remember my 7th grade art class at J.R. Masterman, when Mrs. Glover seemed to "see something" in me, and encouraged me to produce for her class, and I just didn't feel like I was "getting it". One month that year, she named me "Artist of the Month". Now, getting awards, that I was something I could relate to! But I kind of felt that I was being made the butt of some bizarre joke, getting this particular award. An artist? Me? Mr. Roboto, Mr. Precision, Mr. Control-the-damn-thing-at-all-costs-lest-it-fly-off-the-rails-and-destroy-itself?

Anyway, back to the subject, back to this last week or two. Something about the power, the beauty, of improvisation, has finally "clicked". I'm watching myself do it, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. And I've discovered something wonderful: it is easier to plan, when you know you will be improvising frequently in the middle of the script. At least it is for me.

This is the meaning of "living by the Spirit". I think we've all heard the expression that life is not a dress rehearsal? Wow. Let that really sink in. Learn your lines, folks, but don't try to get it perfect, because you don't get another try! Better to keep the show flowing, love the performance, love the audience, love the lights, the set, the music, the other performers.

So anyway. I am going to try to write an hour a week (to start, at least), making a lot of use of my memories from across my life (I'll be 40 soon!). I will write on Saturdays. I may just spend an hour dumping memories and past impressions into a text file, I may spend a full hour writing a blog for this space. How about this: I will put at least a one-sentence post up here, every week. Ah good, I'm so glad you're ok with that.

See you next week!

The Authorities are God's Servants For Your Good

2009-10-18T17:06:00.004-04:00

I think it is fitting that it was exactly six months ago tomorrow that I announced, right here on this blog, that I had decided that I needed to withdraw from our political system. I spent the next six months studying about the underlying concepts of the State, the ideas and presuppositions that form its foundation, and that "make it go". Not surprisingly, it appears that one's warmth of feeling toward the American system of government varies a lot from person to person, depending on how strongly one senses one "belongs to" the system, or the system "belongs to" to one.

During that time I struggled somewhat with Jesus' famous teaching (delivered in the midst of a very tense moment, in the last few days before his death) "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's." But let's face it-- there is pretty much nowhere in the Gospels that you get the sense that Jesus is a buddy of The System. Quite the contrary-- he is constantly clashing with members of the Jewish ruling class.

The bigger problem was the single most famous passage in the whole bible dealing with government: a portion of Paul's letter to the Romans-- chapter 13 verses 1-7. I will quote it here again:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing. Pay to all what is due them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.

That's pretty tough, for a revolutionary-type to swallow: "...whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed." But it doesn't really contradict what we get from Jesus, either. There was exactly one time, in Jesus entire life, where it is reported that he used physical force against anyone or anything, let alone against "the governing authorities"-- the episode of his "cleansing of the temple". It doesn't take too much deep thought to understand what really got Jesus mad, and it was what got all Jews really mad: it was the incursion of "the world" onto "God's property". He was furious because the world's system of domination of the weak by the strong, and of the rich taking advantage of the poor, was alive and well, right inside the outer court of the temple. The temple cult was "just business": just one more "show" that you have to pay (and pay dearly) to see. It was a travesty of everything God stands for.

I've restated the standard anti-government lines from time to time over the last few months, but I think my last post sprang from a sense of restlessness with the stalemate I was having in my own mind with the "other anarchists"-- the ones that stand with the poor and view the problem with the system as an issue of government being in the pocket of the wealthy, not that government is not sufficiently respecting property rights. That post led to some productive sparks in the comments, and I finally bit the bullet and acquired the feminist book my sister had exhorted me to read-- The Autonomy Myth by Martha Albertson Fineman. I was finally ready to hear the message that "the State" is not, per se, the cause of all our ills. "The State" is one collective organ of society, "The Market" is another, and "The Family" is largely left to struggle haplessly as the other two duke it out decade after decade and century after century.

Anyway, I had to revisit Romans 13. I now believe that what Paul is saying is actually very important. He is saying that while we struggle mightily to spread the news about God's kingdom, and work to see God's "cleared territory" (to use a modern anti-insurgency phrase) on earth expand ever further, there is a place for the use of deadly force. And not only that, but that those who are professionals in the use of force, are acting in the capacity of servants of God, and need to be paid for what they do. And then, at the end of the passage (verse 7) we see that Paul and Jesus are on the same page, after all! Paul makes it concrete ("taxes... revenue... respect... honor..."), Jesus leaves it more vague ("...what is Caesar's... what is God's"). Paul is speaking as a good Roman citizen, who is able to appreciate the "Pax Romana", Jesus is speaking as a devout Jew, who knows that God is sovereign over all creation, and has merely allowed Rome temporary jurisdiction over the lands it has conquered (see his statement to Pilate, at the time of his trial: "You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above...", John 19:11). When we're in Caesar's jurisdiction, we give to him "what is his". The difficult question of when we're in that jurisdiction and when we are not, I'll talk about more in the future.

Paul and Jesus are speaking from two quite different viewpoints, but have the same opinion about government-- leave it alone, give it a wide berth. Focus on doing the good things God is leading you to do. Jesus' statements are tinged with the resentment that comes from a fundamental identification with the poor and oppressed, and a knowledge that the rich are "the system". Paul is more concerned in this passage, I believe, with the problem of tamping down what was almost certainly a widespread sentiment among the Christian church of the first century: "Why should we tolerate the oppression of pagan Rome? We are children of the King, and shouldn't have to be subject to these enforcers of the worldly system." His response, especially in the light of what immediately preceded this little discourse, at the end of chapter 12, is: "It would not be wise to oppose Rome by force. God has instituted Rome to serve a purpose for this time in history, just as he has instituted that a stone shall fall to the ground when you drop it. And besides, we do not accomplish the aims of the Kingdom by violent means."

So what is the upshot of all this? The upshot is that you will no longer see much anti-government rhetoric in my future writings. I now believe that there are very few passages in the bible that speak directly about government, for a good reason: government is not the problem. Just like the poor, we will have "government", in some form, "always with us". Government is essentially a clean-up device, for dealing with things when they go wrong. What that means is that if you try to use government to effect positive change, it will backfire spectacularly, and spawn more problems than it purported to solve. But also, I have come to believe that throughout history, governments have been God's tool for bringing devastating judgment for the evil deeds of people, and the current American government is no exception.

Instead, I will spend more time talking about the rest of the bible, that tells us all about God's plan for humanity, and how we can bring that plan about in front of our eyes, slowly but surely. That plan calls for cooperation, reconciliation, truth-telling and sharply wielded reason. There are ways of doing Acts 2:44 ("All who believed were together and had all things in common..."), in our time. We need to start doing them.

Government: The Gun Is Always In the Room

2009-09-20T23:38:00.003-04:00

I appreciate that many of us have a very practical nature, and a problem-solving bent. But I going to take a stab at demonstrating that as Christians we need to be thinking about means, and not just ends. Or to put it another way, we need to examine some of the core methods that undergird the operation of all "worldly government", and then based on what we find, to decide if the oft-posed question as to the "appropriate role of government" is in fact moot. I particularly would like to request that my “left-leaning” or “social justice” friends bear with me and read through this little thought experiment.

We all agree, I'm sure, that a lone man pointing a gun at me and demanding that I hand over a specified amount of money, is evil. And I'm also pretty sure that we agree that if he gives a reason for his demand, that involves the supposed welfare of a third party, he is still evil. If you do not agree that in the second case, the man is evil, please note that in a comment on the post, but for now I will assume that you’re with me, and will proceed from there.

So the lone guy, pointing a gun at me, demanding money, to be used to benefit another person who is not present, is evil. Then let's add a wrinkle: instead of a lone man, he is a man who has been hired by a group of 10 families, to come to the door of each house in this 100-family subdivision, point the gun, present the humanitarian cause (really, it doesn‘t matter what it is) adopted by the 10 family consortium, and request the specific donation. And now, the “cause” is not the mere fulfillment of the need of a single person or family, but is a project that will benefit all the families of the subdivision--say, a new park area open to all in the subdivision. The 10 families are contributing that same amount, voluntarily. Evil? I don't see how you could say no. (Gun-- remember?)

Ok, now instead of a 10-family grouping hiring the man with the gun, it is a 90-family grouping, in the same 100-family subdivision. Everything else remains the same. Evil? Again, what has changed, that would allow you to say no?

What if, instead of a man with a gun, the 90-family consortium just sends a letter to the 10 other families, informing them of the decision of the 90 families, and saying we hope you comply willingly? 8 of the 10 families decide to send in the money. Follow-up letters are sent to the 2 remaining families, informing them that this is a cause that was adopted by 90% of the families of the subdivision, and that 8 of the other 10 families agreed voluntarily to comply with the decision, and that if they don't comply, there might be "unfortunate consequences"? 1 of the 2 families now sends in their check, leaving just one holdout family.

A series of increasingly menacing letters are now sent, but the holdout family does not budge. A final letter is sent, informing that family that as they have demonstrated a brazen disregard for the good of the whole subdivision, they have forfeited their ownership of their house, to the Subdivision Family Well-Being Organization, and now have 60 days to find somewhere else to live, and vacate the house. 60 days pass, and the family still has not vacated the house. The SFWO hires several men to go to the house with guns, and evict the family from the house. The family refuses to open the door. The men break open the door, and physically carry out the members of the family, who still refuse to leave under their own power. The SFWO auctions the house off to a new family, from outside the subdivision. From the proceeds of the property sale, they deduct the contested family donation, plus the extra costs incurred due to the seizure of the house and the auction, etc. etc., and remit the rest to the evicted family.

Evil? Yes? (Again, I still don't see what has changed, that would make it not evil.) Ok, then expand "subdivision" to "township" or “state“ or “country“, and increase the number of families, and provide for regular elections for officials who will administer the "family cause organization" by collecting the regular donations, and seeing that the money gets spent efficiently on the cause.

Add to the mix, that "this is the way it has been done for 200 years", and that resisters to the plan are extremely few and far between. (Why would you expect them to be numerous? Who likes being evicted from their own home, that they purchased fair and square from someone else, and which they may have invested years of their lives in?) Add what many consider to be the coup de grace: “By your residence/birth in a specific area, you are implicitly a party to a ‘contract’ that requires your sharing in the costs of administering the area.”

Do you see the point? Even if *no one* refuses to pay their demanded share, and therefore incurs the forceful penalty, it *does not remove the fact* that it is a system that *relies on unprovoked force*. Without the threat of force, it *cannot exist*.

This is not the way God’s kingdom works. The way God’s kingdom works is demonstrated by the story of Zacchaeus (Luke 19), who, upon seeing the light of the Kingdom of God, voluntarily, *joyfully* even, pledged to give large amounts of his wealth (ill-gotten or no) for the benefit of the poor, and to make multiple restitution for any ill-gotten wealth. It is also demonstrated by “Lazarus and the rich man” (Luke 16:19ff), in which the rich man “goes to hell“, for a reason that is left implicit-- but which a reasonable person would conclude was, that he did not show compassion toward the wretched man who begged at his gate. Fine, he goes to hell, but I still know of no paradigm, in the Kingdom of God, calling for forceful seizure of wealth from the wealthy, on behalf of the poor, or on behalf of the “public good”.

In my next post I’ll address the two biblical passages that seem most strongly to advocate for a taxing government, or at least to give consent to it.

Building a People of Power - Part 1

2009-09-06T15:20:00.002-04:00

I stand by what I said in earlier posts on the subject of how I believe one should use the Bible to discern God's will. However, I now feel that to a certain extent I was reinventing the wheel during that process, because it just so happens that a few years ago I read a book which really energized and inspired me, called Building a People of Power: Equipping Churches to Transform Their Communities. At the beginning of this book, the author (Robert C. Linthicum) lays out an approach to interpreting the Bible which he uses as the foundation for all of his theological statements throughout the remainder of the book. (See the back cover here.)

(Quick side note for folks that may know me from church: I first acquired this book when I was investigating what people do when they begin to be involved with the Servant Partners mission organization, which sends teams into the urban slums of the Global South to spread the good news of Jesus and to teach the people how to organize their neighborhoods to solve problems of crushing poverty and oppression. When you go to SP's main orientation program in Manila, they ask that you read a set of books beforehand. This is one of them.)

Linthicum does not make any direct statements in favor of anarchism, or say much specific about politics in general, but since I believe that the main concepts of his book are crucial for making concrete plans for dealing with the crises of our day, I will most likely be periodically writing posts derived from different parts of the book. Also, to anyone who wants to better understand how to get together with other Christians to bring forth God's mighty kingdom in the midst of our dark society, without adopting the tired programs and rhetoric of the political Left or Right, I highly recommend that you get yourself a copy.

Please-- if you have any expectation of reading any posts from me about the bible in the future, take a few moments to carefully read, in its entirety (don't worry, it's not that long), the excerpt that I have provided a link to above, because the approach to Scripture described there is what I will be applying in everything I say or write about the Bible. If you disagree with this approach, you will disagree with my statements about what the Bible teaches.

And so, with this preparatory material published, I now feel ready to write on the two subjects I've been itching to write on for a long time now: Paul's brief statement in Romans about the proper relationship of the Christian to "secular government" (Romans 13:1-7), and Jesus' famous "Render unto Caesar" quote, which is reported in almost the exactly same words in all three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). So stay tuned.

Musical Interlude

2009-08-13T11:03:00.002-04:00

I was riding my bike this morning, in the pseudo-rain (turned not so pseudo for a few moments), feeling a little bit heavy of heart. And toward the end of the 30 minutes, I remembered this song, which is another of my favorites from my childhood church experience:

Your steadfast love extends to the heavens
Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds
Your righteousness is like majestic mountains
And your wisdom, like the depth of the sea
And you come to me;

Filling my heart with your lovingkindness
I find my peace in the shadow of your wings
I eat my fill from abundance in your household
And I drink from the streams of rejoicing
You are my king.

I may update this post with a link to an audio file of my singing it, if I can pull it off. Because the music is beautiful.

We Wrestle Not Against Flesh and Blood

2009-08-09T17:55:00.004-04:00

Now that I have apparently come out against the existence of "the supernatural" in my previous post, let me confuse matters by quoting this famous passage:

Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. (Ephesians 6:11-12, King James Version)

Hmmm... Interesting stuff, no? This passage clearly shows us that there is a whole world of bad out there, that we can't even see, right? When we learn in Frank Peretti's novel This Present Darkness that there are demons who are sort of like filthy vultures (or something), who have swords that they can plunge into your engine block at just the moment you need to drive away quick to refute a room full of New Agers, it is obviously right out of the bible.

Um... no. I am totally sympathetic with people for falling into this trap, because the phrase right before "For we wrestle not..." is "the devil". And we know that the devil is a supernatural being, right? And if we're wrestling "not against flesh and blood", then, well, what else is left?

Ideas. "Memes". Belief systems that seem to "have a life of their own". Something all these principalities, powers, and rulers have in common is that they feed on fear. If people weren't struggling to "save their lives" (as they understand their "lives") by playing their little part to support the current power system, the power system would, well, have no power. People are in bondage to these systems of thought, these carefully woven webs of truth and half-truth and outright lies. They define their very identities by these systems.

So, Jesus said "Those who seek to save their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives for my sake will find them." Are you willing to "lose" your life as you currently know it, a willing (but perhaps grumbling) servant to the "principalities, powers and rulers of this present darkness"? Or will you continue to bind your identity to this current system of supposed "participatory democracy", and find yourself utterly lost when it inevitably crumbles away and/or your secure spot in it vanishes?

Voluntaryism is very clear about one thing: we will not achieve our aims by attempting to change the current system by force (including the inherent violence of the electoral process), or by violently overthrowing the current system, only to replace it with the next batch of "P, P and R". The war is for the minds of the people. (Alex Jones, infowars.com: "There's a war on for your mind!" George Donnelly, georgedonnelly.com: "Arm your mind for liberty!") And this fight for your heart and mind is most intensely manifest in "high places".

Let me clean up the loose end of "the devil". I somewhat jokingly implied that the mention of him might mislead you into thinking that the following sentences applied to a supernatural realm. Here's a shocker for you: I don't believe that the devil is a personal sentient individual entity. We can refer to the devil as "he", just as we can refer to God as "he", but we should not fall into the trap of thinking that there is a "place" or a "dimension" where these two "reside". Who is the devil? He is the supreme leader of that band of "P, P, and R". The one that binds them in evil and makes them mutually reinforce each other. He is "the" malevolent will.

I may write more on this, but I think I'm rambling a little now, so I'll stop. Next up: Romans 13:1-7. "There is no authority except from God... whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed... for the authorities are God's servants..."

"Shema, Yisrael..."

2009-07-31T21:34:00.004-04:00

It's taken me a lot longer to get around to writing the follow-up post to "Thoughts on 'Biblical Epistemology'", than I thought it would. And at this point, I think I'm writing this more for my own sense of closure than any other reason. When I wrote the last post, I said that my motivation was to show bible-believing (aka Evangelical) Christians how the bible clearly shows that voluntaryism (free market anarchy) is the best political view to have. But now, I just want to put a stake in the ground where I stand-- which is far away from Evangelicals, and far away from atheists and agnostics.

For well over 20 years, probably almost since the time I started really thinking about God in earnest, I have felt a kind of split within my own mind, a seemingly irreconcilable conflict. On the one hand, I belonged to (was "nestled in", might be a better way of putting it) a community of Christians whose belief in God and in his chosen savior Jesus filled them with joy and hope. I loved to sing for over an hour every Sunday, and forget everything else, and bask in the sense of the wonder and beauty of God. We sang many songs that came from Jewish prophetic writings, like this one from Zechariah:

"The Lord your God is in your midst,
the Lord of Hosts who saves.
He will rejoice over you with joy.
He will renew you in his love,
He will rejoice over you, with shouts of joy."

Just remembering that song brings tears to my eyes, and there are so, so many others. My point? Just that I have been experiencing God's real presence when among Christians, all my life, and I still do.

On the other hand, I have always been a keen observer of nature, a lover of logic, an avid reader of scientific texts of all kinds. As I learned more and more about what scientists have discovered, and the process of developing scientific theories, I began to wonder more and more about all the "supernatural" things we read about in the bible. Looking back, I can't remember when I first thought there might be a conflict between modern scientific knowledge and the miraculous stories of the bible, but quite smoothly I think I developed two "buckets" or "compartments" for my mind: one for religion, and one for science. As long as I was enveloped fully in my Christian community, and had very limited exposure to people who didn't believe the stories of the bible were true, I was able to negotiate living in my "religious mind" when at church, and in my "scientific mind" when, well, studying science at school. The "two minds" pretty much left each other alone.

When I was about 24, the doctrinal system of Evangelical Christianity started to lose its integrity in my mind. I had the basic problem of "come on, how could a person walk on water, and why would God even give someone the ability to do that?" etc. etc. etc., but I also was starting to struggle with more abstract "theological" concepts, such as "one God, three persons". This struggle got very intense, with my desire for logical harmony and consistency warring against my "moral" sense that I should "just believe it". I was convinced, from hearing it over and over and over again, across the years, from all sorts of people, that to attempt to understand God was hubristic and perverse. Finally, that year, I just removed my need to understand-- by stopping my participation in the activities of Christians. This was the fall of 1995. For the next four years I attempted to define myself outside of Christianity, and failed.

In the fall of 1999, after a string of soul-shaking events, I gave up the struggle to understand-- by acknowledging that I needed to participate in Christian community, and accepting that "perfect" understanding was not a prerequisite for coming to church. However, I never regained the anthropomorphic understanding of God the Father that I had begun to shed in 1995, and in some ways I felt that I was "in the closet" theologically, and that I was a "liberal in Evangelical's clothing". But-- the crazy thing was, I had tried to go to "liberal" churches, during my wandering period, and it just didn't work for me! I wasn't really a "liberal"! Ack! What was I, anyway? Why couldn't I just play nice?

When it was pointed out to me, earlier this year, that governments are unable to exist without violating the most basic moral principles, I turned to the bible and then, realized that the answer had been there all along.

If you read the gospels of Jesus-- what he said, what he did, how he was killed, and how his followers continued on after him, and line it up against the Hebrew scriptures, you realize what he was really about. He preached the kingdom of God, which means, really, the reign of God. Jesus said a number of things that were confusing, about his relationship with "God" or with "the Father", but he really did not refer to himself as a king, at all, until his confrontation with Pilate! And he did not offer that answer on his own, but rather in answer to Pilate's direct question to him, "You are a king, then?" Pilate asked it that way, because he was not at all getting the sense, that Jesus was promoting himself as a king of any sort. Jesus' answer was, basically, "Yes, sort of, but not in a way that you can understand."

And now, to the point of this post! Jesus referred to his return, to his "coming in glory, on the clouds". We are told that he was "taken up to heaven", while his disciples watched. Jesus talked (a little) about the "end times", and about a "day of judgment", and of course, about eternal paradise and eternal torment. But why was he killed? I maintain that it was because of how he was upsetting the order of the day, by what he said and did, and by what just naturally seemed to happen to the people who gathered around him. And the people who killed him were the ones responsible for maintaining that order.

In my last post, I tried to point to a concept given by Paul in Romans 1, which is that God can be understood by "what has been made". The comments made on the post all said, in one form or another, that knowledge about nature should be "subject to" or "guided by" the knowledge we have from the bible. In the weeks since I wrote that post, I have thought it over, and I realized that the distinction between "general revelation" and "special revelation" is a red herring.

"Historical" or "orthodox" Christianity takes as a bedrock presupposition that there are two worlds, one "seen" and one "unseen". (It is found in the very first sentence of the Nicene Creed: "We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty; maker of heaven and earth; of all that is seen and unseen.") It underpins so many doctrines and beliefs, that it is almost unthinkable to question it. But I don't question it-- I simply deny it. And, I also refuse to accept the label of "atheist" or "unbeliever". I am a steadfast follower of Jesus. I strive to follow in his steps, and to proclaim the kingdom of God, which is here, and is here now. It has always been here, and now! Jesus' uniqueness is that he was the first to realize this fact, and to refuse, unflinchingly, to refrain from acting on the realization.

Anyway, what happened, very early on in the history of Christianity, is that after Jesus kept not returning... and not returning... and not returning... the question of an actual "kingdom" was pushed neatly and comfortably into the future, to "the end of time", when Jesus would return, as king over all things, and all people (most especially, all the ones who had refused, up to this point, to acknowledge his lordship) would suddenly submit to his kingship. And the persnickety Jews, who never could get over their insistence on an actual king to rule over them righteously, were hit so hard in their homeland during the late 1st and early 2nd centuries A.D., that they ceased being a distraction from the new community of (mostly Greco-Roman) "Christians" who were more concerned with preparing people's souls for the "life to come", after death.

I don't believe in two worlds, a "physical" one where "matter" exists, and can be seen and tested, and a "spiritual" one, where "spirits" exist, and where people "go" when they die. And I don't think the Jews really believed in two worlds either, until a few centuries before Jesus, when they began to be exposed heavily to Greek philosophy, in which a dualistic view figured importantly. I even think that Jesus himself was limited in the way he could express his revelations to those around him, by the dualistic views that held sway among the pious Jews of his day.

There. I've said it. I fully realize that many people do not think it is possible to be a follower of Jesus and not believe in two separate worlds, but I say that it is possible, because I don't believe in two separate worlds, and I am a follower, and a lover, of Jesus. People may assert with very strong emotions that a Jesus who didn't do "miraculous" things, is a weak and powerless and pallid and despicable Jesus. And that people who believe in such a Jesus think that he was "only" a moral teacher, and that such a Jesus is utterly unable to save us from anything. They may assert these things, but that doesn't make them true.

"Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is One."

Thoughts on "Biblical Epistemology"

2009-06-22T16:07:00.003-04:00

Since there are so many bible-believing (or "Evangelical") Christians in North America, and more to the point, so many among my family and closest friends, I feel quite motivated to explain to folks why I believe Christians should be voluntaryists (libertarian anarchists).

But before I fully plunge into that, in order to provide some foundational principles, I wanted to take a few moments to put forward some of my thoughts on "epistemology", which is a fancy word professional philosophers use for the study of "how we know things". I would like to give the disclaimer up front, that I am not a philosopher, have not taken a single college course in philosophy, and have only read a learned (i.e. Bertrand Russell) digest of the main contributors to "western philosophy" throughout history, most of which I remember only foggily. What I am about to talk about is a sort of rough-and-ready, "poor man's" epistemology. It should go without saying that I am not going to quote any philosophical authorities, who have given us their thoughts on epistemology.

I guess I wanted to put something down here that Christians could read, and if they don't like what they're seeing in this post, they will be saved from wasting their time on future posts of mine that discuss biblical passages in depth.

When I use the phrase "biblical epistemology", I am intentionally being ambiguous, because I want to talk about two questions, rather than just the one meaning that I would be intending if this were a serious philosophical essay. The "formal" or "academic" question would be, I think: What does the bible teach about the way human beings can know things? The second follows from the first: How can we know anything, from reading the bible? (And then the first question follows, in turn, from the second, and... so on.)

If you're scratching your head right now, saying, "Well, gee... Does the bible really say much about epistemology?" then I would agree with you that, no, it doesn't say a whole lot, but it does say a few things. First, the two fave passages of Evangelicals from the Greek scriptures, when talking about the bible's own "witness" to its authority (all passages are NRSV, unless otherwise noted):

"All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

and:

"First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God." (2 Peter 1:20-21)

Those are fine passages, of course, and ought to serve as exhortations to us to study the bible a lot and figure out how to apply it and teach it in practical ways, but-- they are really red herrings, when it comes to the question of epistemology (and hermeneutics, for that matter!), for the simple reason that they are circular. They basically say: "This book, that I [the passage] happen to be part of, is God-inspired and authoritative, and should form the basis of teaching about God." Or, they tell us, "The bible is good! Read and study it!"

But the following passage qualifies as a biblical teaching about epistemology:

"For what can be known about God is plain to [people], because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made." (Romans 1:19-20)

WOW! This is a simply staggering pronouncement. Paul is saying here that what can be known about God has been understood, throughout all history, through the "things he has made", aka "nature" or "the creation". Now, I of course am not the first person to stumble upon this verse, over the last 1,900 years or so since Paul wrote it down. People have said a lot about it. I think that it is probably the main source of the "general" side of the doctrine of "general and special revelation".

The established Christian doctrine of God's revelation to humanity, general and special, is relatively straightforward. "General" revelation refers to Paul's statement above, about what all people can know (plainly!) from nature (about God?). "Special" revelation is basically, the contents of the bible.

So this is the moment you've been waiting for-- the main point of this post! "Orthodox" Evangelical Christianity holds that the bible ("special revelation") "teaches itself" and/or "is inerrant and complete". All passages are to be interpreted "through the lens of" all other passages. God's word is true (it's God's word, after all, how could it not be true), so you need to study the bible "as a whole", and the "systematic theology" ("theology" = knowledge about God) that emerges from that effort, will be harmonious, even if individual passages seem to contradict each other.

"General revelation", on the other hand, is... "natural law", I guess, in this doctrine of revelation. Or... You know, it never really made sense to me, this concept! I mean, if everything that can be known about God, can be (plainly!) understood just from observing nature, why do we bother with the bible at all? (Good question! we hear pipe up the modern "secularists/atheists" who are reading this post for some reason.)

I'll tell you what I think:

1) To state the obvious: God is eternal, the bible is not. That is to say, the bible had a beginning, whereas God has always existed, and even creation existed long before the bible did.

2) In light of #1, we can say that Paul's statement about gaining knowledge of God from creation, is true (it's in the bible, after all) but it would still be true, even if Paul hadn't said it, and even if there were no bible at all!

3) In light of #2, we can only conclude that while the verses of the Christian bible should, certainly, be interpreted through the lens of other verses of the Christian bible, more importantly, the whole effort of interpreting the Christian bible, and any other religious text, must be guided based on knowledge about God that is plainly available through the study of nature, i.e., independent of the Christian bible.

I think I'll stop here, and continue in another post, with my thoughts on the subject of what can be known about God from what he has made. But feel free to comment on what I've got so far.

Free Philadelphia!

2009-06-08T16:08:00.004-04:00

I want to say a word or two about the little bit that I've learned about the Free State Project, and the Voluntaryists who blog on FreeKeene.com. As far as I've been able to make out, the Free State Project is trying to focus attention on New Hampshire because it is one of the least populated, least taxed and least "governed" (i.e. by the taxing State) states in the U.S. One can only imagine that it is hoped that if sufficient numbers of liberty-minded activists move there, eventually New Hampshire or a portion thereof might be able to secede from the U.S.

But I am far less interested in the Free State Project, than I am in the bloggers on FreeKeene.com, because FreeKeene.com is, at least based on what is found on the website masthead, a Voluntaryist presence. (I refrain from calling it a "group", in deference to the strenuous opinion expressed in a few of the blogs that I've read there, that the bloggers "belong to no group" and are "just individuals". I can appreciate why this is stated so firmly and so frequently, as they may want to avoid federal prosecution under R.I.C.O.) And I tip my hat to these bloggers, and to the LP, and to the Free State Project, for working hard to get the message out to Americans that we live in a society that is not nearly as free as we think it is, and which, more importantly, is becoming less free with every passing year.

But I think that the marginalization of these sort of activists continues apace, and I will explain why. The "framers" were (many of them) extremely creative, highly intellectual, multi-talented, and deeply courageous men. But America has changed! Those sort of men are mere myths to the vast majority of Americans. And the LP is a party of virtually nothing BUT ideas. Once you understand the danger of the ever-growing national State, you want to talk about it, and sometimes to yell about it, and sometimes to screech about it. I was there! Just a few weeks ago, I was there. I had long and intense conversations with my two more intellectual sisters. I did not really budge either of them! Not with all the logic and reason that I see in such sparkling relief, in my head!

Here's the rub: Americans understand, in an elementary school sort of way, that ideas are very important to the American people. But now, what they really want, is solutions. For the problems of TODAY. And also, the fact is that for Americans, the American State is a "brute fact", like the air we breathe. They can't do the mental gymnastics required to think things through, with that thing gone.

So, my understanding (which I invite correction of) is that the Voluntaryists of Keene (or at least the ones on FreeKeene.com) are mainly following the civil disobedience route, in an attempt to show the people of Keene, and NH, and the U.S., how big a sham civil liberties are in America. But here's the problem: you've chosen a "happy" state to do this in! One of the most free states in the union! So, you will annoy the residents (I know this is happening), and you will be nothing more than a curiosity to the rest of America, because NH is a tiny, peripheral curiosity of a state to most Americans.

I live in the immediate outskirts of the city of Philadelphia. I am 38 years old, and except for the last six years, and the four years I was in college in New Jersey, I was a resident of Philadelphia. Philadelphia does not get all the media attention that L.A., Chicago, NYC, and even Boston and S.F. get, but one could easily argue that the Philadelphia metropolitan area is one of the most important urban regions in the world, let alone in the U.S.

In the true agorist (unfettered free market) spirit of friendly competition, I would like to suggest a challenge: I'll strive to rid this 5 million person "city-state" of all statist oppression (in my lifetime would be great), and you see what you can come up with in the 1.3 million person state of New Hampshire. Or maybe you can tackle the Boston metro area, and get Keene into it as well (even though Cheshire County isn't part of the Boston MSA)?

You gotta have faith!

What I've learned in the interim

2009-06-03T17:27:00.005-04:00

I feel so changed now, from what I was when the 40-day "fast" began (April 21), that it's a little hard to know what to write, by way of "personal update".

My "personal relationship with Jesus" (to use the Evangelical catchphrase) has been deeply revitalized (think: "raised from the dead"). I feel that I've been given the ability to read the gospels, and imagine myself there, hearing Jesus' words from his own mouth, hearing and seeing the people he interacted with.

A common way of describing the "story of the bible" in a single phrase is "God's work of redeeming his creation from the Fall", or something like that. Sometimes it's described as the story of God's successive covenants with "his people". However, I now believe that, from beginning to end, the bible is about God's continuous efforts to eradicate slavery from among humanity and, conversely, his efforts to teach humanity what freedom is and to act it out. More time has now passed from Jesus' time up to the present, than from the beginning of recorded history up to the time of Jesus. The only way of viewing things that makes any sense to me, is to interpret history since the death of Jesus in terms of the successive systems of slavery (read: governments) and the apologies made on their behalf, and the reasons given for their overthrow, and the sacrifices made by those who saw (by faith) a world without slavery.

Mahatma Gandhi introduced "satyagraha" ("truth-force") to a world unfamiliar with the Sanskrit language and Hindu spirituality, by means of his non-violent campaign against British domination of India. I believe that he correctly understood Jesus to be all about the very same thing, as "the stone that makes them stumble and the rock that makes them fall" (Romans 9:33, I Peter 2:8).

Here in the United States, with the first governmental system in all of human history created largely "from ideas", the evolution of free society has advanced far. The "framers" (i.e. of the U.S. constitution) took the huge step of abolishing hereditary titles and honors. They did not take the even huger step of abolishing taxation of the populace under threat of force. However, over the period of time since the founding of the American state, Americans have shown just how much can be done without government, and they have also been shown how much violence and cruelty and destruction even their supposedly "noble" government is capable of.

As a "voice crying out in the wilderness", there is the Libertarian Party, which was founded in the U.S. in 1971, a mere 14 years after Atlas Shrugged was published. I'm a few chapters into Atlas Shrugged now, and the philosophical nature of the novel is clear. Politics lurks as a marginal concept in the book, but it is not a blueprint for political change. The LP has had virtually no impact on the U.S. at the national level, over its 47 years in existence. It is far outside the mainstream, although one could possibly make the argument that a significant percentage of American voters registered as Republicans have a lot of libertarian sensibilities.

What has held them back? I believe that the LP was doomed from the moment it was founded, not to change American politics per se, because of its very acceptance of the government-promoted system of election politics, itself. Voluntaryism appears to be "like" LP core beliefs, in that it believes that "government" (read: NOT the "state") should have a minimal role in society, a role that restrains individuals from violating the life, liberty and property of other individuals. But in accepting a taxing entity called the "state" to perform this supposedly "minimal" role, the LP cut off the very branch they were trying to climb onto. Voluntaryists go "all the way", and repudiate both the state and electoral politics entirely.

I will say some more about Libertarians and Voluntaryists, and their (apparent) current strategies and tactics, in a post soon to follow.

Anyway, back to me. Even though I felt, throughout my 40-day sojourn, a strange sort of centrifugal force in my soul, flinging me outward and into "the market", I have been repeatedly reined back in, in the true spirit of Voluntaryism ("present the world with 'one improved unit'"), to the "smallest" reaches of my existence, i.e. my home (population: 3 humans, 2 smart-ish animals) and my little Presbyterian church, a few blocks away.

But if you want to "get started building the voluntary society", you necessarily want to start a business (or help start one, or grow one). And I do. Many businesses, actually. But I need to start with one. I still believe in Dendron Growth Strategies, which is (currently) a coaching, business planning, and micro-venture company of one (that would be me).

My bedrock image is Jesus' analogy for faith, in the Kingdom of God: the mustard seed. It starts very tiny, and it eventually grows into something pretty big. That's how freedom spreads: one little mustard seed of faith at a time.

No turning back, no turning back

2009-04-19T02:23:00.004-04:00

If you look down to the previous post, you'll see that almost two years has passed since I've written anything here. No point in going over everything that has happened in the interim, but strange to say, it can more or less be summarized as "We left one Presbyterian church and joined another. Again. And I finally got out of consulting, and into a stable job with a 'blue chip' software company (Oracle) where my maximum commute is 30 minutes each way. Oh, and I totally love my wife and daughter!"

So... what has brought me out of blog retirement, you ask? Something quite new, something quite unexpected. It all began like this: On March 30, Marshall Mitchell, a fellow member of the 247th Class (aka Class of 1988) of Central High School, posted the following as his Facebook status:

"Marshall Mitchell thinks that if citizens took on crime, poor education, and drugs like people in Fargo are taking on the floods, we would have a different urban America in less than a year! Change I can believe in...and it costs a lot less too!"

The very first comment on this, a mere three minutes later, was from George Donnelly (who I now know/remember is a member of the 248th Class at Central):

"Good point. The solution is through voluntary action by people working together. Not government force."

So, ok-- total honesty time: my first thought was, "Ah! That wack-a-doodle right wingnut who hates public education and doesn't think all citizens have a right to minimal health care. How nice for him to chime in here, with-- hey, surprise! 'government shouldn't be involved in dealing with urban social ills'!" Re-reading this stream now, I am embarrassed to see how wacky my own response to his statement was. (Something about how involved governments in America were in upholding slavery and Jim Crow, via force. Never mind.) It was wacky because I totally, utterly misunderstood what his intention was in alluding to "government force". In my defense, I think that most if not all of the people who read Marshall's statement, also had no clue what he was talking about, not really.

Remember that incredible moment in The Matrix where Neo is talking to Morpheus in this weird antique sort of room, and Morpheus offers him a choice of two pills to take? I can't remember much of the actual lines that led up to it, but it was basically something like:

Morpheus: So weird things have been happening to you lately.
Neo: Yeah.
Morpheus: Well, reality is not really what you thought it was. If you'd like to go back to your old life, without weirdness, take this pill. But if you'd like to really find out what's going on, take this other one. There will be no return, however, from the rabbit hole you will go down.

And Neo took the "other one" (red?) And the rest is history. (Yeah, I know, pretend history. And it's a little unfortunate that I apparently find myself in the company of the Neoconservatives, who it's been sneeringly said about, in one or more high-profile Op-Eds, that they "believe the Matrix is real". Oh well.)

To try and summarize what ensued after that first exchange with George: The "government force" he was talking about, was NOT really government poverty or community development programs themselves, but taxation. He was talking about the fact that all governments, everywhere, at all levels (i.e. local, state, federal), extract taxes from their citizens under threat of force against any noncompliant individual. And, furthermore, no government can exist without taxation, because if it doesn't tax, it's not a government. (Not a "state", strictly speaking.) And taking something from someone with the threat of force is what is commonly called "stealing". Or "theft". Which is immoral.

Ergo... the only truly consistently moral stance that one can take is... to oppose the very idea of, and existence of, the State. You know-- the government.

Wow. So, um... can I change my mind, and take that other pill now?

Anyway, in case this all seems overly cryptic to you, here's another way of saying it. I have embraced a political view that can be variously called libertarian, anarcho-capitalist, voluntaryist, agorist. It is the most radical stance that I've ever encountered, and so far I have exactly one other acquaintance who embraces it. (That would be George.)

Gee, Joel, what are you smoking? Why take up wack-a-doodle ideas about the illegimitacy of all governments, at this late stage in the game (class of 1988-- I ain't in my twenties anymore)? Where is this coming from? Well, from the basically anarchist practice of the early Christians, before they became so "acceptable" to Romans and before Constantine coopted them to help unify the empire (gah!). From the Levellers during the upheaval in England during the 1600s. From some of the great thinkers on liberty around the time of our "revolution".

And from the Hebrew bible, in the passage in I Samuel where the Israelites demand that Samuel give them a king, so they won't feel so different from other nations, and God tells Samuel to tell them in precise terms how they will be oppressed by their king if they get one. (Hint: they'll have their property taken for the king's purposes, and they'll be pressed into his military, and into tending his vineyards and flocks, etc. etc.) And God says (paraphrasing): "Don't worry, Samuel, they're not rejecting you, they're rejecting me. But go ahead, anoint a king for them. When they cry out from his oppression later, I'll ignore them." Seriously-- it says that in the bible. That God considered the Israelites' desire to be governed "properly", to be a rejection of God.

And how about the First Commandment? And how about Nebuchadnezzar and his compulsory worship of the great statue (which was not about religion, but about government)? So, ok, I'm getting a little obscure with these last two, but I'm serious.

So, to sum up: I need to oppose the government, I don't know exactly where to start taking actual practical steps (e.g., there's no way I can keep the Feds from sucking mucho thousands from my pay each year, and still work for Oracle), I'm reading a lot about it, I'll probably be writing a good bit more about it, and trying to get more of y'all to take the red pill, and join this scary, but (I believe) real, life.

Save Net Radio!

2007-05-24T11:04:00.000-04:00

So here's the deal. In early 2005, the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board issued a call for participants in a hearing that would determine the royalty fee structure for "Internet transmissions" (later changed to "digital audio transmissions") of copyrighted music, for January 1, 2006 through December 31, 2010.

Long (and pretty boring) story short, on May 1, 2007 the CRB issued its final ruling on the matter, i.e., they stuck with the rates determined a little earlier in the year and denied requests by the webcasters for further hearings.

The webcasters say that the ruling would put a lot of the "smaller" companies (read: the ones whose sole business is streaming music on the web) out of business immediately, especially since the ruling is retroactive to January 1, 2006, and that it will have a stifling effect on the whole industry of broadcasting music via the web. AOL, Yahoo!, etc. were complaining too, saying that even though they could in theory pay the new royalties, it would make their (currently quite small) music streaming divisions unprofitable and prevent growth in that area.

SoundExchange, the company that apparently is the main collector of the royalties on behalf of the recording industry, successfully convinced the CRB that more money should be coming to the recording companies from webcasters-- period. Now that a bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives, with 95 (and counting) cosponsors, which would nullify the CRB decision entirely and substitute its own much reduced fee structure, SoundExchange has made public overtures that would soften the blow for "small" webcasters, but keep the original rates for "big" ones (AOL, Yahoo!, yadda yadda). The other side (the Digital Media Association and the SaveNetRadio coalition are the most prominent public representatives) is refusing to back down, for the reasons given in the preceding paragraph.

If you're still reading, thanks for bearing with me. Before writing this, I decided to look at the actual CRB ruling text directly, to make sure I wasn't being swept along on some obviously goofy populist bandwagon. It is full of mind-numbing legal and economic mumbo jumbo, and I only read a small portion of it, but what I did get through didn't do much to change my mind about supporting the actions in Congress to remediate the situation. (I had already called both senators and my representative anyway, but this here is public, right?)

Here's how I look at it. Based on what I've read from indirect sources, the House bill (and a virtually identical bill introduced in the Senate a week or so ago) would make the webcasting royalty structure identical to the one that applies to the satellite radio companies (XM and Sirius), which is a) 33 cents per listener per hour or b) 7.5% of gross revenues received, directly related to the transmission of music. The webcaster can choose which option they want applied to them.

Two people are listening to music. One is sitting in a living room, using a decent laptop with decent speakers, connected to the internet via a wireless router. The other is sitting in a car equipped with an XM radio receiver. They both listen for one hour straight, with minimal, if any, commercial interruptions. Why on earth should the webcaster have to pay more royalty money to the recording companies than XM (which charges 13 bucks a month for sending music to a single receiver) pays?

The only "internet radio" I ever listen to is Pandora (which is way cool and has one of the best web user interfaces I've ever seen, but what do I know) and Otto's Baroque Musick, but both claim (and I have no strong reason for not believing them, especially Pandora) that they will be obliterated if the CRB ruling stands, and I think that is a bad thing.

I know you want to help, so here's what you do. Click here and then click "Call your members of Congress" link toward the bottom of the screen to get the phone numbers of your senators and representative. Calling is the most "impactful" way to communicate with them. It is very easy to do. And then, if you've got a website of your own, you can place a banner on it. I'm about to try to do that now.

Thanks for reading. You're very patient.

Update - What happened to Rumba 104.5 FM

2007-05-19T00:35:00.001-04:00

Wow-- lots of people (well, maybe 4 so far) have found my previous post by typing a question about what happened to Rumba into Google. So I will tell you all the secret knowledge I discovered by browsing to www.rumba1045.com: it has moved to 1480 AM.

Hey, AM-- that's almost as good as FM, right? Not in my car, it isn't. Anyway, presumably they weren't making as much money as they should have. Or something. Doesn't really matter.

The Day the Rumba Died

2007-05-17T16:50:00.000-04:00

I just have to share with you folks a sad thing that has happened.

A few months ago I discovered that a Philadelphia adult rock station called Star 104.5 FM had converted to a somewhat eclectic Latin music format, and had been renamed "Rumba Ciento Cuatro Punto Cinco" (104.5). (My brother Gabriel told me today that 104.5 had actually changed a good year or two ago; I was just late finding out about it.) I was thrilled. Except for the occasional English commercial, all the talking parts were Spanish. There was a decent mix of music, including Reggaeton, Salsa-style pop, a lot of soulful ballads, etc. Not the full range of Latin music, by any means, but a decent mix.

Anyway, what I'm getting to is that this became pretty much my one radio station. I occasionally would switch to 91 FM to get traffic, or my now quite small daily dose of national and world news. But when I wasn't listening to an audio book (currently hearing: "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right" by Al Franken), I was listening to Rumba.

Well, wouldn't you know, yesterday or the day before I switch to 104.5 for a little idle listening, and... the song sounds like it's in English (yes, I'm an old fogey who often can't make out lyrics in the latest crap that plays on the radio). My little denial machine actually kicked in, and soothed me with the thought that maybe this was one of those songs on Rumba that has some stretches of English lyrics. I switched away, or pushed in the audio book cassette. But then on my way home, it's undeniable: it's one of those noisy yet bland post-grunge rockers, then it's something Eddie Vetter is singing, etc.

So that's it. Just like that. No warning, no explanation, no nothing. Gone. Snatched out of my noncomprehending hands. Like the Orwellian mid-speech switch of enemies from Eurasia to Eastasia.

I guess I'll get over it pretty soon. Maybe this will end up being the thing that pushes me to finally get an MP3 player.

At the Crossroads

2007-05-07T10:57:00.000-04:00

It's been a while. Since my last entry we've visited three more churches. It looks like we have settled on one, but I thought I'd mention the two (besides Manoa) that got just one visit.

On Easter we went to Sharon Baptist Church. We didn't know anything about it; it turns out to be an African-American megachurch, right within the Philadelphia city limits. It was founded in 1934, in South Philadelphia. In 1982 it had 282 members and was located at 59th and Catharine, in West Philadelphia. They started to have space problems, and in 1999 they constructed a brand-new building not far from the reservoir, across the city line from Bala Cynwyd.

(I'm going to take a jab at the University of Pennsylvania here. I found out about Sharon because at Angela's request I was looking for a service that started at 11:30 or 12pm. After googling around for a bit, I found this. Sharon's main location hasn't been at 59th and Catharine since *1999*, and in all this time this information hasn't been refreshed on a page dedicated to "diversity" at Penn?)

Your jaw drops when you drive up to this building. This picture that Angela took with my cell phone doesn't quite do it justice:

So anyway, it now has 6,000 members. The sanctuary itself is vast, seats two, maybe three thousand. It was pretty well filled (by the time the sermon started, anyway) on this Easter Sunday, but it was made sparklingly clear by the pastor, repeatedly, that many of the 6,000 members are not very regular in their attendance.

We were late, so we missed whatever music they might have had early in the service, but we were electrified by a performance of "He Is Worthy" by their decent-sized choir, for the offertory. It sounded *exactly* like the studio recording we hear on Praise 103.9 FM. Anyway--megachurch. Flawless multimedia. On-premises restaurant of some sort (we didn't see it). Many attendees dressed as they would going to the movies-- i.e., their regular clothes. That's a big deal for a black Baptist church, and that "come as you are" atmosphere is obviously part of the reason they have so many members.

Angela (and I, and Abigail) loved the music, but the big church thing was a bit much for her. Perhaps more than that, I think she wants church to be a little bit more churchy. I am probably misrepresenting her somewhat, but that's the best I can do at the moment.

Ok, moving on. The next week we went to the African Episcopal Church of Saint Thomas. Hard to find a bigger contrast between this place and Sharon Baptist. Angela had far fewer comments about this church-- I don't think she was really tempted to return. If folks in street clothes filling a plush concert arena isn't her idea of church, neither is an Episcopal mass, really. I wouldn't have any problem with joining a church like this, and I liked the fact that the pastor ("rector", technically) is involved in local inter-faith stuff. But I spent the first 10 years or so (until almost 14 years old) of my churchgoing life attending Catholic mass.

So finally, on April 22, we visited the church that's been staring us in the face since we moved to our current residence: Overbrook Presbyterian Church. Not too cold, not too hot. Small (15 or 20 people) but powerful traditional choir. Intimate T-shaped sanctuary, reasonably well filled. Appealing young pastor. Very multicolored congregation, good age distribution. Very clean building, in good repair. Decent amount of parking, not quite sufficient for all (I found that out when I got there five minutes late the following Sunday), but we managed to get a spot in the lot that first day (on which, incidently, we were on time!) Perfectly satisfactory accommodation for our two and a half year old. One mile from our house.

Overbrook calls itself "The Church at the Crossroads". It is located at an important intersection (of routes 1 and 30) at the edge of Philadelphia. Across the street, in Wynnewood, is Palmer Theological Seminary (formerly Eastern Bapist Seminary) and St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Seminary. A bit further down Lancaster is Lankenau Hospital, where Abigail was born. A little ways down City Avenue is St. Joseph's University. On the Philadelphia side are the sprawling neighborhoods of Wynnefield and Overbrook, both of which are majority African-American.

It's at (or relatively near, anyway) another sort of crossroads as well, which may be the reason it came "unrecommended" by someone (Angela can't remember who) at Woodland: the divide within the PC(USA) and all the other mainline denominations over how to view homosexuality in general, and ordination of non-celibate homosexuals as pastors in particular. Overbrook is part of the Covenant Network, which is trying to remove an explicit prohibition against homosexual ordination from the PC(USA) constitution (aka Book of Order). Woodland, on the other hand, is a member, albeit somewhat noncommittal, of the Confessing Church Movement, which is staunchly opposed to any change in the rule. (See also this Wikipedia article about the more general mainline Protestant phenomenon.) How noncommittal? A search of "confessing" on their website does not yield a reference to Confessing Church. But the fact remains that Woodland leans conservative enough to have voted as a congregation to follow the senior pastor's lead to join the movement in 2002, shortly before he moved on from Woodland.

Anyway, yesterday was our third visit in as many weeks. We've started to meet a few interesting people. We found out that the pastor will not be there much longer, as his family is moving out of town for his wife's work. But we still feel comfortable and secure there, and we're looking forward to setting down our roots.

Premature jubilation

2007-04-04T17:41:00.000-04:00

It turns out that I should have taken with a grain of salt the perfunctory value statements made about my lipid levels by the office med tech or whoever it was (i.e. not the doctor) who called me Monday morning to tell me about the test results. As far as I can remember, she said that all four numbers were "good". Maybe she said that because all of the numbers had improved over last September; maybe there was a little indicator on the printout that showed them within a wide "acceptable" band.

Anyway, when I visited her yesterday afternoon, the doctor (eight months pregnant!) did not call any of the numbers "good". The triglycerides had dropped so precipitously that rather than smile about it she wondered aloud if I had fasted properly prior to the previous test (on which they were alarmingly high). Never mind that they were perfectly fine now. Total cholesterol, she at first said it was "way too high", until I pointed out that she was looking at last year's results for that number. She may have mumbled something about the new number being "ok"-- I don't really remember.

Anyway, LDL (bad) cholesterol is still a little too high, but I'm within 10 of the right number. HDL (good) cholesterol still too low, more than a little. So I'm supposed to try to cut out more cholesterol (and saturated fat?) from my diet to lower the LDL and exercise more to increase the HDL. Sigh. I'm not sure I can really cut all that much more out of my diet, and anyway, I want to live a little. The doctor did point out what anyone who has seen those goofy TV commercials knows already, which is that high cholesterol partly comes from diet, and partly from your family (i.e. your genes).

I wish there was a way to get more perspective on this, i.e. what kind of danger these particular deviations really represent.

Sorry this was so boring.

America's Next Top Church

2007-04-02T14:31:00.000-04:00

As I think I may have forecasted a few posts back, we visited United Presbyterian Church of Manoa yesterday. Angela was a little underwhelmed with their choir. That may sound petty, but her feeling (and I'm more or less with her on this) is that if you're going to do church choir, practice your songs until you can sing the music without making mistakes. It disheartens her when a choir stumbles on the basic execution of the musical notes, during the church service. She was pretty sour about this, but her attitude softened somewhat when a church member showed up at our doorstep roughly three hours after the service with a little welcome gift bag. (Not to try to mollify us about the choir-- I think they do it for all their first-time visitors. ;-) ) She (Angela) said, "Well, maybe we could try one of their other services." (i.e., that doesn't feature the choir that we heard in the 11am service).

Folks that aren't very computer geeky may not get this, but I remarked to Angela on our way home from lunch after church that I currently consider myself to be "safe mode" regarding church involvement. I have retracted myself into myself somewhat, to more easily allow for a phase of browsing, which is largely being directed by Angela. She doesn't really know what she wants, which is fine. I feel that my role is to keep us slow and relaxed, which means--I think--not too many different churches per month, please.

Wacky Bible

2007-04-02T14:27:00.000-04:00

I wanted to share about this version of the Bible that Angela and I have been reading together, in a "read the Bible in one year" edition. It's called The Message. The translator has opted to render all of the texts into a very informal contemporary style. This is perhaps most notable in the Psalms. He comes out with a bang with Psalm 1:

----------------------------------------
How well God must like you--
   you don't hang out at Sin Saloon,
   you don't slink along Dead-End Road,
   you don't go to Smart-Mouth College.

Instead you thrill to God's Word,
   you chew on Scripture day and night.
You're a tree replanted in Eden,
   bearing fresh fruit every month,
Never dropping a leaf,
   always in blossom.

You're not at all like the wicked,
   who are mere windblown dust--
Without defense in court,
   unfit company for innocent people.

GOD [i.e. YHWH] charts the road you take.
The road they take is Skid Row.
----------------------------------------

Anyway, so far it's been a nice solution to a longstanding problem Angela and I have had with doing Bible reading together. I've read so much of the Bible so many times, and in several translations, that it simply isn't very interesting to me to just read through it again, without "working" on it in some way. Angela, on the other hand, has some pretty big gaps in her Bible knowledge, and just wants to cover as much of it as possible and to handle any "analysis" in a casual and gentle manner. The great thing is that this translation is so wacky, that it is virtually a new book to me, and I've enjoyed reading it with Angela. We try to read at least one day's worth (I say "at least" because we started in the beginning of January and we're about a month "behind schedule" already) in bed before turning off the light.

So far, going through the daily dollops that have been portioned out for us, we've read Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Matthew, part of Hebrews, some Psalms and some Proverbs. And yes, you're right-- there's only so wacky you can get with Leviticus.

Blood and Pizza

2007-04-02T13:13:00.000-04:00

I may have mentioned that Angela and I are both on the South Beach Diet. I'm more or less in my maintenance phase now (at around 140 pounds), but the idea is that you try to abide by certain basic principles forever. So anyway, last Tuesday evening Angela asks me if I'd be willing to buy a pizza from somewhere. Pizza, being a very high-carb selection, has been pretty scarce around our house for the last few months. She suggested that Peace-A-Pizza might have some whole grain stuff on their menu. I looked them up online, and they don't.

I typed "whole grain pizza" Philadelphia into Google and eventually ran into Mom's Bake At Home Pizza, with a number of locations in the Philly metro area. It just so happens that there's a location pretty close to us, in Havertown. Check out this menu! Whole wheat crust available. A little more expensive, but hey-- 25 cents more a slice, on the large pizza. Isn't your health worth 25 cents extra? More tasty, too.

We opted for a large "Positively Pesto" (under "Special Pizzas"-- comes with chicken, sundried tomatoes, and ricotta), with whole wheat crust. The BOMB! One of the best pizzas I have ever tasted. Anywhere. Right out of my own oven. So now you know.

I guess this is a natural enough segue to my next topic-- my lipid panel. For those non-doctors out there, that means a test to find out if your blood has all the nasty stuff that gives you a heart attack. The whole reason I went on a diet this January and stuck with it is that my levels were all pretty bad as of last October, and back in early 2004 I had lost weight and seen the levels fall perfectly into line. Starting late in '04, after Abby was born, and through 2005, I gained it all back.

So anyway, after a little less than three months of dieting and having arrived within one pound of my "official" (for the purpose of the South Beach Diet website) goal weight of 140, I had blood drawn last week to allow my doctor to revisit the issue. Someone from the doctor's office called me on my cell today to let me know what the results were. All four numbers (triglycerides, total/LDL/HDL cholesterol) were "good"! Yay! Warm satisfied feelings inside. It's the combined warmth of "winning" plus the vague warm feeling of having a reduced risk of having a heart attack... some day?

In Sickness and In Health

2007-03-27T09:56:00.000-04:00

So, let's see... Abigail got a fever sometime early in the evening of Thursday March 15. That meant that she couldn't go to her school on Friday-- six hours extra childcare for Angela, on no notice. I had already planned to take the day off, so the impact to Angela was mitigated. Abby continued to have a mild fever all the way through Sunday evening, which meant two things: a) she was not going to school the next day (her normal schedule is Monday-Wednesday-Friday), and b) she appeared to have passed the magic three-day window after which the doctors tell you to bring the kid in to figure out why the fever hasn't gone away.

I stayed home again ("working from home") that Monday. She no longer showed a fever when we checked her temperature that morning, so we did not take her to the doctor. However, she seemed to have pink eye now, and her nose got very runny. Not long after this, the area under her nose got very raw and inflamed. Painful. Eyedrops for the pink eye, which she seemed to consider tantamount to torture.

I went in to the office on Tuesday and Wednesday, then stayed home again (working) on Thursday, as Angela had just gone two straight days taking care of Abby all day, and not doing her own thing on Wednesday.

Friday morning, crack of dawn, Abigail in the bed with us, Angela groans to me that she's sick. Not much to think about: now I pretty much had to stay home, not working. I wasn't sick to speak of-- just hurting all over my right side from my right-handed racquetball adventure. So I took my second "personal" day in just over a week. A week previously, in my agonizing way, I hadn't been sure whether to call in as sick (I still had lingering sniffles or whatever from my own cold at that point), or take an unplanned "personal" day. Here's the thing: in my old company (Adjoined), sick leave was a nebulous thing, and it wasn't clear what the "limit" was. In the most recent employee manual of the newer company (Kanbay), it says that we get seven sick days per year, and three personal days. In describing the purpose of personal days, they explicitly mention taking care of sick family members. In other words, it isn't appropriate to take a sick day, if you're not sick but are caring for someone who is sick, or providing childcare in place of someone who is sick.

This doesn't work so well for me. It would be much better if it was the other way around, seven days for me to help when others are sick, and three days for myself, or maybe five and five. Anyway, I'm coming dangerously close to boring myself here in my complaining about how to avoid awkwardness in taking time off, so I'll assume that I may have already passed that point for any readers.

So this past weekend, Angela was sick with a very sore throat and general crappy feeling. I started to feel a little achy late on Saturday (it was a little hard to tell it apart from the pretty severe muscle pain I had on the whole upper right side of my body-- did I mention I played racquetball right-handed last week?), and then felt much worse on Sunday. By Sunday evening, the worst was more or less over for me.

Good news for Monday: Abby ready to go back to her school, after more than 10 days away. I worked from home so I could help get her there and all. Neither Angela nor I very sick at this point (I was fine with a stiff dose of Tylenol, anyway). Subdued evening; I conked out on the sofa unexpectedly from around 6 to 7:30 or so. Angela had said she wanted to go to bed at 9 (!) since that's when she "has her dip", she said. I never understand this lurching around from going to bed at 12 or 1, all the way to 9. How about 10? 11? No matter: we were up till close to 12 again anyway.

Tuesday (today). Working from home again. No one really sick, but it's a non-school day, and I figured I'd help Angela transition back to the normal routine. Thing is, instead of going to bed super-early last night, Angela drank some slightly-strong green tea late-ish in the evening, and didn't sleep much. So she's dragging around today. Sigh.

I like to think that we're seeing the last of a big destabilization of our family that began (most likely) with Tara moving in. When Angela needs me at home so much, on zero notice, I feel like I'm presenting a pretty unreliable face to my client and my employer. But I don't need to see it that way: part of the reason I've stayed home as much as I have in the last week or two is-- because I can. The engagement I'm working on allows for it.

One of the biggest messages we've been getting from our joint counseling at CCEF is: one day at a time. I'm going to try to live by that.

Our Odyssey

2007-03-23T15:46:00.000-04:00

Earlier this month, I referred to a "new chapter" for us, with the live-in arrangement with Tara at an end. It might seem odd that I talk this way about it, when she was only here for a month, but one should keep in mind that a) we had originally intended it to last considerably longer, perhaps a year, and b) it was a very intense month, which changed us.

I think we were moving in this direction already, with Angela going to her counselor every week, me going to mine, and both of us going together to CCEF every other week (we went weekly for the first three weeks of March, to devote extra time to dealing with fallout from the time with Tara, but we've dropped back to every other week again) , but our experience with Tara seems to have focused our minds and crystallized a certain consensus between us regarding our priorities as a couple. Namely, that we need to focus inwardly and ever more intentionally on our own "work" of recovery, and of organizing our lives, as individuals, as a couple, and as a family.

Don't we often find broken people taking refuge with other broken people? There can be a two-way bond here: the party providing the refuge has a deep sympathy for the one seeking refuge, and the one seeking refuge may trust the other more, out of a sense that they "understand". This may be a reckless leap, but I wonder if this dynamic isn't a big part of what makes poverty such an intractable problem.

As best as I can make out, the up-close experience of Tara's anxiety, confusion, bitterness and isolation shook our sense of our own identity. I feel the need to emphasize that Angela spent far more time cooped up in the house with Tara than I did, and she accordingly was the more shaken. What seems to have emerged from our three separate streams of counseling work is that our identities (hers and mine) must be much more bound up with the day-to-day work of keeping house and raising Abigail.

I don't feel that I'm breaking confidence excessively to mention that Angela's counselor recently reflected back to her that she may suffer from an interesting form of "survivor's guilt", vis a vis her status as a somewhat affluent black woman in America. Her mother struggled mightily, with no husband to help at any point, to raise her in a wealthy suburb of L.A., and in that she succeeded. Angela got an Ivy League degree and now lives relatively comfortably in one of the better public school districts in the United States. What about all those black women that don't "make it" like she did? Who don't find an adequate mate, who struggle raising kids alone, more often than not in poverty? What about all those girls, worth no less as human beings than she, languishing in the cities and the poor countryside? She is aware of them-- so what is her responsibility? As a Christian? As a Christian black woman?

Her responsibility is first and foremost toward her daughter and her aging mother and her husband. You'd be surprised how little that message comes through in the Christian scriptures. What I mean by that is that except for a few scattered reminders that women should "submit" to their husbands, and that they will be "saved through childbearing", there is only one passage that I can think of that holds up caring for your family as a universal (i.e. cross-gender) value, and that is mostly a negative exhortation (to paraphrase: "Anyone who does not care for his family is worse than an unbeliever.") The Hebrew scriptures are not much help either, in my opinion, since most of what we read there mainly tends to underscore how vastly different the ancient cultures were from our own, in many respects.

If I do say so, I feel that it is even harder to find guidance in this area as a man. The one, single, solitary place that is of help is I Timothy 3:4,5: "[A bishop] must manage his household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way-- for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of God's church?" And it obviously is not much help, since the only way specified that this man is supposed to "manage" his household is by keeping his kids in line, basically. But there is a shred here, at least, for someone like me, who has in fact held church office. To me, that shred is: "You doofus! Why are you out there trying to keep a church afloat? Tend to your own family's problems first!"

Other than these two things in the Christian scriptures, any instruction to tend to your family would have to remain implicit, and really I don't think that you can make much of a case that raising a family can be a worthy "mission from God" is a distinctive of Christianity. (Although I've heard that raising families is an enormously important value to Mormons.) Anyway, this is the consensus that has been emerging between me and Angela-- our only clear "mission", at this time, is to grow stronger as a family.

A somewhat unexpected result of this has been a decision to leave Christ Liberation Fellowship. It is a small, five year old, predominantly African American "church plant" of the Philadelphia Presbytery of the PCA (the largest of a number of relatively small conservative Presbyterian denominations in the U.S.). It is struggling somewhat; as the pastor expressed to us on Sunday when we informed him of our departure, "We're too big to disband, but too small to grow without difficulty." I have struggled a bit at CLF because I have an ongoing struggle with conservative Evangelical Christianity on a number of levels, and my original rosy view that "this church is different, it has a real mission to the poor" has largely faded. Angela has been struggling with the situation of CLF's location in a virtually comatose host church which is only able to keep its doors open by renting space to four other churches (of which CLF is one). It's a chaotic arrangement and aspects of the building's dilapidation-- in particular, a portion of the roof over the fellowship hall that looks like it could fall in-- have been really getting under Angela's skin in recent months. And then there was that little incident in mid-January where Abigail almost lost the tips of two of her fingers...

I grow verbose. In plain English, attending CLF has been stressing us out. We're going to look at churches whose continued existence is in less doubt, who inhabit less precarious digs, who have a music ministry (read: choir) we could participate in with relative passivity, who have a more stable programs for children, yadda yadda yadda. It looks like we'll visit United Presbyterian Church of Manoa this Sunday.

Maybe it's more of an "anti-Odyssey", if by Odyssey you mean some kind of wandering journey away from home.

More to report later, I guess.

Switching up

2007-03-23T15:09:00.000-04:00

Ok, so last time I checked in I indicated that I had won both of that morning's racquetball games, but that my body was really paying for it. Of most significant concern was my left hip and my left shoulder. And really I was only concerned about my shoulder, that the soreness was perhaps more of the repetitive stress variety and less of the muscle-building type. (I've been playing every Tuesday and Thursday for a while. Anyone have an opinion as to whether five days of non-use of a particular muscle leads to soreness every time you resume exercising it, even if it's on a weekly basis?)

Anyway, I was still sore enough on Thursday morning that I decided to take a drastic step, perhaps more drastic than just canceling for the day. I played both games with my right hand! (And yes, you surmise correctly, I am lefthanded.) And get this-- I almost won the second game! We served back and forth maybe four or five times with the score at 14-14. (I discovered from my perusal of the official rules of racquetball the other day that in non-professional play, a two-point lead is not required to win a game.) He had won the first game something like 15-6.

I scored so well against him-- in both games, really; keep in mind that he shut me out not too long ago when I was playing with my good arm-- that I initially felt that I should allow him a sort of handicap in my own mind, to account for the disorientation of being served to from the other side of the court. But don't you think, then, that he would have done *better* in the second game, not worse, as he adapted to this? I don't know.

In any event, between the fact that as of Tuesday I had won 7 out of the last 8 eight games, and the fact that I very nearly beat him with my bad hand yesterday, I feel as though I no longer have anything to prove. So I think I'm going to stop keeping track of our ongoing win/loss record.

One more note about this, and I'd be interested to hear others' experiences or secondhand knowledge about it: exercising somewhat intensively with the less-skilled side of my body for 45 minutes or so had a curious effect on me, for roughly the next 45 minutes. It's difficult to describe, but as I drove home I felt almost as if I was in a different body. I was driving exactly correctly, right foot on the gas, left foot at the ready near the clutch, more or less normal speed, but I had frequent flashes of *unsureness* that my hands and feet were doing precisely what I wanted them to do. And despite this "unsureness", I felt quite tranquil. Anyway-- obviously I'm inclined to think that the use of my right side had something to do with it. I think I'm going to switch more regularly, and see how it affects me.

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2007-03-20T14:22:00.000-04:00

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Racquetball Revisited

2007-03-20T09:52:00.000-04:00

I decided to glean a lesson from my shutout last week in the first game, and asked Bob to let me hit the ball around for a few moments before we started the first game today. I guess it worked somewhat, since he only got 5 straight points before I got traction and started to catch up. I won that game, and the next as well, bringing us to Bob - 14, Joel - 13.

A few other notes-- since Thursday Bob had obviously either read about or been told about the technique of hitting the front wall at an oblique angle, to cause a lot of sideways bouncing, and supposedly make the ball "die" and be harder to hit. It didn't really work very well.

Also, I told him about some things I read last week in the official rules on the web: 1) A serve is good as long as it passes the "receiving line" (dashed line) without hitting any surface, and then hits the floor before hitting the back wall or more than one side wall. That last part is the key: we had been ruling all serves that hit the wall before hitting the floor as faults. 2) In amateur play, a two-point lead is not necessary to win a game. Not that big a deal, but could shorten some games, obviously.

I feel like I really pay a price for winning some of these games. My left shoulder is sore, and I didn't even smash it into the wall today. Just lots of hard swats on the ball. And my left hip is also sore, of all things. I guess 36 really is over the hill.

Taking one for the team

2007-03-15T09:02:00.000-04:00

Today is Thursday, and you know what that means-- right, morning racquetball. As usual, Bob was there before me, but only by a few minutes. He always has a few minutes to hit the ball around before we play, and we start a real game as soon as I come into the court and stretch a little.

So, I say that between less than six hours of sleep and lack of warmup, the result of the first game wasn't that surprising-- I was shut out. I won the second game, by a reasonable margin.

We fought hard in the third game, doing a lot of switching off serves without scoring. It was 8 to 10, my serve. Often I run back from mid-court as soon as I can see where the serve is going to land, but not this time, and Bob returned the serve right into my face. He hit me right below the glasses, and just to the left of the tip of my nose. It hit pretty hard. It took me a minute or so to shake it off. And of course, since it was clear that his return would have been successful had my face not been there, we treated it as "interference" and did the serve over. Anyway, I ended up winning, 15 to 12.

Updated record: Bob - 14, Joel - 11.

Roaring back

2007-03-13T09:02:00.000-04:00

So my cold seems to be largely beaten. A little stuffiness, but I feel like I have my energy back. And get this-- I won all three racquetball games today! Not only that, but I had my opponent's head spinning in the first game when I came back from 10-2.

Returning a lot more of his serves helped, but I also was able to run around a *lot* to get where I needed to be. All this on a little more than 5 hours sleep, to boot.

Current standings: Bob - 13, Joel - 9.

Losing streak

2007-03-09T14:03:00.000-05:00

I have a cold, must have started on Monday. That is my excuse for a five-game losing streak in racquetball with Bob Stei, two games on Tuesday and three yesterday. The third game yesterday was well-fought, and I even led for a while, but I couldn't pull it out. It still boils down to that far-right corner serve of his. If I can figure out a way to always return it, then I'll win again.

Standings are now Bob 13, Joel 6. (Ack!)

Next Chapter

2007-03-02T11:49:00.000-05:00

Perhaps I was being prescient, perhaps it was self-fulfilling prophecy, when I tacked on "Lord, help us" at the end of the post "Living Together". Perhaps neither. Anyway, we were not able to make the arrangement with Tara work. Just not enough patience and clarity of mind to go around. (We all could have used more of the other eight fruits of the Spirit as well, I imagine.) The last four weeks have been difficult at times, but I can't say I regret having taking her in. She and her son are both very special people.

The situation has been sufficiently stressful, particularly between Sunday night and yesterday morning, that it's going to take a few days for us to decompress and begin to move on with our lives. We might see a movie tomorrow; the last time we went to a movie was on Tara's first Saturday with us. Also, it appears that we're probably going to postpone the beginning of the next round of Financial Peace University until later this month or maybe April.

I guess that's all I really have to say right now. Racquetball standings after yesterday's three games: Bob 8, Joel 6. If I'm going to catch up, I'm going to need to develop a more dangerous serve.

After winter's peak

2007-02-23T10:29:00.000-05:00

I think we're past the worst of it! (Winter, I mean.)

I realize now that it was the same day I wrote the post "Living Together" that Angela found out that her father in Arkansas had died. It had seemed for the several days before that, that things had been "evening out" a little, in our domestic arrangement, but this event may have knocked us off balance a bit. Angela decided to fly down to Arkansas alone to attend to the funeral with her sister Capucine. She left yesterday and will be returning tomorrow. Between the stress of preparing for a trip to a place she was unfamiliar with, and having to miss the Financial Peace University preview scheduled for noon tomorrow, the atmosphere has been pretty charged and there have been a few unfortunate interactions.

I guess that's pretty much all there is to say about it... I look forward to warmer times.

More popular

2007-02-20T09:54:00.000-05:00

If you look alllll the way back to the second or maybe third post in this blog, you will see that I was hoping to get "hired" by Blogitive, to mention companies in the blog for $5 a pop. The first time I applied, I had only made a few posts, and you couldn't find me on Google even if you entered the URL of the blog itself. Blogitive, needless to say, didn't find me very appealing.

I've been findable on Google for some time now, and I determined a week or two ago to write "at least three times a week" as mentioned on the Blogitive site. I also have accumulated a decent number of postings now. So I figured I'd give it another go. Again, no luck: the emailed reply stated that I need to increase my blog's "popularity". Go get yourself on FeedBurner, etc. etc., that should get you started.

So, with a sigh I accepted that in order to get paid (even relatively paltry sums like $5) for advertising, you have to give the paying person some confidence that someone, anyone, will actually see your ad. I'm pretty sure at least one person is subscribed to my RSS feed, but his viewing of an ad probably isn't worth $5 all by itself (sorry Josh).

So I found myself asking (a little stupidly, I guess) if I really wanted my blog to be all that "popular". I don't really know what that is like. I lead a relatively sedate life at the moment (as far as my own personal activities are concerned, that is-- there is rarely a dull week at my house); would I get too sucked in if things got lively in blog-land? In my fantasy world, I am able to provide comfortably for my family just by writing stuff. But the only way (correct me if I'm wrong here, someone) you make six figures writing stuff is to have quite a large number of people read what you write, all the time, and like it a lot.

It's an interesting question, now that I think about it: in the world of writing, is it a few millionaire columnists (Tom Friedman? Maureen Dowd? I wonder how much they make) and superstar novelists (Stephen King, Michael Crichton, Dean Koontz etc.) amid a sea of struggling scrabbling playwrights, journalists and would-be novelists? No one in between making a comfortable living of, say, $150,000 a year? (If that sounds high to you, remember that a free-lancer needs to buy his own health insurance and whatnot.)

I have to brag here a little bit, although under the circumstances perhaps it's a little foolish to brag about it. Back in mid-2004 when I was a new Presbyterian elder I was tilting at windmills trying to save this lump of a guy at church from ending up on the street (again). At the height of my crusade against the system I wrote one or two letters to the social work office where the person's case was being managed. I made enough of a pain of myself that I eventually found myself on the phone with the director of the department, two levels up from the caseworker I believe, begging me to back off and just let them do their job. But early on in that conversation, presumably to serve as a velvet covering on her impending blow, she told me that I write "beautifully".

When I do actually begin writing, I can write quite a lot of reasonably good quality material in a relatively short time. (75 page senior thesis in... what was it? 38 hours? Never mind that I got a C+ on it; I don't think it was because of the quality of the writing so much as because it was not very good historical scholarship. Dang that head of the Presbyterian denomination in Mexico who never sent me that perfect packet of revolutionary era periodicals that I believed he would send to a total gringo stranger, after one phone call, and with no referral of any kind. I wasn't even a Presbyterian at the time.)

What do you think? Josh? Want to collaborate on a novel? We'll be rich. You provide the idea, and I'll help you write it.

Racquetball, after a bit of a hiatus: today I won 2 games, Bob won 1. Cumulative record: Joel - 5, Bob - 6.

Living Together

2007-02-15T16:52:00.000-05:00

A few posts back I mentioned that a woman named Tara Harrison and her one-year-old son Oni have come to live with us. As two interesting weeks have now passed, I'd like to offer some reflections. Initially, lover of drama that I am, I wanted to offer a sort of blow-by-blow (I mean that, um... figuratively, of course) description of our experience so far, but I feel the need to be sensitive to all four of the other members of my household, even though none of them are likely to ever see what I write, as least not for quite some time. So I'll try to talk somewhat more abstractly, while hopefully holding folks' interest.

I'm particularly interested in the idea of mergers of family units in the American cultural context, and how it might differ from similar endeavors in more "community-oriented" societies. First of all, how likely would it be for an arrangement like ours (a mother and toddler child moving into the house of a family comprised of a man, woman, and one slightly older child) to be made in an Arabic country? Or in China? I can only guess, but I think that it might be more common if the newcomers were related in some fashion by blood, and much less common if there were virtually no prior relationship at all.

Actually, Tara and Oni have moved in at least partly in order to provide some ongoing childcare services for us, and it might not be that uncommon in those other societies to have some sort of live-in help. But we have, from the outset, envisioned something a little more communal and familial.

Americans who are not (hint: like me) from the class of extreme wealth are a little ambivalent about the idea of "servants" or "help". There is the stereotype of the blue-blood matriarch who murmurs through barely parted lips, some disdainful comment about conducting any sort of personal relationship with "the help". There is a clear and firm division: we are the employers, they are the ones who do what we ask. Wealthy people are not servants in homes, and lower-income people do not employ servants in their homes. But what if there isn't such a clear class distinction between the holders of each role? Obviously, one half has a little "extra" money and the other half is in a state of more acute "need"-- or am I already betraying an American assumption that no one would choose to live with another family unless they were in dire circumstances?

I can't help but think of the phrase repeated many times in the bible, "the widow and the fatherless". It seems that a single mother is vulnerable in so many ways. She often struggles continually for honor, for basic physical safety for her child, for community, for any sort of sense that she "has a life". And of course, any family struggles, and for similar things.

After a couple has lived together for five years, and with a child for two years, the negotiation of the details of household life can become like a background activity that is so constant that (at times) you forget it's happening. Or to put it another way, the things that are being negotiated are so nuanced, and your confidence in running your household is strong enough, that you can forget that you will be back at "square one" if you bring in new people, especially an adult, and most especially an adult who is a parent. What time do we all go to bed? What do we eat? Where do we eat? When do we eat? What will be the role of the television? How many lights should be kept on? And on and on and on.

I personally struggle with the idea of "purpose" when it comes to groups in community. What are we trying to *do*? And when do we want to have it done by? What are the constraints on our methods for doing it? I like to think that although all of us have misshapen hearts, we are determined to persevere through to a consensus on these questions, one foot after the next, one day after the next, one bedtime after the next.

Lord, help us.

Whoa

2007-02-12T15:34:00.000-05:00

Ok, any of you who know me know that I waited two, maybe three minutes after posting the previous entry before searching Google to see who else had used "Immaculate (mis)Conception". My first try was with "immaculate misconception". The top result of that was a movie with that title (out just in 2006!), the plot of which seems to only reinforce how incredibly profound and widespread the ignorance is.

Then I entered "immaculate mis-conception", and found this blog (which belongs to a Filipino librarian?), which led me to the Papal encyclical of Pius IX which laid out the doctrine in no uncertain terms-- in 1854!. Which reminded me that the Vatican took that moment in history to make all the (previously folky) veneration of Mary into "official doctrine". It's fascinating to read about; I think I saw it in Constantine's Sword by James Carroll. The Church was losing ground badly to liberal modernizing governments throughout Europe, so it seized upon the idea of the semi-divine Mary as a way to regain some influence over Catholic populations within those countries.

Gee whiz-- scan through that encyclical a bit. It's far worse for Protestants than I had thought. Look at this:

"Hence, just as Christ, the Mediator between God and man, assumed human nature, blotted the handwriting of the decree that stood against us, and fastened it triumphantly to the cross, so the most holy Virgin, united with him by a most intimate and indissoluble bond, was, with him and through him, eternally at enmity with the evil serpent, and most completely triumphed over him, and thus crushed his head with her immaculate foot." (from "Interpreters of the Sacred Scripture")

And then, what I think could be called the central statement of the doctrine:

"[The early church fathers] testified, too, that the flesh of the Virgin, although derived from Adam, did not contract the stains of Adam, and that on this account the most Blessed Virgin was the tabernacle created by God himself and formed by the Holy Spirit, truly a work in royal purple, adorned and woven with gold, which that new Beseleel made. They affirmed that the same Virgin is, and is deservedly, the first and especial work of God, escaping the fiery arrows the the evil one; that she is beautiful by nature and entirely free from all stain; that at her Immaculate Conception she came into the world all radiant like the dawn. For it was certainly not fitting that this vessel of election should be wounded by the common injuries, since she, differing so much from the others, had only nature in common with them, not sin. In fact, it was quite fitting that, as the Only-Begotten has a Father in heaven, whom the Seraphim extol as thrice holy, so he should have a Mother on earth who would never be without the splendor of holiness." ("... Of a Super Eminent Sanctity")

Now, except for the extremely rapturous and flowery language, I think this is pretty close to what I said in my earlier post. The fervor of the language in this encyclical is a bit breathtaking, and helps me to understand my own father's devotional stance a bit better. But set in its historical context, it seems quite feverish and perhaps even desperate.

So the reaction from Protestants against this is on two levels, to match the two levels (popular and realpolitik) of the Vatican's doctrine. The Protestant "common man" knows to reject any whiff of doctrine that is not "explicitly" derived from scripture, and in particular any doctrine that seems to encroach on the uniqueness of Jesus' claim to divinity, just as the Catholic "comman man" (or more frequently, woman?) clung to the image of a transcendental Mary. But also, realpolitik had been a driving force of Protestantism from the very beginning, as rulers appropriated it as a useful way to undermine the influence of Rome in their countries.

Check out Shia Islam sometime, for an interesting parallel. Relatives of Muhammad who were wiped out in power struggles following his death became somewhat more than human in the minds of those who belonged to the party, or faction (shia) that believed in those displaced relatives.

Immaculate (mis)Conception

2007-02-12T14:17:00.000-05:00

I have no idea now why the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception came to my mind at some point yesterday, but it did, and following fast on the heels of that I remembered how much it irritates me that the vast, vast majority of people who would recognize the term, think that it is the technical term used to refer to the virgin birth of Jesus.

(deep breath) IT IS NOT! The actual meaning can't be understood without referring to another, much more fundamental doctrine, one whose acceptance across all the major branches of Christianity is as broad and (I believe) clear, as that of the Immaculate Conception is narrow and obscure: Original Sin. This is the belief that all human beings who are descended from the first couple, Adam and Eve, are stained with sin from the moment they come into existence, i.e., conception.

So here's the basic gist of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Jesus is God. Mary was Jesus's mother. Ergo, Mary is the mother of God. God is "holy", meaning completely separate from all evil, and unable to be in the same place at the same time as anything evil or impure...

I just realized the reason for the "necessity" of the doctrine. If Jesus came to die as a sacrifice to atone for the sins of all the human race--past, present, and future--then the only way a sinless "vessel" could exist to carry him from his *virgin* conception until his birth, would be for God, by divine fiat, to *prevent the stain of sin from falling upon that vessel upon that vessel's human conception*, i.e. to arrange that the conception would be immaculate (from Latin, unspotted). How could he do that? He can do anything. Ok, if he can do it for one person, why not all people? Well, now we get into thornier matters, but I imagine that the reason given would be something like "Because he wanted to save the rest of humanity through a different means." I.e., through the death of the sinless God-man, Jesus.

I have to confess that I haven't done my research on this (i.e., I haven't looked it up on Wikipedia) yet, so I don't know when the doctrine was first adopted, or if my guess as to the reasoning behind it is correct. I have a feeling it arose sometime within the first six hundred years after Jesus' death, and that it was at least partly driven by the usefulness of having a female divinity to set up against the female divinities in many of the indigenous religions that Christianity encountered as it spread throughout Europe. But it seems clear that the most important presupposition is that a sin-stained woman could never carry in her body a baby who is as fully God as he is fully human.

Protestants hate this doctrine, because it has no strong basis in the bible, and the idea that Mary's sinlessness did not make her divine in the same way that the divine Jesus was sinless, is just too subtle. And also pointless, to them, because they don't have the same way of thinking about the interaction of the "earthly" and the "divine" (e.g. "transubstantiation": the bread of the mass is transformed, each time, into Jesus' actual body, so that the priest can literally, not figuratively, offer Jesus up as a sacrifice again to God), and they have no trouble with the idea that a God-man could be born from the body of a sin-stained (i.e. normal) human woman.

I was tempted to launch onto a tangent, regarding what it could possibly mean, that Jesus is "fully God and fully human". But I think I've made my point, which is that the argument stems from different ideas about how God relates with "fallen" humanity.

I wish this ignorance about the Immaculate Conception were not so widespread, and even more, I wish that it didn't irritate me so much. But alas, it does. Maybe a little less, now that I've vented about it some.

Oh yeah, I'm also fully aware of how incredibly unlikely it is that I'm the first person to come up with the cutesy phrase I used for the title of this post. I'm too lazy to confirm its prior existence by looking it up on Google, and I'd like to linger a little bit longer in the delusion that I'm as witty as that.

May you live in interesting times

2007-02-10T12:51:00.000-05:00

There is a (possibly apocryphal) "Chinese curse": "May you live in interesting times." Well, how interesting your times are certainly has something to do with how tuned in you are to what's going on in the world around you (cf. other saying "Ignorance is bliss"). I've decided in the last few weeks to drastically curtail my intake of news, and am instead listening to an Agatha Christie novel with the not so creative sounding title of "The Secret Adversary".

Result? My mind is not brimming over with interesting things to share with the reading public. Some of this is probably due also to the medicine I've been taking. The river of life flows on, swirling with eddies of trouble and pleasure.

On a diet, new house tenant/guest, company acquired by a large multinational consulting company, very cold, still in debt. What I'm really worried about though, is this: Will I have a chance to watch episode 12 of HBO's "Rome" before it expires from Comcast's On Demand menu?

A light departs

2007-02-08T11:19:00.000-05:00

I feel led to share that Professor Alan Groves of Westminster Theological Seminary passed away on Monday February 5.

Many people die of cancer every year, and perhaps some even chronicle the process eloquently, but I think this year-long blog which articulately and warmly relates the story of a family facing the certain death of the father, is remarkable and very moving:

http://www.algroves.info

I particularly recommend the first few entries, leading up to and including the day (February 21, 2006) on which they discovered that a melanoma removed over a year earlier had metastasized to Al's lungs, and the last few entries before his death (from January 23, 2007 or so). I find them inspiring.

Racquetball rivalry

2007-02-08T10:44:00.000-05:00

Today I played racquetball with Bob Stei for the fourth time. This is the third time we've played in the morning, and the last two times I've struggled mightily to get to the LA Fitness by 7am. (On other mornings I'm sometimes not even out of bed by 7.) We've played two complete games (to 15) each time, and here are the results to date:

1/8: Bob - 2, Joel - 0
2/1: Bob - 2, Joel - 0
2/6: Bob - 0, Joel - 2
2/8: Bob - 1, Joel -1

So (just in case you don't want to bother adding up those numbers) the standings so far are Bob - 5, Joel - 3. I should note that most of the first four games were pretty close, so don't be too impressed with my comeback from oblivion.

Phil was wrong

2007-02-07T13:51:00.000-05:00

(Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog oracle, reportedly did not see his shadow this year. Tell that to the folks in Minnesota who've had windchills of -40 degrees Fahrenheit in the last few days.)

I considered other more witty or dramatic ways of saying this, but then that took too long, so I'll just say it: a lot has happened since I last wrote.

Everything up until December 23 is pretty much a blur of vague anxiety and dissatisfaction. The only thing that sticks out in my mind now is my interview at ARAMARK. That was a little interesting, but ultimately a bit disheartening, as I was never a viable candidate for the position, in retrospect. I had been determined, for about four months, to get a change in my work situation. By early December, I was riddled with anxiety because it looked like I had painted myself into a corner. My current group was showing me as unavailable after Jan 1 2007, in their planning docs, but I hadn't been picked up by the new group. So anyway, at the last moment I was pulled in for an interview at ARAMARK, and discovered that my lack of recent Microsoft experience pretty much made me a non-starter. So I just continued where I am, at Centocor in Horsham.

I was "officially" diagnosed with ADD in October, after taking tests in August and September. To be honest, I've read the report of the evaluation a million times, and I'm still not sure exactly how the psychologist tied the test results to the diagnosis. She also pointed out, primarily from my questionnaire answers but also possibly from her initial interview with me, that I have symptoms of depression and anxiety. So that's what it said on the report (paraphrase): "He has ADD and depression and anxiety; he could benefit from medication for all of that." So then I went to a psychiatrist to see about medicine and he more or less disregarded the part in the ADD evaluation that said "he doesn't have bipolar disorder", and decided from several answers in our initial interview that I had bipolar disorder and should go down that medication path-- Clonopin, Depakote, a few others were mentioned.

After discussing it with a few people I decided to drop that doctor and I went to another one, who requires that patients meet with him weekly for psychotherapy sessions if he is going to prescribe any medication. I met with him five times or so before getting around to "popping the question", i.e., directly asking him to prescribe me Adderall (for ADD). (It took me about that long to fully come to terms with the fact that he was never going to suggest anything to me, let alone suggest a medication.) He wrote me a prescription, I dropped it off immediately at the pharmacy across the street from our house, and several minutes after that he called me to tell me he had changed his mind and wanted to try me on Wellbutrin instead. All a little awkward, but no big deal. I have been on 100mg of sustained release Wellbutrin (aka bupropion-- ever hear of Zyban, smoking cessation drug? Same stuff.) since December 23.

Again, I'm a little leery of sounding overdramatic and breathless here (and honestly, I'm not feeling dramatic or breathless as I write), but as far as I can tell this drug has had a profound effect on me. I'm not sure I can remember one time since I started taking it, when my heart raced out of anxiety or fear over some situation. At least in the first week or two it made me a tiny bit "faster", in terms of my speed of response in conversation of a moderately complex and/or sensitive nature, so Angela was not excited at the prospect of my increasing the dose. (100mg is usually considered just a stepping stone to the normal therapeutic dose of 200-450 mg a day.) I am *way* less drowsy during the normal course of a day, which also means that it's much easier for me to "get by" on 5 or 6 hours of sleep many nights in a row than it used to be, and I have to watch out for slipping into a manic-type state. Also, sometimes I feel that Angela and play this parlor game of trying to determine the precise cause of my snippiness, when I'm snippy. "Is it the medicine? Is it the lack of sleep catching up? What?" But when crises arise (and boy, have a few arisen in the last six weeks), they don't tend to have the cascading effect of anxiety that troubled situations used to have on me. Heck, I used to have plenty of background anxiety and negativity without any crises. In sum: I'm glad I'm on it.

Um... That seems to be it, really. But three big things have happened in Joel-Angela-Abigail Land since the beginning of the year (four if you count Angela turning 40). First, Abby's right hand was injured in an accident with a door at church, on January 14. A few days later it was rewrapped and placed in a cast for three weeks, which ends today. A lot of you already know about all this and I don't feel like talking it about it much further.

Second, my father escalated into his first manic episode in over seven years, right around the same time that the thing happened with Abby, maybe a week or two earlier. He went into the hospital last week, the evening of January 30. He was going to be discharged this past Monday, but that was delayed as they waited for some blood test results to come back. So we're kind in uncharted territory, i.e., not sure how much longer he will be in a heightened state. Mom says that he didn't appear to change much over the course of the week or two he was in the hospital.

And finally, the night before Dad was admitted to Belmont, we began to help Tara Harrison move into our finished attic space. We moved stuff on Tuesday and again on Wednesday, and she and her son Oni stayed overnight for the first time on Wednesday. On Friday we had a party to celebrate Oni's first birthday. So far things are going really well, with typical adjustments and negotiations taking place. As far I as I'm concerned, it is a win-win-win-win-win situation. I.e., each one of the five of us is benefiting from this arrangement in different ways. So we'll see how it goes.

This is not much of a news flash, but it's been really cold for the last four days or so. And with that, I guess I'll wrap up for the time being.

I am Heineken

2006-11-07T13:16:00.000-05:00

I'm not much of a beer drinker, so perhaps this wasn't much of an "accurate" test. I do, more or less, agree with their choice of which beer I am, but the stuff about concentrating on being drunk misses the mark pretty badly. Because I don't get drunk, and I certainly have never, ever had enough beer at one sitting to get drunk. Because I'm not much of a beer drinker.

You Are Heineken

You appreciate a good beer, but you're not a snob about it.
You like your beer mild and easy to drink, so you can concentrate on being drunk.
Overall, you're a friendly drunk who's likely to buy a whole round for your friends... many times.
Sometimes you can be a bit boring when you drink. You may be prone to go on about topics no one cares about.

What's Your Beer Personality?

On Indefensible Boundaries

2006-09-16T01:44:00.000-04:00

I don't think most people are aware of this, but the idea of boundary is inextricably linked to the idea of identity. Well, maybe people are aware of it, in the form of the cliche phrase "personal space", but in general, I think most people are not conscious about the nature of their personal boundaries.

Some people are nothing but a tent in the middle of an open plain. "Come on over! Nothing to steal here, nothing to fear either. Let's just hang out. Or not-- it's all cool." Others are like Fort Knox: "What do you want? Why should I let you in? There is much of value in here, and I'd rather be alone, than risk losing control over it."

We think of the first President Bush, blowing hard about the great transgression of Saddam Hussein, in overrunning little Kuwait, a "sovereign nation", back in 1990. Well, there's "sovereign" and then there's "sovereign". Some nations are more "sovereign" than others, methinks. All those Arab nations, including Iraq, were "created" by the "great powers", without regard to language, culture, religious sect, etc., after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. So we have Saddam Hussein, ruthlessly killing and torturing "his own people"-- Kurds and Shiites, and invading a piddly little sheikhdom sitting on land that he thought should rightly have been part of Iraq to begin with. The second President Bush, not to be outdone by his father's pragmatic war waged to return the board back to its previous state, rushed in there and removed Saddam, filled with a delusion that there was a "nation" called "Iraq" to be "liberated" and "democratized", as opposed to a motley group that had barely been held together by the most brutal of policies.

Ok-- that was a little bit tangential, but my point is that boundaries are drawn by people who have power to draw boundaries, but oftentimes (maybe even always?) it becomes clear soon enough that the boundaries make no "sense". They are not sustainable. Or, they are only sustainable by the steady application of force, which may be a different way of saying they are unsustainable.

In the last few weeks I have stumbled across my own blindness and hypocrisy, regarding my understanding of sovereignty and justice and virtue, in the context of my marriage. I don't see much value in going into the detailed situations that led me to this awareness; suffice it to say that I have had to let go of some deeply cherished beliefs about how marriage "should be", and how I "should be". In one particular area of domestic life I have decided on a "tactical withdrawal" or "pull-back". I can say this much, about the situation: I have a new appreciation for the fact that even though a man and woman become, in some mysterious way, "one flesh" when they get married, they also remain two completely distinct and sovereign individuals.

I am learning how to be "selfish", in a targeted, strategic way. There *is* a boundary, inside of which is "Joel", outside of which is "not-Joel". There *are* protocols, by means of which I engage in transactions with other sovereign entities, one of which is my wife. Now it's just a matter of improving those protocols, clarifying them, making them more robust and resilient. And although I am conscious that my boundary *exists*, it remains to be made somewhat clearer and better mapped out.

Israel pulled out of Gaza unilaterally, and has been criticized for it. I think it was a no-brainer, however. It was bleeding itself, by maintaining a military presence beyond the "1948 borders", to defend tiny little islands of wild-eyed religious pioneer communities surrounded by a sea of angry and impoverished Arab Muslims. Sharon and his people realized that it was unsustainable, that that territory was never going to be "Israel", no matter how fervently the settlers felt to the contrary.

Sometimes you have to retreat to defensible boundaries.

Quiet moment

2006-08-13T17:22:00.000-04:00

It is about as lovely a day as any that Philadelphia offers its residents. Oddly, this is at least the third day in a row of perfect weather. Should I hope for one more day like this, to round out my current four-day weekend? More perfectness for the big Laramee cookout tomorrow?

There is supposed to be a Woodland Church cookout today at 5pm, in Clark Park. It is now about 5:20. Angela is sleeping, as is Abigail. Hopefully we'll get there in time to eat some warm food.

What can I say, about the more than two months that have elapsed since my last post? God was speaking to me, again, about the next step in his plan for my life. I didn't hear him very well, so he started speaking louder. I brushed his voice off as a distraction. He tried to gently turn my head, away from the thing I was obsessed with. I stiffened my neck, to avoid breaking eye contact with my goal.

And so on and so forth. I was both Balaam, and Balaam's Ass (see Numbers 22). Other people were also Balaam's Ass, to my Balaam. I am sorry for striking these people (I am thinking of a few strong women in my life). "My yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Jesus meant that. If you're stressed out, afraid, anxious... vicious... you've probably strayed from the narrow path of Jesus.

What an incredible paradox! His yoke is easy and his burden is light, but it is *hard* to stay on that path! Why is it hard? Because so many are going the other way, which is in fact harder and more painful, in the long run, and imperils your eternal soul. Who are you hoping to please? If it's any human being or group of human beings, you're in for a world of hurt.

There's another reason it can be hard. What, after all, is the narrow path? It is a delicate, magical balance between living *fully* in the present, while making sure to glance forward and backward frequently enough-- but not too frequently. This is hard! It takes *practice*.

I'm not going to go into all the "stuff" that has happened, especially in July-- that would make this not so peaceful a moment. Suffice it to say that God has reminded me that he is God and I am not. And he has given me rest.

So what?

2006-06-01T13:27:00.000-04:00

My brother, my fellow blind mouse, Gabriel, has raised an important point, in his inimitable inscrutable way.

I summarize his challenge thusly: "So you have Attention Deficit Disorder! So you have Boogah-Boogah Disorder! What difference does it make?" The quick answer: none-- for you. You (Gabriel) are a member of an inner circle of people who have learned, over decades, how to deal with me in a productive manner, and how to get out of the zip code at the first sign of a serious radiation leak. The smaller leaks-- you long ago developed the necessary suit to absorb these.

But I also make the opposite claim, that everyone--including me--will benefit and has already benefited from the taking root of this revelation. Did it matter when Pilgrim's huge backpack fell off? In the sense of the story ending there, no, it didn't. But I betcha it made a big difference to Pilgrim.

:-)

Amazing-Diagnostic-Development

2006-05-28T06:34:00.000-04:00

You know that cliche about the gay guy who "doesn't know" he's gay, but everyone around him does, so much so that it's humorous? At least, it's humorous when the setting is a sitcom. I'd say it's pretty downright sad and tragic, wouldn't you? That a person would believe a lie that he's perpetuating in order to be accepted by others, except the lie is so flimsy and weak that no one who matters to him even remotely believes it?

Well, my only fear in making the confession I'm about to make is that it's possible I am like that guy. I suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder. There. I said it. Ok? All of you in the wings who have been waiting for me to stop denying this, go ahead and get your reactions out of your system.

Sigh. Yes, it is part of the "disorder", "syndrome", "difference"--whatever you want to call this thing that I have, that I am--that I blow things out of proportion, that I exaggerate to make a point. (I fully understand that there may not be many people at all who have been shaking their heads with rueful smiles, waiting patiently for this ADD guy to "come out of the closet".) In the last week or so I have learned so many things about why I am the way I am, but one of the most comforting things I have found out is that my tendency to exaggerate, to overdramatize, when I share things with other people, is not a character flaw, but a genuine and well-meaning attempt to show others how intensely I experience things.

I am 35 years old. I have been trying to keep from seeming, looking, acting, *being* "crazy" for pretty much as long as I can remember, but certainly at least since I was 10 or so. I have had these "pivot points", or "inflection points", in my life-- I keep them treasured, stories of myself, traditions handed down by myself to myself, and occasionally to others. I don't think there are many people, if there are any at all, who know the complete set of these stories.

These stories are of when I was transformed from one thing into another. When I came into the moment (the "moment" usually lasting a few weeks) I thought of myself as, I *was*, one thing, and I came out thinking of myself as something different in a fundamental way. Only after my first round of serious psychological counseling, at age 25 or so, was I comfortable enough with myself (and with my bipolar dad) to occasionally share with someone that these "moments" in my life had some interesting things in common with "manic episodes" (God I wish I could remember how old I was when I first heard that phrase).

It's actually quite simple. My brain is different from the brains of the majority of people in society. Very different. The differences are so profound, that they have led to all manner of mistakes, accidents, social missteps, beginning pretty early in childhood. As all people do when they have a serious weakness or disability that threatens their ability to thrive in society, I developed "defense mechanisms" and "coping strategies", which I had to spend extra energy maintaining. It was sort of like the system we have installed in our house, to remove radon gas.

You cannot tell, except by use of a specialized testing pack that reacts to slowly emitted radiation, that radon gas is being released in someone's basement. But it is harmful to the health of the residents nonetheless. So you get a system installed, that gets the gas out of the house. I have to confess that I've never even bothered to find out how it works. But the point is that this system took effort and expense to install, and it will drain some energy from our house's power system from now until the house is destroyed.

I have a "system" inside me--hidden from view, designed to be undetectable, and generally undetected, since part of the strategy, the point, of my system is to avoid detection by those who are experts in such systems. In my case, I have avoided ever sitting in a room alone with a psychiatrist, someone who might order me to take a drug, or who might stamp me with one of the crude stamps that the psychiatric profession has at its disposal.

I may explain this system more fully in other writings--I may not--but what I wanted to note here is that I now understand that I have only fully experienced life as a human being when my life was under sufficient stress to temporarily disable my defense system. When this happened, part of me would stare in awe at the new world, the world that I normally was asleep to, and the other part of me would moan in anguish at the inevitable parade of gaffes, serious career missteps, and theatrics that seemed fun at the moment but just seemed like lame vaudeville a few hours later, in the light of day.

The ashamed guy would then remove the punch bowl, shut off the stereo, kick out the guests, shoot the fun guy up with chemical lobotomizers, and set to work repairing the defense system and restoring its power supply. The fun guy, the Rip Van Winkle, would then sleep for another year, two years, whatever, and then the cycle would start again.

There may be a book in here somewhere. There may not be. But something is going to be different from now on. The fun guy may be around more frequently, and he may be able to get along better with the outside world.

Anyway, I don't know how much longer I'm going to be writing here in this blogspot blog; I've just signed up for a new web site, called trois-souris.net (Three Mice). As soon as I can get the blog software installed there, I'll be writing there.

Thanks for reading this.

Darkness, and silence

2006-05-23T05:09:00.000-04:00

A caravan of weary travelers, an army moving together with its families and possessions, finally approaches a city visible in the distance, to the west. Rumors, some contradictory, rustle through the exhausted community. Some are filled with hope; others, with dread and terror.

Night begins to fall, and the group stops to rest. There is no moon this night, and the sky is overcast. Just as the last remnants of light from the sun escape over the western horizon, those at the front of the caravan hear a rapidly approaching whistling sound, followed by a tremendous explosion behind them, in the middle of their camp.

Before anyone can quite make sense of what has just happened, there is another whistling, this time from the side, and another artillery shell explodes, again in the middle of the camp. One of the warriors near the front edge of the group stares in amazement: as the second shell explodes, he sees, in the strobe flash against the darkness, bodies flying. Equipment, baggage, everything-- as if an invisible angry giant has smashed down a fist, shaking the earth and making it jump like a table top struck by an unreasoning child.

Gunfire soon begins to rattle out, seemingly from everywhere, and in all directions. It's very difficult to distinguish the firing of the travelers outward from that of the ambush force all around. There is screaming, shouting of orders-- hundreds of voices mixing into a rising bedlam. The darkness deepens; the contrast against occasional shell explosions and incessant muzzle flashes is stark.

The bombardment stops, the gunfire stops. There is the sound of a few isolated whimpers, widely scattered. Otherwise, there is almost no sound. Again, the rustling of whispers, more tentative and intermittent than the rustling before sunset: Has the prophet leader of the caravan been killed?

The darkness is complete. The silence is now utterly unbroken.

Crossroads of the Blogs

2006-05-20T06:12:00.000-04:00

I have now decided that this blog, which was originally created to try to make money with Blogitive (see second post), will be rededicated to the sole purpose of documenting the unfolding of my "missio dei" (mission from God). It is a 180-degree turn toward writing about my own spiritual journey, from my birth, and from before my birth, for myself (i.e., for unblocking my crammed brain), and a turn away from writing explicitly for an audience.

I need discipline, so I'm going to (try to!) write once a week, and only once a week, to this blog. I'll see how it goes, writing for about an hour. Oh, and by the way, I'm already planning to move away from Blogger and onto a server that I manage more hands-on. (Josh Kidd is going to help me with this, but he doesn't know it yet.) But in the meantime, the writing must continue-- no excuses. I know I contain multitudes of books; the question is merely, how many will come out in the world?

In the spirit of not caring about my audience, I will now note for myself alone that I am also going create another blog, accessible only by me, which will contain a daily journal of the events of my life. "Dispatches from the front" is how I like to think of it.

And now, back to what I was talking about before-- required reading for Servant Partners field workers. The three books have arrived-- woo hoo!! I have never been so excited about a book purchase. The books are:

Title	Author	Publisher	Date
Dispossessed: Life in Our World's Urban Slums	Mark Kramer	Orbis Books	2006
Cry of the Urban Poor: Reaching the Slums of Today's Mega-Cities	Viv Grigg	Authentic Media/World Vision	2004, revised in 2005
Building a People of Power: Equipping Churches to Transform Their Communities	Robert C. Linthicum	Authentic Media/World Vision	2005

These are AWEsome books. I am a little ways into each one of them. I am going to need to develop a discipline of some sort in order to push through them-- together they are about 850 pages. I want to be in a position to transform the material contained in them into classes and presentations appropriate for the members of my church.

Last weekend I went with Lynn Wetherbee and Nancy Geryk to a panel discussion on the future of urbanism, put on for Alumni Weekend by Penn's Urban Studies department. It was an AWEsome panel discussion. I'm pretty sure I want to get my master's in urban planning (or urban design or whatever they call it) at Penn.

This afternoon Angela and I are putting on the first orientation session for Financial Peace University. I can't say how exciting this is, for both of us. I am so proud of Angela--she is a brave pioneer.

So, I guess that's it for today-- see you (non-audience) next week!

A little more vision

2006-05-04T23:04:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I last wrote; I've been working on removing wood from my eyes. I think I've succeeded in getting rid of some. Of course, the kicker is that when you remove things stuck in your eye, you soon see other things that need to be removed.

But anyway, my efforts have partly been rewarded with some renewed vision for my future. When I returned to public participation in Christianity, in early 2000, it was because I got a glimpse of a faith that could transform and liberate the poor and oppressed. Six years later, this vision still remains and has been elaborated considerably.

I'm still in the initial stages of this, but I am very excited about the efforts of a group called Servant Partners. I am friends with Jean-Luc and Shabrae Krieg, who are living amongst the poor in the Chimalhuacan section of Mexico City. Servant Partners has as its mission, the manifestation of God's liberating power in the massive slums in the megacities of the world.

I don't currently feel that God is calling me to live long term in any of these fields, but rather to be an enabler, a supporter, a cheerleader and promoter of these efforts. I want to pour gasoline on the fires these courageous, talented, passionate people are starting and tending. I want to give those rich in material things the opportunity to become rich spiritually, by partnering with these advocates of the poor in the U.S. and elsewhere (especially elsewhere, as real poverty, relatively speaking, is pretty rare here).

Stay tuned! I'm awaiting 3 of the 7 books that Servant Partners asks its trainees to read before they attend a 5-6 week "retreat" in a slum in Manila. I will be writing about these books, and about the development of my plans to form a ministry team at Woodland around these efforts.

The Plank and the Speck

2006-04-04T00:15:00.000-04:00

Is there any good news to be found in Christianity? Sure-- don't you know the verse from the bible the reference to which (John 3:16) used to be flashed on a placard at opportune times during televised football games:

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life."

What's that you say? You don't see what's so great about that? Ok, you got me, I was just kidding. The real good news is these words, from Jesus himself:

"Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote [speck] that is in thy brothers eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brothers eye." (Matthew 7:1-5)

In case it's not clear to you why I say this is great news, it's because if you follow Jesus' admonition carefully and diligently, you will regain your vision, or perhaps see for the first time, and will have the opportunity to spread the ability to see to others! You will become part of the saving of humanity!

And this way is open to all-- even Christians.

For thou shalt find it after many days

2006-03-18T22:19:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I looked it up (see previous post), it's from Ecclesiastes 11:1-- "Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days." I think I got the idea that it had the spiritual meaning I gave below, from my mom.

Answers.com says: "This saying calls on people to believe that their good deeds will ultimately benefit them." I think that is more or less in line with what I said in my earlier post.

The New Revised Standard Version says: "Send out your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will get it back."

Casting bread upon the waters

2006-03-16T23:57:00.000-05:00

Ok, I'll come clean-- I don't know what this phrase (from the Hebrew scriptures I believe) means. I'll have to do a search to find the reference and figure out what it really means.

But anyway, in my current bleary-eyed state, I imagine that it has something to do with recklessly and sacrificially (and messily?) spreading yourself around, in a way that might please God. I just got finished posting a request for advice on a broad technical problem I'm facing at work, to a Yahoo discussion group of my work peers. So what, right? Well, there's a messiness to making this sort of call for help, and one of my big character flaws is a distaste for messes, verging on a phobia at times.

But why should you suffer alone? Why would you imagine that 10, 15, 20 strong problem-solving brains might not come up with a better solution than your one brain by itself?

They say that we're now in an age where the primary "commodity" being traded is information. What does this really mean? I think it means that everything--business, politics, religion, science--is now converging, and merging. And believe it or not, I think that this is tied to Jesus' saying that he who seeks to preserve his life will lose it, and vice versa. And that if a seed is to multiply, it must first "fall into the ground and die".

And--I'm getting excited now-- what is it for a *soul* (or putting it another way, a *self*) to die? It is for the boundaries of that self to disappear. If information can flow freely into and out of a territory, we say that territory has a porous boundary. The self-ness of the territory expands and contracts in a dynamic, mysterious way. The self dies, is born again, then dies again-- on and on.

If there is a moment of "conversion" (and I have a hard time believing there is only one moment, but looked at from a certain angle, there may be) to a regenerated self, a self that has won the prize of "eternal life", that moment might be the first time that a fortified, cut-off, and paranoid self/city-state "surrendered" to the Other, the unknown Outsider, and risked oblivion (no-state, no-self, no-where), in the hope of-- of what?

Of perhaps coming to *know* something *larger than the current self*. The damned-- they are just those who insist on fixing the boundaries permanently, who usurp the divine prerogative of knowing the extent of the Universe of Meaning, i.e. *their* Universe. We all know the eyes of those who mistrust and fear the Outside, who defend against everyone they encounter, in a tragic attempt to protect the sovereignty of their self. And we all know the eyes of the living, because they look right into us, with joyful expectation.

You're not welcome

2006-03-10T22:05:00.000-05:00

So I'm headed into a Wawa on the way to work today, and as I'm approaching the door I see a guy coming toward the door on his way out as fast as I'm heading in. He beats me to the door by a fraction of a second, at which point I notice that in his right hand he's holding both a newspaper and a cup of coffee, and he's got his left hand extended to push the door open. Not quite sure what to do, I just stop and let him through.

As the door is swinging open and he is about to pass by me, we have a brief conversation. It went like this:

Me: "Thanks."
Guy: "Nope."

It was odd. He did not say it with venom or with bitterness, or with a great deal of vitality. He said it clearly, a little crisply, like someone smoothly pulling a grape off of a bunch and popping it in their mouth.

I felt bad. After re-running the very short scene in my mind a few times, I came to the conclusion that he believed it must have been very clear to me that his hands were moderately full, and that I was an ass to stand there while he awkwardly held a cup of coffee and another object in one hand. He must have thought it odd that I seemed to think that he had opened the door as a gesture of politeness to me. I couldn't help but think that I had just reinforced his belief that people are selfish and inconsiderate.

And then I was bothered that I was bothered. I wanted to tell someone else what had happened, and I was embarrassed at the thought of doing that. My intention had not been bad, but... I had been in a hurry. He had been in a hurry.

Would it have been better if I had said nothing?

Blogitive

2006-03-09T15:33:00.000-05:00

The folks at blogitive.com have an idea that I find intriguing.

You know how radio personalities sometimes read out ads during their show? They are more or less given a script, but they can also improvise a little bit, add their own touch to the ad. What I like about that is that you aren't "mainlining" a canned ad directly into your bloodstream, like you are when you watch a pre-taped TV commercial. A person is telling you something that someone asked them to tell you.

This is even more relaxed. Blogitive passes on URLs from advertisers to a blogger, and the blogger just incorporates the link into a post, with full discretion on the surrounding text. For an example, go to my friend Josh's blog, and look at his post "How thoughtful is it really to send flowers?"

Want to try it? If you have a blog that is indexed by Technorati or Google (or some other "major seach engine"-- not sure exactly what their criteria are), and has a decent little bit of traffic, Blogitive will probably accept your application. Tell them (using Contact Us) that I referred you.

Think it sucks? Tell me why...

What is so bad about advertising?

2006-03-03T23:18:00.000-05:00

I grew up in a family, and in a social circle, that pretty much thinks advertising is bad, period. But is it really advertising that we have been reacting so strongly against, or something deeper? Isn't saying that advertising is bad like saying that dating is bad?

What I mean is, the thing has to happen. Like eating. And like eating, it is a specific, well-defined activity, and yet pretty much infinite in the variety of forms it can take.

And then... there is the subject of evangelism. From the Greek Eu(good)-angelion(message or news). I have agonized so long over the content of the "gospel of Jesus"-- yet again, it can be stated in so many ways, in so many tones of voice, motivated by so many different motivations.

I like the idea of "memes", which seems to finally be getting some popular airplay in the metaphor of "DNA". Good viruses, bad viruses... spreading effectively or ineffectively... All this comes into play when you talk about "spreading the word". It begs the question... if a message is "good" but can't seem to spread worth a damn, is it really "good" after all? Perhaps that's where eternity comes in. Hateful racist message, spreads fast, but can't be sustained, ends up feeding on itself. Message of sacrificial love, spreads slowly, but ends up "inheriting the earth"... as time tends toward eternity.

Anyway, I am going to try to spread some mundane messages in this blog, and I imagine also some less mundane messages. I just ask that you skim it all, it won't be that hard to read--I don't think. (Rachel says, or said--I'm not sure it still is there--"I guarantee you could be reading something better", when in fact her stuff is pretty good. I will assure you that it will always be worth your while--who knows, maybe it will be?)