humor | WrongCards.com

Another irreverent ecards site to scroll through: www.wrongcards.com.

humor | Link

[Link]

humor | N.T. Wright On The Colbert Report

HT: Clayton

books | Simple Spirituality by Christopher Heuertz

Simple Spirituality: Learning to See God in a Broken World
by Christopher Heuertz

What is this book that ended up on my desk? It is certainly not academic theology, not the kind of book that I normally read. It seems in a way part memoir, though from someone too young to write a memoir, part theological reflection, though simple in its aims, and part guide, though not from someone who has arrived.

I met Chris while he and his wife Phileena were on a sabbatical from their work with Word Made Flesh, an organization that feels called by Jesus to birth communities which practice the presence and proclamation of the Kingdom of God among the poorest of the poor. I didn't get to talk with them as much as I would have like, but enjoyed our encounters. He was nice enough to send me his first book before it went to print.

As the title suggests, this is a book about seeing God. With a fair measure of humility, it discusses both where to look and what it takes to see. Heuertz uses stories, his own and his friends, to make his points. It's a personal book, a book designed to be approachable in its writing and tone, and a book where Heuertz argues that spirituality is often made too difficult.

There is much to commend in Heuertz' book. He discusses five spiritual disciplines that he sees as essential to shaping the Christian life: humility, community, simplicity, submission, and brokeness. His life, work and stories continually point to those who are poor, marginalized, and exploited in society. This is the strength of the book. He is right to suggest that Christianity errs when it insulates and isolates itself from those who are poor, because in so doing it insulates and isolates itself from Jesus. The book gives snapshots of a life transformed by eschewing such isolation and it speaks to some of the pitfalls of our lives: our pride, individualism and independence, lives of excess, desire to be in control and be on the winning team. These pitfalls warp our lives and our churches making Christianity far from compelling.

Heuertz' book weighs in at a mere 150 pages (with afterword, epilogue, and acknowledgments and the print isn't small). Published by a wing of IVP, Likewise Books seeks to publish books that support a practicable, active faith. Heuertz' book fits in this vein, but possesses a wisdom which outstrips its simple and conversational writing. Part of this comes from hard won experience, part from relying heavily on some great thinkers and Christian practitioners (though they aren't necessarily ones with which everyone will be familiar). The reflections are wide-ranging:

• "Humility is a principle and virtue that flows from love in its purest form."
• [about MySpace and Facebook] "I wonder if this virtual environment is actually damaging the spirit of true community because they're actually more closely related to role playing games."
• "Our view of poverty [unfortunately] becomes defined not by access to resources or opportunity but by possessions."
• "...if we are unable to give something away, then we do not possess it, rather it possesses us."
• "On one hand, we assumed that giving to someone begging encourages a lifestyle of pathetic dependency. They all seem to have the same needs, but many of them fabricate stories to prey on the emotions of rich foreigners. It is also a challenge to determine whether the man, woman or child is being forced to beg. Black markets (informal economic endeavors) around the world have been known to kidnap children and intentionally mutilate them, gouge out their eyes, or otherwise maim them, then place them in strategic locations to earn money for their handlers. On the other hand, the man, woman, or child begging from you may literally be dying before your eyes. How, then, can you not give? Scripture says, 'Give to the one who asks you' (Matthew 5:42). But does that mean giving exactly what they ask?"
• "When we don’t submit our lives to God and our possessions to people in need, when we mistake our financial and material blessings as personal provision rather than as resources with potential for kingdom development — have we perpetuated an unjust imbalance between us and our neighbors?"

It's Heuertz' stories, however, that hold the chapters together. Getting to meet his friends through the stories he tells is worth the price of the book.

The only contention I had with the book is that in his effort to show that spirituality can and does have connections to the everyday activities of our lives, Heuertz seemingly harbors an implicit anti-institutional stance toward Christian practice. His desire to show us Jesus in the lives of those who happen to be poor is commendable, but that doesn't necessitate his worry about trying to fit our spirituality into complex religious practices. While religious practices can become corrupted or lose the purpose for which they created, all practices need institutions to sustain them. In a way, Heuertz knows this insofar as he works for the WMF organization. We need to police our institutions and keep them from becoming parasitic on the practices which they sustain and we need to make sure that they evolve with the evolution of our practices. However, while Heuertz is right to refresh us by returning our gaze to Jesus in and through those who might be considered least, the book could do more to think through God's creation and use of institutions for God's redemptive plans. Do our practices of baptism, eucharist, and ministry make connections to humility, community, simplicity, submission, and brokeness? Do they drive us to seek Jesus in the poor? This a criticism of what he does not say rather than what he says and in that sense perhaps the book (or his view of spirituality) is refreshing but too simple.

This is only Heuertz' first book, and what he does say I highly recommend. I promise you'll gain something from his discussion of humility, community, simplicity, submission, and brokeness. For a welterweight book, Simple Spirituality occasionally throws a cruiserweight punch.

[AYT][Theology][Books][WMF]

theology | The Anglican Communion?

While I have some appreciation that AMiA has concerns about what it means to faithfully witness to Jesus, I generally think unity, that for which Jesus prayed, is a larger theological issue than differing views on human sexuality. Even if one desired to voice dissent, something for which I always want to maintain space, I question the decision of the hundreds of bishops that are boycotting the Lambeth Conference and attending a rival meeting for conservative Anglicans in Jerusalem. I'm not opposed to the gathering in Jerusalem, even if it does betray a certain ideological and theological factionalism. But, why have it at the same time as Lambeth? Why not show up for a conversation that clearly needs to continue? I would think it more honorable to continue to gather with those in our body with whom one disagrees, to maintain eye contact with those who also worship the Lamb, than to intentionally shun such difficult fellowship.

Further reading: NYTimes article.

[AYT][Theology][Anglicanism]

life | Clarifying Some Things

1. The voice of the poem is not the voice of the author. Several of my friends were concerned that there was something that they didn't know about.

2. The title of my blog started as a joke, not as some sort of self-aggrandizing claim. True, I've worked with some great minds from the theological guild, Bruce McCormack, Stanley Hauerwas, Geoffrey Wainwright, John Webster, but the blog started as an inside joke. So, its a little weird when you get snail mail that uses your blog title:


I've been thinking that I might need to kill this blog, at least temporarily, when I go on the job market.

[AYT][Theology][Life]

poem | Elegy For My Unknown Child

Elegy for My Unknown Child

it was an october half-moon when
you told me about the watcher in your belly

my excitement’s first thought was
something not even our love had occasioned:

i will give up cigarettes

my candle burning low, less feared
than a young and feeble flame
with no one to tend the tinder

so, three full moons later, i met your
tears, a twigbare landscape

outside, shivering, i remember our
time together in dublin, that beguiling
warm day when i read aloud heaney’s

‘elegy for a still-born child’
my spirit rejoicing in you wept for
the poem, my eyes then bright and dry

i retrieve my lighter from my pocket

this absence, the weight of a body emptied
of growth and expectation, the present’s burden

you ask for a drag of what i did not know then
would be my last

your hand trembles beneath my shoulder blades
gentle, present, birthing

---

Daniel R. Morehead


My latest poem references (and was partly inspired by) a poem by Seamus Heaney, one of Ireland living literary flames, that he wrote early in his career. Elegy for A Still-born Child contains a line that has lingered with and haunted me: Your mother heavy with the lightness in her.

Through my friends and family, pregnancy, adoption, children are increasingly a part of my life, as are the concomitant hopes and joys and the related pains of loss, infertility, etc. This is my nascent attempt to give a voice to the relational context of those pains.

[AYT][Poetry][Miscarriage]

blog | A Quick Look Back

From the AYT Archives:

A poem, a quote, a post about war, a trip, a meditation.

Happy Sunday.

life | What Do You Do When...

What do you do when you're sitting on your front step and someone comes up to you and asks you for a light and proceeds to sit down next to you and smoke crack? Yeah, well, that was my Thursday.

life | We Didn't See This Post Coming

I can't believe I'm writing this. I've actually intended to for years, but, well, as you'll see it's a bit of a delicate matter. And, well, it probably shouldn't be coming from me. Oh well...

About two or three years ago I was involved in several campaigns on Duke's campus relating to various social issues. One of the campaigns was to try to minimize the amount of factory farmed meat used on campus. Most of the people involved were vegetarians or vegans and then there was me. At the time and I guess now as well, my biggest concern with factory farming of animals was the labor issue. I'm concerned about what happens to people when they have to interact with animals in conditions which are disrespectful to those animals (just as I'm concerned about what it does to someone to be in the military and be trained in violence and to kill other humans, to witness horrors, to be exposed to acute stresses - the recent homicide and suicide rates may give us some clue). Some of the female students at the time were also working on an environmental campaign to minimize the amount of waste that comes from the use of tampons. The thinking, as I remember it, was twofold. First, there is just the material waste inherent in disposable products. Second, the cotton used is generally bleached or chemically treated in ways that may pollute communities in which they are manufactured and pollute the bodies of women who use them. Most commercial tampons on the market today contain rayon and trace amounts of dioxin, a potentially toxic by-product of chlorine-bleached products. They were recommending either unbleached, natural cotton tampons or a reusable menstrual cup. Since then, I've been around several conversations when one of my female friends brings up the idea of a reusable menstrual cup and generally the response among the other women is one of bafflement, having never heard of a product like the DivaCup. It's that reaction that made me decide to write this. But what do I know? If it's common knowledge, or they are in common use, we can just forget about this post. And let's face it, I'm not dumb enough to tell woman how to relate to their menstrual cycles, but the friends I know that use them do appreciate the cost savings over continually buying tampons and that it helps decrease the billions of tampons and pads that are dumped into landfill and sewage systems each year in the U.S. alone.

For more information or to locate a store, see: The Diva Cup
iHerb is selling them at the moment at almost half price.
See also: BUST blog, The Bitten Apple.
There's even a Facebook group.

I know, I know, I didn't really see me blogging about environmentally responsible feminine hygiene choices either...and doubt I will again...so back to your regularly scheduled internet browsing.

life | Friday

Well, I guess I'm supporting Obama now. Now, all my Obama friends can finally quit pestering me. Found this page: Christian Principles in an Election Year, from National Council of Churches USA. Its a short, but worthwhile read.

Last week I mentioned a friend was starting a blog, I found this post rather funny. Happy Friday.

misc | Giving Fundamentalists A Walk?

In some ways, I'm glad that there has been a resurgence in the U.S. in recognizing that theology matters to the church. Maybe that's because the anti-intellectual impulses of evangelicalism combined with the anemic ecclesiology of Protestant churches to cause a corrupting (though sometimes hard to communally diagnose) incoherence within U.S. churches. This spawned reactionary movements which some feel will help the church 'emerge'. Others have tried to stop the aimless drifting with the anchor of (a more robust and usually Reformed) theology. Primarily a shift in church life, pastors with a some level of advanced theological training have gained in prominence. Pastor and author John Piper (who did a Ph.D. in New Testament studies) has become a more well known and listened to voice within the zealous rubble of a collapsing evangelicalism. His blog at DesiringGod.org has 11,000 people on its feed. I appreciate his work more as a pastor than his theology. He maintains some the least happy parts of the Reformed tradition. He keeps predestination located as a soteriological category, instead of a Christological one (as someone like Barth does), or vocational (as seen in the work of Lesslie Newbigin). His minority position that Scripture explicitly prescribes gender roles is at best, in my opinion, unfortunate. I like that theology governs positions he takes pastorally and think the books of his that I've encountered are not without merit. Still, I thought I'd playfully question the following list, which apart from the general point that it's probably not a good idea to take potshots at anyone, seems utterly vacuous.

20 Reasons I Don't Take Potshots at Fundamentalists
June 2, 2008 | By: John Piper

1. They are humble and respectful and courteous and even funny (the ones I've met).
Sure ain't nice to take potshots at nice, good humored folk.

2. They believe in truth.
This hardly seems terribly unique.

3. They believe that truth really matters.
What does 'really' mean? You appreciate their white-knuckled foundationalism?

4. They believe that the Bible is true, all of it.
The question of true or not true is never as interesting as true in what way, to what ends, to what degree, etc.

5. They know that the Bible calls for some kind of separation from the world.
We might terminologically prefer difference to separation.

6. They have backbone and are not prone to compromise principle.
Yay, except the flip-side is rigidity, fear, and inability to listen and learn.

7. They put obedience to Jesus above the approval of man (even though they fall short, like others).
Does it matter what you think obedience to Jesus entails?

8. They believe in hell and are loving enough to warn people about it.
Granted this is a list and inflected toward the positive side, but do all of these seem like they could equally go on a list of 20 things that are troubling about fundamentalists?

9. They believe in heaven and sing about how good it will be to go there.
This hardly seems noteworthy for it's uniqueness.

10. Their "social action" is helping the person next door (like Jesus), which doesn't usually get written up in the newspaper.
...but the separation from #5, often makes them unable to partner with other organizations to help make systemic change happen.

11. They tend to raise law-abiding, chaste children, in spite of the fact that Barna says evangelical kids in general don't have any better track record than non-Christians.
...maybe true, but I'm not sure that fundamentalism is conducive to training children in wisdom, moral reasoning, or makes it likely that they will engage the world poetically.

12. They resist trendiness.
Hmmm...except when they think up their own untrendy trendiness...which is generally worse than just being trendy.

13. They don’t think too much is gained by sounding hip.
Not much is gained by being out of touch either.

14. They may not be hip, but they don’t go so far as to drive buggies or insist on typewriters.
So, some untrendiness = good. Too much = Amish, I mean bad, I mean....uhhh....

15. They still sing hymns.
Now you're just sounding old, John. Granted the theology of "Yes, Lord, yes, Lord, yes, yes, Lord" praise songs is horrendous, but there are some terrible hymns too. I'm surprised that organ-hugging didn't make your list.

16. They are not breathless about being accepted in the scholarly guild.
...or the larger contours of theological reflection that has taken place throughout Christian history.

17. They give some contemporary plausibility to New Testament claim that the church is the “pillar and bulwark of the truth.”
But in what way? Excessive razor-wire does not do anyone any favors.

18. They are good for the rest of evangelicals because of all this.
Or maybe because they make the rest of evangelicals not look so crazy?

19. My dad was one.
So?

20. Everybody to my left thinks I am one. And there are a lot of people to my left.
So this is self-serving, then?

So, while we can all agree that potshots generally aren't fair, in the spirit of #8 it's probably not alright to give fundamentalist a theological free ride either.

[Sigh.]

[AYT][Theology][Piper]

theology | Are You So Dull?

The question is not mine, but belongs to Jesus and comes to us through the gospel according to Matthew. Of course, the NRSV renders it slightly differently: "Are you also still without understanding?" Somewhat predictably, I like the more blunt translation: "Are you so dull?"

Jesus, of course, was having a run in with the Pharisees and scribes over why his disciples weren't following their cleanliness rituals. In this case, the issue was hand-washing before eating. Jesus charges them with hypocrisy, using rules to circumvent responsibility. His one-liner: "It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles." Zing! Disciples scratch their heads and ask Jesus to break it down for them. Jesus verbally rolls his eyes, says that the things that are already inside a person are what defiles them (evil intentions, slander, etc.)...end of story. So much for the start of Matthew 15.

Now, I'm always uneasy with connections drawn between health and sin. When encountering a blind man, the disciples draw too much of a connection between the two, asking, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus says neither. The problem with health, like the problem with safety, is there is no upward limit. Can you reach a point when you are healthy? Can you reach a point when you're safe? Sure, there are degrees of less and more, but there isn't a telos to reach short of immortality. As one of my favorite people likes to say, "God intends to kill us all in the end." I think that's right. This, of course, leaves us in the arms of wisdom when we ask questions like: How much medical care should you throw at a person before their personhood is lost? If one can never be safe as such, how much money should we spend on national security? Nothing is probably not the answer, but these kind of concepts with no upper limit do quickly and easily give themselves over to excesses and pathologies which we might call sinful, or at least unwise. In the medieval conceptions of the seven deadly sins tradition, the sins are departures from a proper mean which in the end distracts one from God. Pride, then, can be over- or undervaluing oneself. Gluttony: the sin of the distracted person who spends too much time obsessing about food, potentially the eater, the gourmand, the health nut, the anorexic.

There are really two points I'm making here. First, not everything that might be labeled unhealthy should or could be avoided. If health is not something at which one can arrive, "less than optimal" is just part of life. Plus, like many other things, by way of example we could use acquiring information on a new car, each incremental gain comes at a higher cost. Sure, you could visit the plant and get the life stories of the people working on the line, but at some point more is not more. So I'd argue, it is with health. Second, some things - once weighed - are wrong even if you can't make a rule out of them, things we might term unwise. [Generally, I take this sort of determination to be more important in terms of moral reflection.]

I recently came across the video below in which Mark Bittman discusses what's wrong with what we eat. Now, I love Mark Bittman. I love his "The Minimalist w/ Mark Bittman" videos on NYTimes.com where he usually prepares a simple but inventive dish. In this fiery and funny talk, he weighs in on what's wrong with the way we eat now (too much meat, too few plants; too much fast food, too little home cooking), and why it's putting the entire planet at risk. While I'd hesitate to make a doctrinaire moral injunction, I agree with what he's saying and think it is a moral issue.

Here are some things we can do to start:

1) Grow some food. Benefits:

• Provides healthy food.
  
• Maintains a relationship with the earth which is not simply one of consumption, but caretaker.
  
• Might even inspire you to compost.

2) Find and join a CSA. Benefits:

• Lots of locally grown, fresh produce.
  
• Supports smaller farms.
  
• You don't generally select what you'll receive since it depends on what is growing, so you have the opportunity to learn about how to prepare things you wouldn't normally buy at the grocer.

3) Take a cooking class. Benefits:

• More enthusiasm for cooking.
  
• Alternatively, find two recipes online and make them in the next week. [Here is the Food Network's seasonal produce guide.]

4) Keep a food diary for a week and then cut your meat consumption by half. If we're eating too much meat, let's find out how much.

5) No soda for a month. Benefits:

• Stronger bones.
  
• Less sugar (or if you drink diet soda, less sodium and odd chemicals).
  
• Less waste.
• More money to put towards one of the above.

While I don't want to say that something that is unhealthy is thereby sinful, given the evidence, how we eat may be profoundly unwise. Thus, even though Jesus said "It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person...," well, maybe it is, if our heart cares not for the social, environmental, and physical ramifications.

Feed others, eat well.

[AYT][Theology][Food][Bittman]

friends | I'm Glad They Blog

Just found out my friend Dave [not to be confused with my other friends Dave, David, David, or my brother Dave] is blogging. I met him in D.C. when he was working for Sojourners. Then we both ended up kicking around Duke's Divinity school. He's politically and theologically savvy and generally has a good read on how or how not to conceive the relation between the two. He blogs here.

Another Duke friend and former L'Arche assistant, blogs here. She cares about the right sort of questions/issues which may not initially seem theologically significant but are quite so. She and her blog are pregnant.

Yay for friends who are blogging...

film | The Yes Men

I've been on a little bit of a documentary kick of late. This morning I watched The Yes Men (2003), a humorous documentary which follows the exploits of a group of jokester liberals who make names for themselves as they mimic members of the World Trade Organization at various venues across the globe. It all starts when two members of The Yes Men create a web site that looks quite similar to the WTO site, resulting in the group being invited to high-level meetings and being mistaken for WTO officials. Granted they could have been more informative (especially for those who don't have a lot of information about the WTO, globalism, or late capitalism rolling around their heads), but I thought it was a fun documentary and reminded me that satire is made more powerful when it occurs within the walls of legitimacy. It made me think of 2005 when Banksy waltzed into New York's most prestigious museums - The Brooklyn Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Natural History - and put up his own work on their hallowed walls.

Now that that Lost, The Office, etc. are done for the season, perhaps add this to your NetFlix queue or that list on the fridge of films that you might watch on a lazy Saturday.

[AYT][Film][Banksy][WTO]

poem | Frost On War

The first poem I ever memorized was by Robert Frost. Now even though my favorite poet is W.H. Auden, I'll never truly escape Frost's work or influence. I thought I'd share one of Frost's poems that sadly I hadn't seen before.

In 1918, Robert Frost wrote a poem in the cover of a friend's book. For 88 years, the work remained lost, until Robert Stilling, a graduate student in English at the University of Virginia, discovered it in 2006.

The poem is called "War Thoughts at Home" and was written in the cover of a book belonging to Frederic Melcher, a well-known American publisher and friend of Frost. That book was part of a large collection of materials related to Frost recently acquired by the university.

Back in 2006 there is a NPR piece about the poem being found.

War Thoughts At Home

On the back side of the house
Where it wears no paint to the weather
And so shows most its age,
Suddenly blue jays rage
And flash in blue feather.
It is late in an afternoon
More grey with snow to fall
Than white with fallen snow
When it is blue jay and crow
Or no bird at all.
So someone heeds from within
This flurry of bird war,
And rising from her chair
A little bent over with care
Not to scatter on the floor
The sewing in her lap
Comes to the window to see.
At sight of her dim face
The birds all cease for a space
And cling close in a tree.
And one says to the rest
"We must just watch our chance
And escape one by one
Though the fight is no more done
Than the war is in France."
Than the war is in France!
She thinks of a winter camp
Where soldiers for France are made.
She draws down the window shade
And it glows with an early lamp.
On that old side of the house
The uneven sheds stretch back
Shed behind shed in train
Like cars that long have lain
Dead on a side track.

[AYT][Poetry][Frost][War]