I See Your Chair Has Four Legs, That Reminds Me of The Four Spiritual Laws...

I have a problem doing the Jesus hard-sell. I understand that for some this is the heart of what it means to be a Christian and because I'm not compelled to ask strangers what they think will happen to them when they die, I can't be a real Christian. This is a good as place as any to stop reading if that's the case.

I've tried it a couple of times, the "Can I interest you in some Jesus..." Rather, I've been a type of support person when others have done it. Like I said, I understand why someone would say this is the central piece of their faith- but it isn't for me. I guess that's that post-modern monster Relativor rearing its ugly head and that may be all you need to know what's wrong with me. (Actually, doesn't Relativor sound like a medication?) I get why some would feel that this is what they have to do- and they wouldn't characterize it as selling Jesus- but even as I understand it- "The Ask" never seems real to me and it's something I can't do.

I enjoy conversations of varying depth about things of faith and religion with people I know, but rarely... never... I can't recall. I'll say never -never have I pitched a lead, "led" them in "The Sinners Prayer," then rung a bell for my commission.

In any of those conversations, I've never finished with a, "So what's it gonna take to get you into a church today?" And I don't see myself doing it in the future.

I don't go for the soft sell either though.

The Onion AV Club blog has a brief entry today about Zune viral marketing parties. Someone... someones are paid by Microsoft to throw parties where a Zune is artfully but prominently featured as a necessity to the hipster's existence. Well, okay, not always artfully- but definitely prominently mentioned. It's supposed to make you want one.

So some schlup in a blue polo shirt at Best Buy tells you how much you might enjoy a Zune. You don't believe him- he's some schlup in a blue polo shirt at Best Buy. That won't do at all.

So you see a Zune ad where young good-looking people clearly enjoy life because of their Zunes. You feel good seeing that but you're smart so you say to yourself, "Oh that's just a commercial, it's totally constructed to get you to associate a Zune with good times and good looking people. A Zune might be cool- but the commercial is fake."

Then in real life, you're walking through a hall in your building and some guy you've seen a couple times invites you and your friends to a party where they'll be casually hanging out and listening to tunes on the Zune. It's weird that he mentions the Zune- but whatever, you're social, you go. And this regular person is living it. This regular person is popular, they give you booze- or whatever it is you like, they have lots of friends, good times surround them- and they want you to have a part in that good life. It's authentic. This Zune life is real. They say you can have a Zune and enjoy life as much as they do. Well maybe not you specifically- or you at all- your friend you brought with you will do just as well. And if not them, then the next person to walk through that door. Or some other person, some other day.

You don't matter as much as spreading Zune does. Well, who you are doesn't matter- so you can't afford it, or you don't really listen to music, or you find Microsoft's business practices troubling, or you think a world with everyone running around isolated by headphones is disturbing- whatever, this is Zune, and it's Zune that matters, not your petty concerns and causes or your distorted ideas about Microsoft's success and dominance.

Besides, in a way, by wanting you to have Zune, or at least presenting you the opportunity to receive Zune, you kind of matter- well, not you per se- but the you that you could be if you accepted Zune- the you that Zune exists for. Your neighbor ultimately cares about Zune. But Zune is so great; this thing you can carry around with you and show off, this thing that indicates a good life and good feelings, this thing that shows you've come around to a certain way of being- the Zune way of being- it's kind of like caring about you by sharing Zune with you. It's like an abstract, non-existent, incidental you kind of matters. It's like caring about the idea of you.

Should I belabor the connection I see with certain types of evangelism?

Third Prize Is You're Fired
Girl You Have No Faith In Medicine- The White Stripes
One Way Ticket to Pluto- Dead Kennedys
I Know There's an Answer- The Beach Boys
Liar- Sex Pistols
Rouge- Miles Davis
Unheard Music- X
Many Rivers to Cross- Jimmy Cliff
Broken Face- The Pixies
Fiddle About- The Who
I Don't Really Love You Anymore- The Magnetic Fields
Underture- The Who
Changes- Jimi Hendrix
Hell Is Chrome- Wilco
American Idiot- Green Day
High- Tripping Daisy
Rikki Don't Lose That Number- Steely Dan
Miracle Drug- U2
Wind Chimes- Brian Wilson
Spunky- The Eels
I'm The One- Descendents
I'm Having a Heart Attack- They Might Be Giants

Gay Bomb

"A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting."

CBS News

It turns out the Pentagon is run by Jr. Highers.

This explains the new uniforms made of rubber- unfortunately we couldn't get our enemies to wear suits of glue...

Or maybe the strange obsession with a caricaturized homosexuality explains the suits of rubber.

...

I hadn't realized it was a challenge to get soldiers interested in sex. In fact,* certain strains of chlamydia are so evolved/intelligently designed that they hover in clouds over military barracks.

*By "In fact," I mean "as a joke."

...

How's this add anything?

I thought that fighting was often a surrogate for sex. A twisted, sad, disturbing, and destructive surrogate- but surrogate nonetheless. So how does making soldiers more interested in sex take them away from fighting? Never mind the history of phallic weaponry, enhancing codpieces, etc..., just watch how intensely homo-erotic Ultimate Fighting is.

BOOSH-Y BOOSH-Y

You know how some people say- "America, love it or leave it" or "If it's so horrible here in America, why don't you go live in [someplace else]?," or "Good grief, there was a whole pie here when I left- did you eat the whole thing?"? Well I have a response for some of that. First of all, I like pie and if I eat it all, but burn the whole thing off- what's the problem? Secondly, it seems that someplace else might turn out to be a country full of 28%ers. What would I do in a place like that?

Albania for example-

"It was a unique day in the recent history of the Bush presidency: The U.S. leader, whose stops in Italy and Germany earlier on this trip prompted massive demonstrations against him and the Iraq war, could not suppress a satisfied smile as Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha called him 'the greatest and most distinguished guest we have ever had in all times.'"

LA Times

That's impressive because if I understand Albanian history correctly, that's where General Zod is from, as are Mother Teresa and the cruddy soft metal band Toxin. But I guess native Albanians aren't really guests- great or otherwise.

Their reaction is interesting to me. For one, I often wondered what the former President Bush will do... I'm going to write that again, former President Bush... I didn't see him building houses for Habitat for Humanity or writing books or fighting the global spread of AIDS or raising money for disaster victims... one more time, former President Bush.... Anyway he certainly wouldn't need to clear brush again, well at least he wouldn't need to have his picture taken clearing brush. I guess I imagined he would just sit on the Boards of Directors of multiple oil companies and spend his retirement splitting time between his villa in Texas and various palaces throughout the Middle East- taking leisurely strolls, hand in hand with various Saudi royals. But with this reception in Albania I see the possibility of W, the elder statesman, promoting the word democracy to infant nation states. That's something.

But that's something only slightly here or there. What is more interesting to me is this response. It's impressive considering what the rest of Europe, most Americans and a former president think of MY PRESIDENT. Albanians were largely responding to MY PRESIDENT'S support of Kosovar independence from Serbia- blah blah blah. It's a type of democracy he is pushing- a majority of people in some given locale have a particular opinion- so he says that's the way things should be. At least it is for Kosovo, and they like that. It appeals to their priorities and loyalties- it is for them, the way things are and should be. And that's the way things are.

It's nice to pretend that there is some detached, purely rational, objective way of saying how things ought to be or what we ought to do... but there isn't. There is a more detached, rational, and objective way of saying how things are, but not how they ought to be.

For the Albanians, the way things ought to be is a melange of culture, priorities, norms, mores, education, manners, habits, loyalties, accepted history and on... I'm not picking on Albanians. That's the way we all say things ought to be. A whole bunch of subjectivity is piled up and we say- "This is what ought to be done."

Now somewhere down the line, one might object to this and say something like, "Then this makes everything a matter of opinion- eating babies is a matter of chocolate is better than vanilla." I would say that's silly. Is eating babies really an option for you? You can call it a natural revulsion, a cultural norm, a matter of public sanction- but I doubt that eating human babies is an actual (not hypothetical) option for you. This isn't to say that someone, somewhere, at some time has never had that option. I just doubt it for you. And should some reader eat babies, they likely do it in secret, worried about being caught- unless they're crazy. In which case we know they're crazy because they don't worry about being caught eating human babies. But suppose there is some we somewhere that eats human babies. There is no way for them to know that eating babies is something that someone will call wrong unless there is some actual alternative we that says, "Hey, we think eating babies is horrrible- we say, 'Don't do that.'" There is nothing objectively in the baby that says, "Do not eat." Additionally I would say, not everything is a matter of opinion- just some things- specifically those things that matter to our selves for existence. And then I might ask, "Who told you to hold opinion in such low esteem?"

What we say one ought to do is a matter of opinion and it is often something we don't even say but know as what we ought to do because of who we say we are.

That "we" is very important. Who we say we are is an ongoing, webby, unsettled negotiation. Some are concerned that torture, invading other countries, overthrowing foreign governments, secretly arresting people and holding them without trial or evidence, hyper-nationalism, xenophobia, blah, blah, blah are a part of who we are. It is not compatible with what they say we should be. Others find it a necessary and good thing to preserve some conception of we. Those groups of we are are incommensurate and we will have to find some way to negotiate who we are through that. That's a lot of work, and when there's TV to be watched... well what can you do?

More locally, that seems to be the situation facing our erstwhile Yearly Meeting. If it's simply a matter of majority rule or volume, I'm out. Those who imagine following Christ is a matter of building bigger and more church buildings are more. Those who say Christianity is a matter of assent to a stated creed are legion. It may be that the we that is troubled by particular phenomena has no place in this body. It may be that what it means to be a Friend in southern California (and points nearby) is what it means to be a Nazarene or Calvary Chaplain and my discomfort means I need to find someplace else because I can't be a part of that we. I think there needs to be an ongoing discussion of who we are- but I feel very much right now like a baby eater. This particular body of we does not seem to correspond to what I can say. And if I cannot find something that corresponds to that- I don't belong here. It would be dishonest and wrong for me to continue.

Being a Quaker is neither a matter of novelty nor embarrassment for me. It is about reflecting deeply on what it means to know God myself and in community. It's about reflecting the presence of a totally transcendent God in the Body of Christ. It's about examining and affecting our contexts of understanding so that we don't confuse the practices of our faith with its object. In this context, I find myself caring less and less about what it means to be a Christian and only concerned with what it means to know God in Jesus Christ.

But we're an Annual Conference. We're less and less interested in corporeal life. We're pretending we can say the most important things about God in words. Those things that make sense to me, that have historically been central to Quaker life and thought are dismissed or supressed. I don't know how I can be a part of that we. I don't know how to be a part of any discussion of what that we can be- especially when there is TV to be watched.

Who Do You Say That I Am and All That...
Canned Heat- Jamiroquai
Landslide- Fleetwood Mac
Soul Love- David Bowie
Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves- Verdi
The Heat's On- Dizzy Gillespie
Bastards of Young- The Replacements
Psycho Killer- Talking Heads
Wishful Thinking- Wilco
I'm A Wheel- Wilco
Closedown- The Cure
East of the Sun- Sarah Vaughan
Static- Beck
Analyse- Thom Yorke
Sally Simpson- The Who
I'm Waiting for the Day- The Beach Boys
Bab's Uvula Who?- Green Day

I Wanna Know What Love Is...

I want you to show me.

I'm having a lot of trouble these days with a document our Yearly Meeting [sick (sic)] printed that pretends to explain Who We Are (you can download it at the EFCSW website- it's the first menu item in the upper right).

Firstly, we don't have a Yearly Meeting, we have an Annual Conference. That's right. For those of you reading this far from me and familiar with Friends- here in Southern California and some points nearby, we are no longer a Yearly Meeting. We are an Annual Conference. Do you find that laughable or does it burn in your throat like bile? I want to scream from my humanity, "That's bullshit!" From elsewhere, I feel sympathy and sorrow for those who are so lost and spiritually frustrated that they think a handful of name changes and new buildings will finally satisfy them. And then, maybe, meta-me says, "That's kind of condescending, jerk."

Secondly it wasn't put out by the Annual Conference as a whole, that is, it was written by an individual but given an EFCSW imprimatur.

Thirdly, only a handful of folks find its origin and existence troubling so caring about it at all is probably a sad lesson in wheel spinning.

Fourthly, it's a statement of faith and values and, as such, falls victim to the many problems associated with written statements of faith and values that Friends have historically had the good sense to avoid (I mean Big Picture history- not recent history).

Fifthly, it seems to have been produced in a way that belies the broadly Christian tradition of creeds as collective statements and the specifically Friendly practice of cooperatively doing ecclesial business.

I guess my fifth concern is just a restatement of my second concern... Is it? No, my second concern is that it claims to speak for a body when it, at best, speaks for a handful while my fifth concern is more about this act suggesting a primus inter pares.

Sixthly, it's bad- I guess that's assumed by 1 through 5.

I really appreciate the historic Friends practice of not trying to put God wholly into words. Friends have said and do say things about God. That's not a problem itself. Imagining that saying something about God says anything about God is the problem. I mean we must do more than just say something- and Friends seem to have known that. What accompanies those words seems to be a sense that our words are just that- or my words are just that- my words. I use them and they mean something but the sense is not fixed in the word. The actions that go with the word not only reveal what I mean but enrich the meaning that it can have.

Por ejemplo, The Qweenbean and I always say, "I love you," but if we were separately asked what that word means we would give similar but different definitions. That doesn't mean we don't know what love is, it means love is something that is not fixed and clear but is revealed in actions that we say correspond to love. It makes sense to do certain things and not do others in light of love. If I say I love The Qweenbean and then punch her in the back of the head that doesn't make sense. We also say we love other people. I say I love Clutching is Hugging, Sergeant Jesus, and others and what we mean by love is revealed in how we live with those others. It means more than what it just means to me and The Qweenbean and those relations and the acts in those relations reveal and deepen its meaning. I think marriage is like that too. We have a sense of what marriage is before we enter into it, but as we go on in marriage we have a richer sense of what it means- especially as we come to points where it transcends what we thought it could or did mean. If I stood alone and said, "This is what love means," or "This is what marriage means," apart from what I see love and marriage mean in the communitarian acts of love and marriage, I would be an idiot. I may be an idiot regardless- but I can be an idiot that has a better sense of love and marriage only in working at love and marriage in a context where I understand love and marriage.

So similarly, if there is some such we are calling God- it doesn't seem necessary to say creator and sustainer... wait I mean Creator, Sustainer, etc... That's what God would be by being God so a lot of that nonsense can just be passed over. But also, by being God- it would be something that is transcendent and beyond the world. It would be set apart, set apart, set apart. That's one thing to always bear in mind. But then we go to loving, compassionate, and such. That's stuff we know in our existence- we simultaneously see that God is set apart, and existentially know God in heaven and earth, almost like they are filled with God's glory. But all that has to be understood via acts. We can say something like God is love because a book says so, but like the idiot standing alone saying, "This is what marriage is," without an existence that relates to it, it makes as much sense as hudda zeeta baa daa waaahh. The words aren't meaningless- they mean something, but they might be senseless to us- we need to see more done to know what their sense might be.

It's silly to just say, "We believe in the one holy and loving God, who exists eternally in three persons- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," without recognizing that saying it is a practice in relation to a bunch of other practices that clarify that. We, unfortunately, as an Annual Conference, are lacking practices that would make sense of this statement. To be fair, there is a section in this pamphlet that lays out a vision of what people who believe these things might be like. But it seems like this vision could be fulfilled by people who believe in the Rotary Club, or the Boy Scout's motto, or a chamber of commerce mission, more easily than those who believe the wholly transcendent God was revealed to us in the person Jesus and we now are his body. Our practices seem to betray a faith in a God that desires people know how to say the right things and infect other people across the globe with the ability to say the right things.

So I find traditional statements of faith generally problematic- especially if they are meant to gloss over a whole slew of disparate, non-corresponding practices.

But wait! There's more!

This document/pamphlet represents more belief. Not in what it says- the words in it even as they are explained... or especially as they are poorly explained are largely senseless. I don't mean meaningless. Unity, Liberty, etc... have meanings, but as I explained above, the sense we find in them comes from how we live, or the things we practice that correspond to the words that we use to describe what we're doing. There is a huge gap between the sentiments expressed in the pamphlet and the actual practices of our churches and the leadership displayed recently. That's one thing, but the act of writing this document in what can charitably be described as a cut and paste fashion, sharing it with a handful of reviewers, and then giving it a corporate stamp without corporate consideration or approval and imagining that it can say anything substantial is itself a statement of belief. It says something about what we think God is, what we think is required of us, what belief is. It does say something about Who We Are- but not so much in its words as in the act of conceiving, creating, and propagating it. So this is some act that says something about who we are and what we think about God. It says we believe in this triune relational God that made us in his image, but here we are not being relational in the act of creating the document itself; here we are not being a body. We say we believe somehow Jesus lives in us but that our lives will go on much as they always have, indistinguishable from anyone else because it's what's inside that counts. We say we believe there is a distinction between the world and the kingdom of God but just like the world we build 14 million dollar sanctuaries to our lords.

...

We are told that this is just a pamphlet of thoughts, and not really a statement of faith or a "binding" document. But it is binding in that it represents a practice in action. It shows us to what we have already cleaved.

And practically, it does come before Faith and Practice on the EFCSW website... but maybe that's because the same people who edited the document for substantive and mechanical clarity think "W" before "O" followed by "P" is some type of alphabetical order.

That's my jerky way of saying it's poorly written. To wit: "visa versa" is not what you write when suggesting the elements of the proposition previously stated are now in reverse relation. If you mean that, you write "vice versa." You write visa versa if you don't know better. Not knowing better is fine- but hopefully you are in cahoots with others who do know better and they in turn help you to know better. There is a good deal in this document to suggest this type of progress and relation- not knowing becoming knowing through practice among knowers- is strange or scary. There is a whole lot of confidently stated not-knowing in this pamphlet. Confident not-knowing is fine in conversation or a lame online weblog diary journal. It's not so fine for a tri-color, glossy, multi-paged denominational statement. So add bad editing to the theological caca that it is.

Whatever...

This may be the only time I reference Foreigner so cherish it. I wonder what this does for my Aging Hipster status. Foreigner is uncool- so is that ironically cool? But then if it's cool doesn't that make it uncool- but just uncool not campy or subversively uncool? I don't know. I am wearing a black t-shirt and will be going to Skylight Books today, so maybe it is cool- or I'm cool- so my Foreigner reference is cool too. But then that's probably overstating my cool influence- or ability to make things cool- and then even thinking that I might be cool or anything I might do is cool makes me horribly uncool. But then maybe my being horribly uncool makes my entire life ironically cool. I don't know- I need someone to tell me if I am cool or not.

You May See There Is a Section Within The EFCSW Website For Latin Churches- They Mean Spanish Speaking. This Is The Kind of Thing That Happens When You Have No Sense of History or Context
Frank Black Catalogue

This Is Not a Pipe

Some of the things I think at various times of my life seem at once profound and yet so simple that I am reluctant to share them lest someone say, "Duh."

So I'm on the train today, pressed into a corner near a door and far enough at one end of the car that I have a view of most of the passengers and it occurs to me that all I see, well, what I call seeing is just rippling light. I don't see glasses and headphones and moustaches and shirts and skirts and skin and bags and belts and color- just waves moving in three dimensions that the globs of goo in my head convert to chemical reactions. Those things I see as blue, head, shirt, eyebrows, etc... are not merely observations but are assessments... I don't just mean I give names to sensory data- or agree that these are the names that we give, which is itself a wild thing. I mean seeing these people as people all around me on the train, and then the platform, and then the stairs, the sidewalk, street, etc.. is not in the seeing itself. That is, there is nothing in the physical seeing, in the sense, that says "people" and then tells me how to negotiate my way through everything. What I see all around me, is just rippling light. What I do is something else not based on any of that.

There is nothing in the flood of data that tells me what I ought to do. It seems, there is nothing in the assessments, or even the names, that is founded in the sensory data.

That's why Jordi, or even Daredevil could see...

Like I said- duh.

Playlista
Nature Boy- David Bowie
Everything Is Broken- Bob Dylan
Lover Man- SarahVaughan
Auf Asche- Franz Ferdinand
The 59th Street Bridge Song- Simon and Garfunkel
There Is A Light That Never Goes Out- The Smiths
I Wish- Stevie Wonder