Recent Places

by | Dec 13, 2006 | Everything Else

[Got this idea from Jim, thanks!]

Some things I’m reading / doing / loving today:

“shed
the hidden secrets of
your troubled journey”

From “Teach Me How To See” by Andrew Jones

Still loving Ryan’s (and friends’) ideas about Christmas.

Daley Hake’s photography…. my word can I please be as talented as you?

“I would rather write her a song, because songs don’t wait to resolve. Stories ask for endings, but songs are brave things, bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness.”

The To Write Love On Her Arms story

“God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house… God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives… God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war… God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.”

Bono

Prophetic Imagination

by | Dec 11, 2006 | Faith

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God”
Matt 5:9

Jamie gave a fantastic message at church on Sunday about our calling to be peacemakers. We looked at Matt 5:39-41.

Jamie shared how there are 3 responses to violence: passivity, violence, or Jesus’ way.

He talked about how in each of these instances, Jesus made both the other options look silly. In that culture, you couldn’t hit someone on both cheeks without implying equality. If someone took all your clothes, the shame was on them, the one who made you naked. If you walked more than one mile with a soldier, they could be flogged for potentially causing an uprising. Each response is calculated, not violent or passive, but creative and disrupting.

“Violence is for those who have lost their imagination… We need more of the prophetic imagination that can interrupt violence and oppression.”
[Shane Claiborne]

Walter Brueggemann coined the phrase prophetic imagination. I think that is what Jesus is doing in this passage. Finding ways to take peoples mind off the violence all around us, and remind us that there is a better way. I think our world needs more people who will dare to use their prophetic imagination to change the situations around us. It wont be easy… we look for the quick-exit plan… there is none with this method that I can see. It will take work. But isn’t it worth it? I fear we give up too easily on situations that could be pacified if only we worked harder.

Resurrecting Church

by | Dec 9, 2006 | Books, Faith

I finished off Shane Claiborne’s book The Irresistible Revolution today. Boy does that guy challenge me.

Will post some thoughts later when I process them a bit more, but until then heres a few brief quotes to mull over:

“How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?”

“I saw a clearer glimpse of Jesus in this leper’s eyes than any stained-glass window could ever give me.”

“Following Jesus is simple, but not easy. Love until it hurts, and then love more.” (Mother Teresa)

“If you have two coats, one of them belongs to the poor.” (Dorothy Day)

“When we look through the eyes of Jesus, we see new things in people. In the murderers, we see our own hatred. In the addicts, we see our own addictions. In the saints, we see our own holiness.”

“We live in an age in which people, when they hear the word Christian, are much more likely to think of people who hate gays than people who love outcasts.”

“If we are crazy, then it is because we refuse to be crazy in the same way that the world has gone crazy.”