If We Only Knew What Made for Peace

This will be it for some time.

By "it" I mean the last post of my interwebs journal.

But no one needs to feel abandoned or that this is any kind of end. If the past is indicative of the future, I would bet any future posts could be distilled to the following:

We are prone to believing self-serving fictions.

We are reluctant to be wary of our motives.

Our voodoo is faith, their faith is voodoo.

Boy, we like to be certain.

If history has any lessons, as a movement, we evangelicals today are probably on the wrong side of justice.

A mix of the above is the most insidious of idols.

We sacrifice real people to these idols.

The good news is God offers freedom from this trap.

As far as freedom goes, we have to make it up as we go along and this terrifies us, so we opt to believe self-serving fictions.

and...

I like my wife and kid.

So there we go.

My Last Album Isn't Coda, Thank God
Talking Heads:77- Talking Heads

I Thought It Was Supposed to Help You Stay In the Game

Alternate Take

So Rick Warren canceled an appearance on the news show This Week yesterday. He claimed health and fatigue issues were exacerbated by inhaling fumes from a newly completed pulpit.

That happens.

I struggle buying the idea that Rick Warren is more a pastor than a certain type of entrepreneur. Following that, it's hard for me to see his role as more than reaching a certain type of consumer. He's got a job to do, he's got a customer to keep satisfied. He knows what sells, what to put on clearance, and what to never stock. He does pretty well, I'd say.

If that's seems ungracious to you, know that I see myself in the same light and think that perspective comes only by grace.

Whatever. Maybe that's just my problem, or maybe there's something to it. Or maybe it's my problem because there is something to it.

I've found in my own life that it's hard to mess around with these "things of faith" and stay the same.

I will grant that maybe he really is exhausted. One can only hold the tension between what Christ does and what you will for so long.

"If one drinks much from a bottle marked poison, it is almost certain to disagree witth one sooner or later."

I Thought It was Supposed to Help You Stay in the Game

Well Rick Warren and I have more in common than I ever would have guessed. I am sickened and exhausted by his public speaking engagements as well.

This could be serious. Maybe it's the chemicals from the beard dye.

I'm Not an Actor but I play One on TV

Oh my goodness I would loooooove to hear/see the notes on these.
I bet it would look a little something like this... (I'm scratching my chin and looking at the ceiling- cue wavy dissolve)

Okay, but be more terrified.
Can you do immigrant.
All right show me threatened
Okay your a dyke but your with us- got it? Go
No no no just like it's written- no no I don't care what you "actually know". You can read right- so read it- NO -like it's written- Read it like it's written- God what's wrong with you?
Oh, you're no doctor- Give her the parent card.
GRABS CUE-CARD FROM CUE-CARD HOLDER WAVES IT IN ACTOR'S FACE I am a California doctor- a doctor- got it? DoCK- K-K-K Doctor!- Do we have any actors who can read!? What the [expletive deleted] is wrong with you people?
Great great- show me loving homophobia- perfect!
Do it like you hate your son and resent your wife for making him a fag- excellent
Get this [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] out of my [expletive deleted] face- you're done- no you're done. Get off my set.
Perfect- Did the rest of you see this? That's how you sell paranoia-


This is so the MAN's version of rainbow coalition.

I'll do it.
I'll do it.
I'll do it.
I'll do it.
I'll do it.

Ow My Freakin' Ears

The library was going to open late this morning so the fire alarms could be tested. That makes good sense. You don't want people being confused or unsettled by horrible noise in a library of all places.

Unfortunately that testing was not done... not even started by the time we opened.

So the testing was done... is being done with a library full of patrons and employees.

It's loud.

Loud... no, that doesn't communicate what exactly it's like...

Let me think. If there is a tranquil, still, quiet center of the universe, we are at the point furthest from-
Yes- especially if it is, in fact, an infinite universe-
We are infinitely proceeding away from quiet stillness.

It's like a jackhammer and Fran Drescher had a baby- and this baby had colic- that's kind of how it is in here.

If loud were to be weaponized- it would be this.

It's so loud my eyes hurt.

It's so loud I am going to stick sharpened golf pencils in my ears and welcome the forever nothing that follows.

It's a loud that can induce vomiting.

It's the devil's loud.

It's a loud that transcends the meaning of loud because loud suggests hearing and this loud makes hearing impossible.

So why don't I just get up and leave? Good question. That's what any reasonable person would do.

I have.

Again and again.

I think I'm done for the day.

Death is a Prophylactic

I was asked to verify that Billy Graham ever said what I said he said. I guess I have to say he didn't "say" it.

It's tough if you don't accept that he was a man, but here 'tis.

So the reveal?

Celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. "Spiritualizing" My Lai. Waving our palm fronds.

Isn't it all of the same stuff?

Doesn't it depend on our creating a self-serving, self-justifying, affirming sense of God- a sense of God that is then for us in a self-serving, self-justifying, affirming way?

I guess we could say it's all in the past and now we know better. I guess we do say that, and do so without thinking that makes us the crowd that rejects Jesus.

Convenient.

...

Here's where it gets maudlin...

Could you stand with King while he was still alive? If you're a White Christian, history says you probably couldn't.*
What would you do or say about My Lai if now was 37 years ago? Say, "Thanks, Billy"?
Where would you be in the last week of Jesus' life: with the crowds, his disciples, the religious leaders? The Gospels don't really give any of us a happy out with those choices.

So where do you stand now?

Are you convinced that your god has saved you from this story?

I'd say y/our submission to y/our god still crucifies love today. But "The cry of revolt against such a god is nearer the truth than is the sophistry with which men attempt to justify him."** [sic all the way around]

If Only I Were Listening to Rattle and Hum
Doolittle- Pixies

* Ouch, did I have to say it like that?
** Some so and so's thoughts on what the Letter to the Romans could mean.

I Will Be Brief

This week seems a perfect storm of destroying devotion.

What?

This past Saturday was the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder. I know this anniversary was not a decade marker- and Obama is president- so it might not be necessary to remember Martin Luther King Jr. anymore, but whatever the reasons, it didn't carry the same eventfulness as last year's anniversary.

I mean last year was a "commemoration". Last year, we were all remembering what MLK meant to us. And of course by remembering I mean constructing self-congratulatory narratives that let "we" be self congratulating.

Again... what?

Then we had Palm Sunday. I'm always struck by Palm Sunday's conventions. The palms of course. The little bits of object lesson that have us identify with the crowds saying, "Hossana in the highest. Yay, Jesus." But not too much with the crowds saying, "Hossana in the highest. Yay, Jesus."

That's confusing. What're you getting at?

I know it's a lot of material to cover, so we seldom get to the "stuff" between the entry into Jerusalem and the bloody exit, but these crowds saying, "Yay, Jesus," soon say, "His blood be on us and on our children."

Well... we're THE CHURCH. When we say, "Hossana in the highest. Yay, Jesus," that's what we mean.

Somehow, we're different. We don't see ourselves as subject to similarly self-serving motives or the possibility of sin.

Right, we are different. They were Jews. Remember? They had certain expectations of a Messiah that Jesus just wasn't going to fulfill. Didn't you know that? That's why we're different.

Our confident praise is something like, "If we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in the blood of the prophets," without realizing what it means to say, "If we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in the blood of the prophets."

Uh, you had me then you lost me

So Jesus' dies for our sin (though not because of our sin) and reconciles us to God, a God that justifies us, that we can attach ourselves to wholly and confidently in a way that satisfies our deepest needs.

Oh, okay. Right. I get that.

It's difficult to be wary of our offering praise to a God that satisfies us. It just makes sense to attach ourselves to God, to fix ourselves on this God with intense devotion and say, "Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest." It's difficult to find it anything other than proper because we've been washed white.

You said you would be brief. I still don't get what this has to do with Martin Luther King or why it's a storm of devotion destroying.

Oh... right. I guess tomorrow will be a bit of a reveal.

Finally! No Wonder You're Going Out of Business

Blockbuster has shipped The The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection, Vol. 2 - Pod People

You're invited.

Jesus Is Our Following Jesus

Speculum- ... so I was so overcome and convicted by my own role in that whole stinkin' process that I bought as many newspapers as I could and ripped that picture out- I mean the picture of that dad crying over his dead little girl's body just overtook me- and so I ripped it out- out of each newspaper and wrote "This is the face of our sin" on each one with a magic marker. So I'm running up and down the street-
The Curator- Like a crazy person?
Speculum- Like a crazy person- and giving these- I guess flyers, giving these flyers to everyone and finally, you know a group starts to gather around me, and so I just ask myself- I ask us all- I ask how we cannot confess this as ours? I just ask why we say this is necessary and good- how we can live with ourselves if who we are depends on this kind of death- I mean this death, even this one specific death- if who we are is worth this one little girl let alone how many countless others, And I say, "we have to know this little girl, we have to know what we've done to her"-
The Curator- And you don't think that was a bit extreme?
Speculum- ... well...
The Curator- Do you think that's what people wanted to see? Do you think that picture was going to get people to listen to what you had to say?
Speculum- I don't know if it was about getting people to hear me... I thought it was about- I dunno I was just confronted with what it means if i seriously think I'm following Jesus
The Curator- If it's not about getting people to hear you then why say anything? You do want people to hear you. You have a very important message to offer them, but you will only drive people away with this...
You have to remember the heart of your message- the heart of our message: Jesus is our peace.
Speculum- Yeah but, well I guess, yeah Jesus is my peace, it doesn't seem like I'm not saying that-
The Curator- But you might be turning people off though, right?
Speculum- I suppose-
The Curator- And how will people hear your message if you've turned them off. How will they know that good news if you've sent them away? Our message is Jesus.
Speculum- Sure, right. I don't suppose they could- but... Well no. Isn't their being turned off a matter of their being committed to death? I mean if we're going to turn from death-
The Curator Jesus is our life.
Speculum- What? Yes. No- wait, there's going to be a bit of feeling bad- I felt bad when I was confronted by this picture- I don't see how I couldn't if it's a matter of really being confronted- if it's a matter of sin being overcome-
The Curator Jesus overcomes our sin.
Speculum Sure, but I don't think you would say "Don't confront a man whose beating his wife because he'll feel bad and won't want to listen to you"-
The Curator Jesus is our response to domestic violence.
Speculum What?

Objectivity

Said in line at Stater Bros.- Ugh, Valerie Bertinelli beach body at 48? Yeah it's easy when you have a personal trainer, cooks, and get to work out all day...

...

Before purchasing-
Off-Brand Drumsticks
Spaghetti Sauce
Frozen Pizza
Diet Coke
Lay's Potato Chips
2 Healthy Choice Soups

The Morning Lasts All Day

The Lovely Elizabeth is singing the chorus to Life in a Northern Town these days. A lot. It makes the Qweenbean happy.

She admitted that it makes her hurry home from work now. The soft inference is she previously did not come home as quickly as she could. Whereas I, the good parent, can't wait to get around our little spawn's filled diapers, inarticulate articulation of wants, demand to be held, need to be constantly watched, and all that fun stuff.

...

A student asked if I enjoyed parenting and I said I do not. I love The Lovely Elizabeth. I want to do everything I can to take care of her, think of her when I'm away from her, like the little person I see developing, want to treat that responsibly, am excited about being with her in the future, and who knows what all else. I like that I am her parent as far as that goes, but I don't think I could say I like parenting. Other, better people, may like parenting as a concept and try somehow to develop that dynamic with people whose parents they are not (was there a better way to write that?). I am not one of them. I can't imagine myself waking up 5 times a night for... well you, dear reader as an example. I don't see myself doing the things I do as a parent as enjoyable in themselves.

Do I?

No. I think I stand by that. And I think I can say that the joy I find in knowing The Lovely Elizabeth, the strange feeling of elation that wells up in my chest when she smiles, when I hear her little voice, when she lunges toward me to give what seems like a hug, the fondness I feel for her, the concern, interest etc... is all carried by our knowing and getting to know each other rather than through being part of some preformed template for a relationship that we may call "parent" or doing "parenting".

There's a difference?

This may seem a silly difference to point out, but the silliness has broader implications.

As we hold out certain concepts as good: parenthood, dating, marriage, what have you- we obscure its reality that includes awfulness, ugliness, sadness, suffering, etc... I don't mean that we don't perhaps know that any set of relations will have difficulties, I mean our putting the relations forward as an ideal, especially as an ideal to which we say folks ought to aspire can lead to despair or guilt for feeling things that are a part of living with and knowing someone, let alone raising someone.

Whatever, it's not like the confusion someone may feel at being sad when everyone tells them them they are experiencing the greatest joy ever is a big deal.


The Lovely Elizabeth is the one with the goatee.

Oh Thank God

"One Republican Senator, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, voted against the legislation. He was joined by seven Democrats: Barbara Boxer of California, Richard H. Bryan of Nevada, Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland, Mr. Dorgan and Mr. Wellstone."

NY Times

So he remains God's prophet.