Posted 4/26/2002 11:02:36 AM



caught this on jordan's blog:


Why? Why does it have to be this way? I don't want to rip anyone off. I don't want to take part in a global conspiracy against the poor. I just want a hot drink, a dangerous amount of caffeine and somewhere to read the paper. Is that too much to ask?

Posted 4/26/2002 10:20:52 AM
there is nothing covered up that will not be exposed.
nothing is secret that will not be revealed.
every secret kept will become known.
what you have whispered in hiding will be shouted from the housetops.
Q45

some shutter at this thought. i guess we all do a bit. that is as it should be. there is an aspect of being known that is terrifying. being known is a commitment that opens one up to rejection, boredom, disappointed expectations.

i read these well known couplets of jesus and hear something altogether different now from what i heard in my youth. youth (my youth at least) seems often marked by the natural naivety that is present outside of living with one's bodily enactments over time. i heard words such as those in Q45 in my younger days and it reinforced a simplistic self-righteous moralism in me. it became another reason to do or not do certain things on my inherited list of virtues and vices.

i read Q45 now and i see something more. i see a tightly wound network of relational issues bound up in the opposition of the secret and the revelation, the covered and the exposed; the parties to the secret and the secret's ultimate self-announcement, those covering and the eventual exposure of that which is covered; the near voyeurism of those not party to the secret, not actors in that which is covered yet obsessed with an open account, fascinated by a total exposure.

i read Q45 now and i hear something other. a complex of relationships that eschews the simplistic machinations of party line buttressing and rebuttal. i still hear the moral snap of these stanzas. only i am now far more interested, not in eschewing secrets or coverings, but in enacting a relational integrity and in embodying mysteries together that need not fear eventual exposure.

i find this then the most passionate word that can be spoken between friends, lovers, community:

perhaps our greatest challenge is not too many secrets, but too few worthy of the name.

Posted 4/26/2002 08:49:17 AM
cliff notes on the RIAA and web radio

RIAA
heavy handed recording industry behemoth

web radio
innovative, young medium difficult to directly co-opt

why does this matter?

may 21st internet radio that is based in the USA could cease to exist as we know it... or risk being sued for perverse levels of royalty payments directly to record labels not just to artists like in terrestrial radio.

let's go find some smooth stones...

more:
Write your congress person
Save Internet Radio
Web radio's last stand
Small Webcasters campaign for survival

Posted 4/25/2002 09:19:02 PM






massively parallel lived contingency swallows absolute cause and effect and every other mechanistic notion of emergence.

Posted 4/25/2002 01:11:24 PM
LIVE

Posted 4/25/2002 12:05:58 PM

"what would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?"
she read off of the pewter bar sitting with dead forthrightness on his bookshelf.

"walk on water," she thought to herself.

and in her dream called life she surprised herself
with her next words: "get out of the boat... for death approaches."

Posted 4/25/2002 11:46:38 AM
ask and it'll be given to you
search and you will find
knock and the door will be opened
Q35

we all ask. a few of us search. knocking seems to demand too much. what is it about knocking that is frightening? knocking is frightening. if you say it is not you have not yet knocked. some of us confuse the search for the knock. some of us don't even really ask and just assume we are knockers. to knock. this is to live. or is to live the next unspoken moment that knocking enables? to enter. yes, to enter. this is life.

Posted 4/25/2002 11:29:32 AM
a thread on defining ourselves and my response:

we are perhaps presumptuous, self-centered and short-sighted in our own ways, but no more or less so in a qualitative sense than any other period of transition and excess... there is no golden age to get back to. we are always already finding who we are. it is not so much this search that concerns me; it is what we do while living out this search. if we still haven't found what we are looking for we should at least be transformatively engaged in some aspect of what we have found to date. my greatest concern is not the ubiquitous journey to self so much as the pathetic apathy that quietly feigns real life.

Posted 4/25/2002 01:51:57 AM
look at the long now--the 20,000 years from the emergence from the 'ice age' forward to the year 12,000 on the christian calendar. you look at something like that and all of a sudden your little quarrels with someone in your camp over some idiosyncratic difference in the way you do or speak something seems rather irrelevant. i would suggest that the more our stories begin to include the vast expanses of time that are usually ignored by those concerned with being right the more we see that being right is really not what is important.

put a virtual tack on the timeline of the long now. where do we fall on the long now? where do the reformers? the scholastic fathers? the early fathers (are there no mothers??)? the time after jesus but before christianity? the time of jesus? the hebrew prophets, judges and kings? moses? the patriarchs? the ancients--noah, adam, eve? this "vast expanse" of history spans a few thousand years! our stories have been told from a historical procrustean bed! we have never ventured to reclaim our human legs and speak with courage a story that is something other. how do our stories morph as the scale on which they dwell swells? how does our message of the kingdom find a new conceptualization? does this not perhaps force an actual decentering and an actual rejection of a strictly linear, progressive view of history and revelation? do we perhaps now find ourselves anew in a place of cyclical, generational enactment of the other kingdom rather than a once for all pronouncement of it?

too many words for so early in the morning...

Posted 4/24/2002 11:09:59 PM
so, why is it that i can surprise myself in my dreams? they're my dreams. my mind creates every character, dialogue, scene... and yet i am a participant who can be surprised at times. odd thing dreams.

Posted 4/24/2002 08:50:47 PM
anecdotal evidence of the continuing economic trouble in the USA:

in traffic today i saw a large, hand-written sign in the back window of a jeep that read simply, "I NEED A JOB" and listed the guy’s phone number. next to this placard was a one page resume taped to the window.

Posted 4/24/2002 08:47:50 PM
from the sex crazed BBC...

he said "prolactine." yeah, huhuhu.
BBC News | HEALTH | Sex drug could aid male stamina

Dr Ros Bramwell
"It's nice to see this kind of research being done and very particularly suggesting that breast feeding is sexy."
BBC News | HEALTH | Breast feeding sends mating signals

Posted 4/24/2002 12:56:35 PM

Posted 4/24/2002 12:40:32 AM

...
why do you leave me wanting more?
...

felloroara

Posted 4/23/2002 06:53:26 PM
Ekklesia Project Online: 'Entering the Wreckage'

Posted 4/23/2002 05:57:12 PM
onepotmeal posted some interesting thoughts here.

Postmodernism that does nothing but perpetuate the elitism it is capable of dismantling really isn't postmodern at all, but is just an example of subverting a subversive idea to maintain the status quo—academics hiding behind a smokescreen of impenetrable jargon to keep the 'uninitiated' from grasping the full weight of their ideas. Or, if you like, learning to say 'neener neener' in newer, fancier ways so those outside the jargon box don't know that the emperor is wearing new clothes.

Posted 4/23/2002 01:39:34 AM
from doc's Monday blog:

Like most Libertarians, I tend to like less government. Unlike most Liberals, I love business, and love markets. But, unlike most Libertarians (and Conservatives), I don't believe the market has yet been built that can save an old growth redwood tree. I also don't believe markets, as we commonly understand them, give a shit about the Long View. . . . Basically, I believe the old labels suck. When I try any of them on, they don't fit. And I think that's their problem, not mine.

Posted 4/22/2002 10:35:54 PM
ok, daniel, the dealingwith guerilla christian, has done it again with his super, mega, paradigm shifting, media driven, new and improved church!

Posted 4/22/2002 10:19:41 PM
so is it odd to you that mayor giuliani looks the best out of all of these action figures? blair looks like a school girl. osama in drag is an interesting sight. although, far more interesting is the real life picture of osama in flared jeans and a tight shirt leaning up against his convertible during his less than austere pre-jihad days. though that pic will cost you some serious dough and is not available at herobuilders.com.

Posted 4/22/2002 07:55:11 PM
another message from nonzero. this one is rather long compared to the first entry he sent me. this guy needs his own pc. i'll humor you for awhile man, but you really need to get yourself some electricity and bandwidth, ok? love ya.

the sum of perfection:
forgetfulness of creation,
remembrance of the creator,
attention to what is within,
and to be loving the beloved
-st. john of the cross

ok, so saint john o' da cross is cool. hell, he is the namesake for the inspiration behind the flower that is making some pseudo-pharma companies billions keeping the world's semi-depressed perky (no slight here, i am in need of the perky weed periodically myself). my main beef with ol' saint john is his other-worldly orientation. we see this view played out in our day through at least two generalized spiritualities that are often caught up in "fighting each other in christian love" rather than living out what it is they say they value. These ways i term rejection spirituality and replacement spirituality.

rejection of the present spirituality takes the dichotomies of in/out, creator/creation, church/world literally by intensely privileging some specific past periodization of the faith (amish lifestyle, reformation theology, desert fathers spirituality, et al) and projecting it out as if it were the silver bullet for all of our social ills and spiritual malaise. these are people not very happy with themselves or anyone else (yes, i am using a HUGE brush stroke here. you know some of these people, though, don't you?!). these people are right, damnit!

replacement spirituality takes these same dichotomies seriously, but not so much to be pure or right, but to feel good. welcome to the all jesus all the time pleasure dome. you need a happy marriage, good kids, more stuff, higher self esteem, better dates... we got all o' dat! these folks are the reason seeker sensitive services started. you didn't know that? these mall circus pep rallies aren't for the unchurched. who wants stupid christian entertainment when i can go to friggin' vegas for less than tithing? these institutional monstrosities are for the apathetic church. these folks need a little religion with their sugar. this is the reason the jesus junk industries in the west are doing so well. jabez me baby. i need another hit of this shit.

ok, now that i have totally offended everyone in american christendom how about a little positive prose? bottom line? if you grew up in or are currently associated with a church in the USA colloquial sense of the word you are by definition a little bit rejection and a little bit replacement. your particular brand of jesus will determine the secret formula you are imbibing and prescribing (have you ever thought of modern christianity in the west in terms of the soda wars?). own this. don't lie to yourself or the rest of us. some of us get really pissed off when you do this. that is my first happy thought: own where/who you are. i did not say go jihad for where/who you are. i said admit it. and then move on.

next? recognize that where/who you are is smack dab in the friggin' middle of what we have fondly come to call contingency. you sit in a vast chain of being. you don't know who you are and you will not remain the same. so be it. bask in this. what else is faith for? go move mountains! don't tell me that you know kung fu. jump into a construct and show me! that is a hell of a lot better for all of us than you just insisting that you are right! the gospel ain't 'bout you being right! got it?

finally (for almost dr. this is a three point homily), after 1. owning where/who you are, 2. recognizing the larger context of unknowing that this where/who you are lives within you should consider 3. stop masturbating with your christian romance novel and go lose yourself in something divine. oh, i said that this was the happy part. sorry. strike that. here, i'll do it for you. just ignore the offensive stricken words. yes, the kingdom is that simple. being lost with the widows and orphans and poor and oppressed and impure and uncool and corrupt and empowered and confused and diseased... you get it. ok. that's it. frighteningly simple, eh? too simple. there ain't no way to own this. you can't build a huge international television ministry to sell this. it ain't being bottled and sold through distributors anymore.

let me go over these points again:

1. this is my heritage < >. i own it.
2. i realize that my heritage is living, active, changing and in the final analysis based on the agreements of those i call "my people" over time.
3. i'm going to be about justice, mercy, love, community where i am and be advocate for the same in those places i cannot be.

so, in summation, i will seal my heresy with a remix of st. john of the cross:

the sum of perfection is a ridiculous idea:
remember all of creation as if it were the creator,
be righteous, forget the pursuit of being right,
let your body live out the Way that lives within you,
and love one another
-nonzero

Posted 4/22/2002 06:23:23 PM

a piece of andrew's alt.worship synopsis:

People admire churches that are big, publicly significant and long-lasting. The emerging postmodern churches are just the opposite. Although it is too early to generalize, the trend is for them to be small, intimate groups .... They are indigenous, organic and flat-structured, often refusing to become institutional. They are seasonal, not perennial. They don't always last in the same form for very long. Their worship revolves around cycles and celebrations, feasts and festivals, rather than regular weekly events.

Posted 4/22/2002 01:33:19 PM
poozi really died.
she won't be alive anymore.
she won't ever be a butterfly now.
poozi is dead.

four sentences spoken by a. in memory of the faithful friend stee poozi. though a friend for a short time we trust that she has been translated into a new existence where the pain of caterpillar life is no more. we miss you poozi. xoxo d,s,a

Posted 4/22/2002 01:09:18 PM

life is provisional.
it will ultimately become something else.

you are free to live.

Posted 4/22/2002 12:19:07 PM
andrew jones, the tallskinnykiwi, recently wrote a bit about alt.worship. some interesting thoughts. check it out.