spirit jambalaya

this is a great idea. it only makes sense in a world growing ever closer physically and psychologically yet sometimes splitting at the seams that we train our future religious leaders to see each other's truths in perspective rather than pretending each is privy to a sole truth. after all, we train keynesians and friedmanites and marxists, freudians and jungians and adlerians, new critics and pragmatists and post-structuralists under the same roofs. well, all right, we don't. but we really should.

faith in mammon

"Market Fundamentalism has its own economic orthodoxy that, for the most part, is unquestioningly accepted. It is an idolatrous religion, because it makes a god out of the Market. It puts money above all else. This religion has its own high priests, those economic advisors, corporate executives, and government officials who make the rules and oversee the functioning of the economic system as a whole. It has its own saints, people who have attained the success that the system promises...people who make it all seem possible, people upon whom we can pin our hopes. It has its own symbols, corporate logos such as the Golden Arches and the Nike swoosh that can be seen everywhere. This religion prepares children as candidates for confirmation through corporate links to schools and universities and the privatization of public schools. The religion of Mammon has its own sacraments: you have to be baptized with at least some of the money upon which the religion is built in order to partake of the 'means of grace,' the fast foods or caviar, depending upon what level of success you have attained. This religion encourages the use of its rituals, such as investing in the stock market and shopping, whether you have a lot of money or only a little to invest and spend...This religion has its own preachers, whose message is carried by commercials that promote its sacraments and rituals, by news programs that carry its official ideology, and by sitcoms and other programs that are steeped in its milieu."

--from Shaking the Gates of Hell: Faith-Led Resistance to Corporate Globalization by Sharon Delgado

a mosque grows in manhattan

that there are conflicted feelings about a mosque being built a few blocks from ground zero in manhattan should be a given; that those feelings should trump considered thinking about it is not. a mosque should be built there.

the overwhelming vote in favor of endorsing the mosque (29 to 1) by the local community board is an indication that there is a fervent wish to build bridges between locals still affected by the near-decade old wtc attacks and the faith whose twisting convinced some followers to fly two airplanes into the twin towers. it is the equivalent of building a church near the site of wounded knee, and I am in favor of that too.

the board's vote is not binding--it has no real say in the matter--but it does indicate the feelings of community members, and suggests that there's an opportunity for reconciliation that might never come again. of the sincerity of injured families and groups which spoke out against the building I have no doubt--I'm certain they deeply feel this is an affront--but I would also point out this quote, attributed to bill doyle, leader of the group coalition of 9/11 families: "Many families of Sept. 11 victims fervently opposed the proposal, saying they were offended by the idea of building a prayer space so near the site. 'That should be a serene site...Now you’re going to see protests and demonstrations there all the time'" (link may experience problems). bill doyle is probably talking about his own group's plans to disturb the peace.

the impetus for most of such opposition is an unstated desire to keep the two groups, attacker and attacked, segregated and in conflict. in the face of a nearly-unanimous vote willing to provide a symbol for bridging the divide, such opposition is like peeling back a scab. it's time to let the wound heal.

"we swim together"

I attended my quasi-home church the other morning, expecting to hear a visiting pastor speaking on "the art of listening to yourself"--spiritual stories and memoirs, that sort of thing--and was surprised to listen instead to the candidate for full time minister at the congregation. this was not a problem.

julianne lepp, the candidate, is young and southern and interesting. her sermon was titled "lifeministry: diving deep" and had a water motif--her referent point was the ocean and diving into it. "we swim together," she said in her conclusion; "we might want to swim alone but the lifeguard has a rule: we must swim together."

the congregation seemed taken with her and her partner (their children were not there) and I think she will make a good fit for the eau claire congregation. she is solidly in the mold of the last two ministers, virginia woolf and (interim) wendy jerome. like with them, I found her easy to listen to (not unchallenging but easy to follow and to understand) and essentially optimistic, which is important in fellowship. if she is confirmed, I look forward to good conversations with her.

but while listening to her I came to an interesting epiphany about myself. I enjoyed parish work when I did it--the sermons, visits, the hustle of writing and meetings--but I think I'm coming to realize that this may not be the future for me. I am feeling drawn closer to a new style of ministry devoted to people outside church walls, more like community or service ministry. I've had a hard time articulating what I mean: a ministry of doing and being on the street with people (especially the homeless) and traveling. if I had my druthers, I'd be one of those annoying traveling ministers who set up camp at rainbow gatherings and dead show parking lots and behind carnivals and tent revivals. I'd love to give sermons, but that wouldn't be likely. I'd be more often serving people, getting food together, talking one on one with people, hanging out with kids and old people, sewing up ripped clothes and setting up healthcare appointments. most often, listening to the stories people tell.

this would be wonderful. I'm not aware of any way to make a living at it.

you must change your life

I've spent all week in essay-land and below is the final paragraph from one of them, for an online class I took on the spiritual life of the congregation. the essay reflects one of the thoughts I've been having the past few weeks, encouraged by the reading for this class and another class on liberation theologies. if contemporary xianity is the church of the empire--and this is not just about xianity, by effect all contemporary religions, judaism, islam, buddhism, hinduism, and unitarian universalism, are the churches of empire--then perhaps it's not a bad thing that congregations and churches are dying out. perhaps the reason we aren't drawing young people to us is because we are not offering what they need from a spiritual angle. perhaps what needs to happen in the 21st century is the previous millenia of theologies need to fall away so new, 21st century theologies can be built by those young people themselves. let the dead bury the dead, indeed; let the living build for the living.

"We’re concerned, and rightly so, about the drain on congregations. Churches are dying out and there are any number of statistics that prove this to my satisfaction. But perhaps we’re looking at this wrong. My friend Pete, a Lutheran minister who nears retirement and the return to Tanzania where he was born, has a theory that every ten years a church ought to burn down so each generation has the opportunity to rebuild it from the ground up. No more favorite windows, no more nostalgia about the hymnals, no more untouchable crosses sitting like a gargoyle on an otherwise renovated wall. We fear the end of church, the dying of the light. Perhaps it is not such a bad thing. As Diane Butler Bass notes, “Jesus insists that every person he meets do something and change. The whole message of the Christian scripture is based on the idea of…the change of heart that happens when we meet God face to face.” We may be wrong to assume one needs a face to meet with god. All religion has at its core this message: You must change your life. Perhaps we shouldn’t assume that advice is meant only for people. Perhaps like a fir seed, snuggled so tightly in its pine cone husk that it takes a forest fire to bring it out, churches must die out for greater church messages to emerge."

the quiet voice of truth

"it is a tragic commentary on our broken world that many people do not listen as carefully to the quiet voice of truth as they do to the loud noise of bombs."

--father naim stifan ateek, palestinian xian and anglican priest

from justice and only justice: a palestinian theology of liberation

HUGE FACELESS WHATEVER


helen thomas asks a question a number of us have been asking for years. oliver roy gives a thoughtful answer, and makes me wonder about the use of his answer for trying to understand the spate of school shootings in the last 20 years. a number of kids, many of them boys but some girls, feel isolated and secluded even while they're hyper plugged in, maybe because they are, and want to feel like they're affecting someone or something. I felt much the same when I was younger; I think most of us have to some extent. then, in the words of jackson browne, "the people who finally can't take anymore...pick up a gun or a brick or a stone." the narrative roy is referring to, applied to american youth, runs more to the personal suffering individual--rather than the global suffering ummah--desperately trying to evoke a response from the huge, faceless whatever.