Posted 10/25/2002 11:27:02 PM
Riddle's Little Project Mayhem... no, i guess that would mean that someone other than the owner puts the words on the marquee--hey, that's not a bad idea...

On Sunday November 17th let churches with Marquee signs shout a message in one accord. Using their all UPPER CASE letters wisely for once in an ecumenical anthem. Let the mega-churches use their electronic time and temperature signs responsably. Let us declare what the world already know but what we are afraid to admit! On the morning of Sunday November 17th the movement begins as we all proclaim the truth together

CHURCH
SIGNS
ARE
STUPID

Posted 10/24/2002 08:17:34 PM

current mp3:
the.prayer.chain::whirlpool

A
And some men say that God is dead
         G
some men say that God is dead
A
And sometimes I believe them
                G
And sometimes I laugh at them
            A
Because the rosary beads are worn
    G
and no one is praying at his feet

Posted 10/24/2002 05:02:26 PM
NAQOYQATSI

Posted 10/24/2002 02:15:44 PM

Ponds moi
Je suis a toi
current mp3:
enigma::mea.culpa

Posted 10/24/2002 12:56:37 PM

haunted

to be haunted by insignificant success
to want for a way that does not exist
to rush on in the momentary balm of pace
without hope hoping to someday face
the unexpected imploding of feigned postures of strength
that devilishly divine play of pride's disgrace
which somehow crafts an open space
a momentary lapse in this numbing race
a sated moment of inconvenient grace
that transforms the bored into the sacred mundane
that salts the taste on obesity's frame
that patterns a way after success
an intoxication beyond frenzied idleness
destiny's orgasm in cycle sustained
something holy
something other
something fully in/sane

a living encounter with all that is and is not
this vast mystery of being
called the kingdom of god


{stream of consciousness blogger free verse that got way too rhymey... sorry}

Posted 10/23/2002 10:18:12 PM

Posted 10/23/2002 04:25:23 PM

relaps has started blogging.

Posted 10/23/2002 10:51:40 AM

oh, hey, btw, the time is now.

Posted 10/22/2002 10:22:51 PM
And I won't listen to messages
Sent by someone who calls up and says: ...
-da.weezer, "slob"

Posted 10/22/2002 10:01:15 PM

so what is it with being saved?

saved from what? saved for what?

could it be that we might possibly have taken this whole "being saved" thing in the wrong direction? if spiritual living is about getting people into "heaven lifeboats" i'm ready to get back into a 90 hour work week driving revenue for some multinational ecological disaster. the "hide me from hell" approach to the cycles of human religious existence seem altogether foreign to me. i need to be saved?

saved from what?

"what about hell?" i am asked. "exactly," i answer, "what about it?" we do not know. hell is metanarrative. all metanarrative is unknowable. these stories must be judged in action as useful or useless; as in continuity, in some way, with some line of tradition or as inconsistent with said tradition. i believe that we can continue to use this metaphor to communicate the visceral sense of human justice that is beyond our control as a species--that desire to have some overarching sense of things being made whole at some point--but we would do well to consider the genealogy of the place of the dead narrative throughout human societies and, specifically in this present context, the Abrahamic faiths.

ancient semitic tribes had varied and rather simple stories about the unknowing after the death of the body. sophisticated afterlife narratives and angelology developed most acutely during the captivity period in Babylon out of which came nuanced accounts of personal angelic beings and heavenly battles and the like in such powerful prophetic personalities as Daniel. up into the days of the late second temple (Jesus' days) there was a strong tradition (perhaps most stringently held by the party of the priestly elite we call the Sadducees) that denied the afterlife or the resurrection of the dead. out of a more Pharasaical set of assumptions, Jesus spoke of hell in stories he told (Lazarus and the rich man, the sheep and the goats, et al). anyway, this is getting too long. my point is just that there was never a view of the afterlife (the place of the dead, sheol, hell, gehenna, hades, the bosom of Abraham, heaven, the happy hunting ground, etc.), but, significantly, there is a strong, consistent recurring theme of cosmic justice throughout human civilizations.

Jesus speaks on the themes of judgment/salvation in a few places in the received gospels of the latin-hellenistic canon and his message is altogether different from the "Jesus loves you and if you don't love him back you're going to hell" message of vampire Christianity (Dallas Willard's turn of phrase).

::some stories with a judgment motif::

ten virgins
investments: courage, fears and outcomes
sheep and the goats
lazarus and the rich bastard (oh, i mean us)
feast in the kingdom

funny thing about this Jesus character and his teaching on judgment and the afterlife... it seems that those who consider themselves the most religious are the most likely to be duping themselves out of the kingdom (feast in the kingdom), those comfortably self absorbed (lazarus and us) into judgment and those who publicly act the most respectable (sheep and the goats) into that dreaded goat status (funny how odd that sounds in our time...).

::some teachings on living the antihell life (in hyperbole)::

murder/anger/speaking
self-mutilate don't sexually dominate someone else's partner, heck, don't even think about it
heavy burdens and "twice the child of hell"
the tongue (james, jesus' brother)

another funny thing... Jesus seems far more concerned with the life you live than with what you think about him; the ways in which you become the conduit for justice and injustice as opposed to your views on his ontological nature. there is an antihell way according to this radical Jew... but ultimately the judgement is left to God who alone is good.

so what about the fall? don't we need to be saved from Adam's sin? this inaugurating sin event is a Christian gloss on an obscure recounting of an ancient Sumerian and Akkadian origin story complex within Hebrew scripture that, over thousands of years, was never interpreted as a moment of evil universally entering the human species by those whose sacred writings these are. the only interpretive postures that seem anything akin to theologically significant with regard to a Judahist exposition of the Eden stories as a platform for an original sin doctrine were produced by late second temple Judahist groups, probably influenced by Essenic thought, as evidenced in late apocryphal and pseudepigraphal writings. that there is somehow a transmission of damnation, generation to generation, through a spiritual encoding in the torn fabric of human spiritual DNA is metanarrative that is both difficult to find historical theological justification for and, in my view, less than useful as a prism in refracting the faiths of the Abrahamic traditions in general and the Way of Yesh'uah in particular.

after hell and the fall the next question that often arises as one begins to question the perversely overused metaphor of being saved as a primary identity marker in a spiritual life is the whole issue of what salvation means. what are we saved for? the traditional American religious answer today would be something along the lines of this: salvation is mental ascent to a collection of sentences that saves me from hell. so what am i saved for? i am saved for the express purpose of being right--because people that are right don't go to hell!

i am right! you need to be right like me! come agree with my sentences and you can be saved too! woo hoo! yippie! we're all saved now. isn't it hunky dory being right?? let's all pray for Israel's triumph over those usurpers who have built that temple to satan where the next temple is going to be (isn't the resumption of animal sacrifice going to be great!). hey, maybe Jesus will come back soon and we can get off of this fallen planet! warning: this car will be unmanned when i'm raptured, baby. oh, yeah. i can't wait for the antichrist to be revealed. wow, that will be cool. like, maybe he is already alive. if he is he works for the UN. man, do i hate the UN. wow, i need to get out of here and go pass out tracks to get some people saved!

(sorry, i started to feel like i was writing a "get your war on" comic. anyway...).

it's time for something else. something other. something beyond the crass bumper sticker sloganeering that passes as thoughtful religious expression in our time. an ancient-future path of difference. a life for others worthy of crucifixion that dismantles the myopia of a consumer Christian lifestyle. a communal life of thoughtful creation that in practice deconstructs the rah-rah Christian lifestyle marketing of our most successful and sickly "spiritual institutions."

so now what?

in an effort to find new ways of speaking:

today i declare myself unsaved.

today i choose to love.
today i choose to follow.
today i choose the sufficiency
that is not mine to possess only mine to give.

a salvation whose i am.
an other's choosing to gift
my unpossessed reciprocation.
a way only known in the open spaces of giving.

now, let's all turn to hymn number 543, hymn 543,
singing all seventeen verses for our time of invitation...

who will join me today?
do you have the courage to be unsaved?

Posted 10/21/2002 11:12:56 PM

absolute origin evaporates in the play of inevitable genealogy.

Posted 10/21/2002 10:27:51 PM

licentiousness: liberty as tool in service of the merely selfish.

grace: a reckless extravagance of giving.

Posted 10/21/2002 08:20:08 PM
NPR : In Praise of 'Slow Food'

"Slow food" is more of a philosophy than a cuisine. It's not about all-day cooking in a crock pot -- slow food is defined by how it's prepared, and how it should be enjoyed....

Slow food is about local, hand-made ingredients, traditional cooking methods... "The idea was to combat fast food... by looking right near you for something really good, and local, and handmade," Kummer says. "It's an alternative to what you'd find in supermarkets and fast-food places." Kummer adds that putting in the effort to find quality ingredients supports those farmers and artisans who carry on time-honored traditions

Posted 10/21/2002 07:24:43 PM

Ya'akov bar Yosef akhui diYeshua

Artifact May Be Earliest Relating to Existence of Jesus

a stone burial box (osuary), potentially that of James the brother of Jesus and the leader of the Jerusalem based community of those who first followed after God in the way of Jesus, was just discovered. read more in the journal breaking the news, the Biblical Archaeology Review.

Posted 10/21/2002 01:24:33 PM


so, did i mention my birthday...

yeah.

Posted 10/21/2002 10:46:02 AM

message to religious weirdoes everywhere:

get out of your inbred communities of sameness and go help somebody.
get a life. find a path. do something!

prevent a disease,
love a child,
give your second coat,
create space for collaboration and newness,
build trust and hope...

don't reinvent unless you have to.
join with the government, philanthropic and not-for-profit communities
that are already endeavoring to make a difference.

stop whining about being right and find your voice.

be known for your love or be known for nothing.

Posted 10/21/2002 10:37:55 AM

Soularize in retrospect

in the tradition of cooper, evans, riddle and so many more i too will recount my pilgrimage to that odd but safe place of religious respite known as Soularize. it all began when i was 29...

-Day 1.5-
monday-tuesday

we (Kausar, Justin and I) departed dallas around 9pm on monday the 14th of october. after exploring the underground parking garage of a local bank building looking for an ATM machine and starting down 635 west we received a call from my sister saying that she could not find her keys... so we turned around and drove back to my condo. an hour later we again were on our way... 16 hours later we pulled into the crisp northern experience known as the Twin Cities.

immediately upon arrival we heard Doug Pagitt say some pretty cool stuff. we were stuffed away in the corner of this very cool turn of last century church balcony with a few other people scattered about. Chris Seay was one of those up there. cool to finally meet him. nice goatee.

after the main session we hung out with Karen Ward and some others and talked about ancient practices of people who were trying to follow Jesus. after that we met some awesome new friends--David from San Antonio and Adam from San Francisco. after some hang time we all went to get some Ethiopian at this great little place that we didn't really know how to get to. when we arrived we met two girls in the parking lot (also conferencers), Jenna (who came from a broken home, btw ;-) and Andrea (the heritage wesleyan ministress) from Illinois, who joined us for dinner. we seated ourselves as the restaurant was in panic mode... 70+ people from the conference showed up for dinner on a night that usually only had one server... needless to say we did not see our waitress very much, but we had a very cool time of conversation. grooving Dan and Scott the philosopher showed up twenty minutes later and rounded out our dinner party.

post-Ethiopian we went to see the films in the Damah festival tour. my favorites: 1,2,3 Dream (? i think... the "i rode in a car once" movie), Bybee and American Wet Dream in that order (the first two are not yet available on the web). We did not see all of this year's films--just the tour selection. i hope to see more of them on the web as they are released.

our first night we ended up staying in the very nice DoubleTree suite that dwavehed had... on one of the secured floors no less. i even got a robe. nice. a lot better than sleeping in the car... which was plan A...

-Day 2-
wednesday

the AM saw us sitting on the floor in an overflowing room to dialogue on theological turnings with Brian McLaren. we met more people... lots of people. Dan the star man from San Fran, John Franke and others. a gaggle of us walked through the chill and light snow to a local sandwich/coffee shop and had more great conversations. later that afternoon, there was a talk on HIV/AIDS that i hear was rad*--though i was dead to the world asleep someplace i think.

the PM found us mingling in the speaker reception at the conference hotel. i finally met Spencer and hung out with Jordon Cooper and some other hilarious Canadians. after it all wrapped up we headed over to Brits Pub to throw back some shepherd's pie and ale... great time with a table full of Canadians, a Brit and some Americans... man i miss my orange '72 VW van.

-Day 3-
thursday

wow... this narrative is already way too long. i'm going to start summarizing... but first, a quote from jason's blog about the Dirty Worship band:

The dirty worship band, which was a conglomeration of several worship people from around the country... They had one highlight for me, the contribution of the folks from the Bridge in Portland. There was so much passion and energy behind their original material and in how they presented it.... they seemed to have a The Violet Burning meets Fugazi feel (which are two bands we love). The Bridge's band is called Agents of the Future... go buy there CD's. They'll be in heavy rotation at our house.

the Rev. Bernice King spoke on the number 11 and the penis (yes, this is literally true, ask me in person...). i caught one of the two Brad Cecil workshops (which was good). i missed a chance to hang at another coffee shop with the gang. i thought about what i was going to say the next day in my session and began to think that i would not follow the plan... we ate with Doug and the gang with the addition of a fellow from Idaho (sorry man, your name slips me) and Beauty-in-the-Present from Warehouse242.

despite the opportunity to go see the violet femmes i went back to the suite Brad so generously shared with us and went to bed early.

-Day 4-
friday

i got up early. we went to the volunteer breakfast, but i set up for my session while everyone else ate and talked. i went with my new plan to forego my notes and instead workshop the concept of genealogy as a constant artifice in retracing stories of meaning after contingency. i think that it went well. pretty good feedback overall. we ended the event with a great time of worship and communion. after a lot of goodbyes we got in the car for another 16 hours and pulled into the driveway at 7am saturday morning.

there was a lot more. it was the people who made the event so amazing. thanks Spencer. it was great.
\\\\
*rad - a word popularized in the 1980s meaning cool, awesome, bitchin, wicked, et al.

Posted 10/21/2002 08:37:52 AM

machina xianporna :: your church - porn or art??

i've pointed to this before. after going to three churches yesterday (don't ask) i thought that it was high time i linked to it again. read scott's great post and ask yourself if the spiritual communities that you are a part of are more porn than art. then ask yourself what you are going to do about it.

Posted 10/21/2002 08:29:54 AM
philosophy trading cards and action figures

Posted 10/21/2002 08:10:05 AM
current mp3:
dwavehed::wake

Posted 10/20/2002 09:40:30 PM
Adopt-A-Minefield

Posted 10/20/2002 06:26:19 AM
Iraq grants amnesty to all prisoners

"thank you for your support in this election. it was only through your vote, my secret police and local vote rigging that we were able to see 100% of the Iraqi people come together in unity giving me the mandate i need to fight the evil satan Bush. as a token of my gratitude i will release all convicted felons from the prison system into your neighborhoods. again, thank you." -MC Saddam

i guess that this is good for those wrongly accused... but could that be more than 20%, 30%, maybe 40% of the prison population?