Apples don't have kittens.

[Dan speaking, not David]: I'll spare us the annoyance of another long post about my frustration with the religious establishment, for the moment.

Just a moment ago, I came back to my computer where I happened to have run a Google search for Utica. The name Utica reminds me of the Polish word ulica, "street" (this association used to flow in the opposite direction). Just for fun, I decided to search both words together to see what results I would get. The abbreviation for "ulica" is "ul.". Searching for "ulica utica" (no quotes in the search), provided a lot of results with apparent bad text recognitions, and results for U.L., which I presume to represent Underwriters' Laboratories.

There's no moral to this story, I just thought it was amusing.

Solstice Song

song i wrote for rachael's solstice party (video follows if i can get my computer to play well with youtube)

g d a em
g em d

when the night gets longer
my heart grows stronger
i don't have to wait for the day
when the air gets colder
my soul grows older
it's the winter, and things are okay

while we rest from the light
may our hearth glow more bright
lending warmth and courage to our space
though the wind blows like crazy
keep our dreams full and lazy
may we use this time to bring grace

the snow calls us to quiet
the darkness says we could try it
as a space for comfort and for rest
we turn our hearts to contemplation
and our lungs to respiration
as we gather warm in every nest

but we know in this season
that some have no reason
to bless the darkness or the slow;
as we open to december,
may our hearts also remember
those who shiver homeless beyond our glow

as the night gets longest
my heart beats strongest
wishing warmth for all those who mourn
in this day of longest dark
could a fire grow from a spark?
what justice in this season will be born?
what justice in this season will be born?

Reaffirmation of Welcome

I wanted to share this awesome Reaffirmation of Welcome recently passed by Lake Street Church of Evanston, one of the great churches in the Chicago area that is a member of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists. I think all welcoming churches might want to consider doing something like this periodically, as the Spirit leads them.

Statement follows:

At this time in the life of our nation –

• as the suicides of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered youth capture

headlines across the country

• as campaigning politicians pronounce that they don’t want children “brainwashed

into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option” as

heterosexuality,

• and as fear of the “other” and a spirit of hatred threatens to consume our public

and religious discourse:

Lake Street Church of Evanston, a congregation affiliated with the American Baptist

Churches, USA, reaffirms our public commitment of more than fifteen years to be a

place of welcome and support for all of God’s children.

Our welcome knows no boundaries of age, race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexual

orientation, economic condition, or physical or mental abilities. We affirm that gay,

lesbian, bisexual, and transgender lives are fully compatible with Christian teaching.

LGBT individuals and families are fully included in all aspects of our congregational life,

from birth through the celebration of the lives of those who have passed. In a spirit of

radical inclusion, we long for the day when full civil rights are extended to all Americans,

and pledge to be a place of spiritual renewal and encouragement until that day arrives.

Reflecting God’s bold embrace, we proclaim a world with freedom and justice for all,

where we can all honor and celebrate the many faces of love.

---
Cool, huh?

Go Lake Street!

birth pangs (angry baby jesus)

Hello Internet,

Sorry for the long-ish radio silence while I got started at my new gig. It continues to be awesome. Here's a response I posted to a colleague's request for advent stuff:

Funny you should mention it:
We had our annual art and poetry show from our homeless and formerly-homeless group last night, and it was (and this is high praise) as awesome as I was expecting it to be. Inspired, on the train home, I wrote ...a little ditty that Tom Ryberg had assigned to me: (I think he's gonna set it to music, and I've got the germ of a melody myself.) Not sure if it's length-or-language-wise appropriate, but I pay attention when things happen at similar times.

Angry Baby Jesus, or Birth Pangs, from an idea from Tom Ryberg
(to be sung lilting, almost calypso, but with an edge)

Everybody loves a baby
or so they claim until
she's howling and needs a changing
she's teething and never still

I want an angry Jesus
lifted wailing from the straw
the Jesus I know is angry
before he can even crawl

Please throw out your hallmark Jesus
cherubic and clean and white
that Jesus won't ever save you
that Jesus won't make you right

I want a dirty Jesus
who smells like sheep and blood and shit
if you want the incarnation,
you're gonna have to handle it

I want a bloody Jesus
because he's just been born
how long can you ignore him?
He's screaming outside your door

The New Creation trembles
the Holy Wind fills Her sails
and with the Newborn Savior
in hope and anger all Creation wails

(repeat previous verse of your choice, depending)

The Night Ministry

Many of you know I just started working with The Night Ministry as their Community and Congregational Relations Coordinator. Here's an embedded youtube video about their work.



Unrelatedly, somefolks just hit three hundred posts(!). Go team.

Acres of dental floss

Okay, I should probably say something to put the foregoing in context. The two statements are tangentially related (I am currently not at liberty to provide further details on that statement nor to confirm nor to deny any speculation on how).

Something that has been bothering me an awful lot lately is the statement that keeps cropping up, in one way or another, that various occurrences are "God's will". (To avoid overcomplicating things, we won't go into detail about describing or defining God). As often as not, though, I hear a lot of talk in the circles of Christians with which I am most familiar, that being my family and their churches, of "God sightings", which ultimately are best described as fortunate coincidences. One of my favorite examples of a "God sighting" came when two carloads of parishoners from my parents' church were driving to some church event--possibly a concert or a convention--in Pittsburgh, neither driver being familiar with the locale, got separated on the Interstate and were suddenly reunited immediately before arriving at their destination: the reunion was a "God sighting" because it assured both drivers that they'd arrived at the right place. Never mind that nothing remotely miraculous occurred, nor that it was only to be expected that they should arrive more or less together having traveled under the same directions and left at the same time. The real wall-banger in this to me, though, is that attributing this happy happenstance to divine intervention necessarily implies that these individuals truly believe that in a world of disease, disaster, war, and injustice, God somehow made a priority of sparing them the inconvenience of having to find each other after arriving.

That doesn't really answer the latter and more provocative of my statements from yesterday, though, at least not yet. The connection is here: the first time I heard that particular story, or any of the dozens like it that were given the same honorific designation, I was still disposed, if not to believe it entirely (the latter of my two objections had already become quite apparent), at least to want to believe it. At the same time, I was all too eager to comply with the prescriptions of the leaders of my--relatively conservative--church, including the recommendations of reactionary Christian philosophers, the consumption of whose doctrines and publications was heavily encouraged by the church and my parents. Hence the association with Dr. James C. Dobson, whose organization was instrumental in my voluntary subscription to a variety of the popular fundamentalist morality crusades, and even a few of my own for good measure: someone we all know here will remember all too well my zealous concern for his spiritual safety upon finding out that he liked to play Dungeons & Dragons, and how when given to see that this was not much different from my having played the villain of my middle school class play, I was much more ready to condemn myself along with him than admit that I might just be overreacting to things a bit. And I wondered why I didn't have many friends in middle school.

I wonder if the inevitable kickback from Rev. Jones' upcoming Qur'an barbecue can be attenuated at all if some volunteers organize a competing Bible burning alongside it.

A yard strewn with yogurt containers

It occurred to me today, by far not for the first time, that baby dolls disturb me somehow. I find them depressing and sad, just to see them in a store or on TV.

I also said to myself today, also not for the first time, that it's too bad Hell doesn't exist, just because it would be satisfying to see characters like Jerry Falwell and James Dobson end up there.

Podcast fyi

The second part of our zombie theology conversation is now available at geektheology.podbean.com.

David

Zombie Theology Podcast

Heya,

Tom Ryberg and I recorded the pilot episode for our new Geek Theology Podcast, and now we found a way to put it up on the internet. Our first episode, "Take and Eat" is about zombies.
It's available at:

geektheology.podbean.com.

David Weasley

Invocation from Nate's Ordination

My beloved colleague Nate Dannison asked me to write an invocation for his ordination service, which happened earlier today. He said I could say whatever I wanted. Here's what I wrote:

Triune God, we call you to this place and moment-
knowing that you were herre before us,
and that you will be after we are gone-
but knowing that our hearts find strength
when we call out to you:

By the name of God the Mother and Father
who brings us to birth and to rebirth
who remembers every child,
who feeds every spark of liberation
and mourns every tear of oppression

By the Holy Spirit
who hovers over our lives
pulling us through distraction and despair
pulling us over the even-now-crumbling walls of empire
dismantling our sinful hierarchies

And by our brother the Risen Lord Jesus
who danced with us, even unto death,
who walks to the margins of the crowd
and snaps open his plastic case,
and takes out the world's rattiest
two dollar fiddle
and begins to play:
And when we hear his song
it is so familiar, so new; so bold and humble
so warm and troubling and romantic
that what can we do but
join his foolish dance eternal?

In the name of these three, and in the name
of the Beloved Communion of Saints,
who watch with us in joyful anticipation,
and in laughing certainty:

Come, Triune God,
and be present in this place and moment.

Amen.

here's Beth!

Here's a link to an article I recently wrote for the MCC Great Lakes Regional Newsletter:

¡Seño, ya tenemos hambre!

-Beth

“see acts 16: a couple of stanzas for the 2010 seminary graduates that I know and love aka give me a hundred preachers who fear nothing...

“see acts 16: a couple of stanzas for the 2010 seminary graduates that I know and love aka give me a hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God and I will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of god on earth- at least a dozen more this year”

Look:

the demons knew first.

The demons knew first like they always do, and so they became dedicated to stopping you.

The demons knew first and they spread rumors about who you were and what you can do. But maybe not even you knew it first, so Racism conspired with Patriarchy, and they both got together with Despair to keep you firmly out of the proclaiming life.

And as the three of them made the blood sacrifices to Empire, you began to hear some whisperings from other folks. From your family, or from people whose vote outweighed your family's vote, sometime outweighed your own vote and eventually and finally outweighed the demon's vote.

And here you are. And we cheer for you as you graduate, and the drum line plays riotous applause and deep thumping dancing base drums that shake the gates of hell, and make the demons prepare to face you in trembling armor: because now we all know.

And pretty soon, my friends and siblings, pretty soon: everybody will know.

And look: the demons knew first, and they were scared, but now they are terrified.

And it's no wonder we feel like singing.

what if

What if there was a movement,
in every town and city,
(some successful and some not)
a movement whose founder aimed
for the destruction of empire
whose chapters struggled
(some successfully and some not)
for radical justice-loving,
and love-justice radicalism?

What if this movement has hovered
around the periphery of Western culture
for a thousand years, or two,
and its greatest successes
were usually kept silent?

What if it was made up ordinary souls
with penchants for sin or poetry or manual labor,
who bring themselves to the struggle,
or drift along obliviously
(sometimes successfully and sometimes not)?

What if there was a movement,
of myth and macaroni, of bread and jokes and power?
And what if they were recruiting?

[insert your church name here,
and photocopy or scrawl on torn-up advertisements.]

amazing what you find when you clear out your camera's memory

 

I guess in the old days this is what you found when you developed that roll of film that's been in your camera for ages. Anyway, here's a blurry picture of me shaking hands with Jurgen Moltmann!!!

i feel like everyone should write one of these about themselves

I can walk as far as I need to.
I know a lot of stories.
I know a lot of songs.
I know that everyone can dance.
I can use words for magic. Which is to say to turn citizens into people, turn sitters into waiters, to pitch matches that are rhythms and slowly building metaphors. Ｉknow a half-dozen rituals that I can deploy at a moment's notice and can improvise more on a half-moment's notice.
I can turn bitching into planning.
I believe in enough things.
My name is David Weasley. And I fight demons.

Nothing Can Ever Stop My Lord

nothing can ever stop my lord: an easter song by david weasley. spoiler alert: if you're coming to first baptist berwyn tomorrow morning, you shouldn't read this unless you want to hear the song before worship.

C Am/ F Am G
C Am/ F F G

chorus:
nothing can ever stop my lord
though lord knows, many have tried
nothing can ever stop my Lord-
we didn't know it was true, til he died.

Nothing can ever stop my Lord
though the Empire didn't know that
the thought that the torture would stop the good news
and make all of us people turn back

and when they left him to die in the sun
they were trying to stop that word
and convince us that justice was not in our grasp
but they had not counted on my Lord

chorus

some say when they killed him he went down to hell
to stem even death's bloody tide
and he busted all of the dead sinners out
and left hell's gate broken wide

so they tell that story of the Harrowing of Hell
I don't know if I believe that stuff
but that he will find you no matter where you are
I know that, and that is enough

chorus

over and over we try to nail him down
with our genders and nations and race
but my old friend Jesus is never down for long
even death could not put him in his place

nothing can ever stop my Lord
not your hatred or your bigotry
not even your doubt, not even your despair-
he will not rest until you're free

chorus

nothing will ever stop my Lord
not your failure or your having no room
when you're too sad to rest or too broken to pray-
remember what happened when they put him in the tomb

now: you may die, and I may die
and our bodies may crumble to dust
but we will remain as his body lives on-
deep roots are not reached by the frost

chorus

there will come a day

there will come a day,
when we won't have
to mark good friday.

when there aren't any more executions.
when there isn't any more injustice
when there isn't any more death.

And then we will celebrate easter together.
but easter will just be our lives.
easter will just be our world.

we who love the fallen: a good friday call to worship

We who love the fallen
who desperately cling to those unjustly killed.

We who have walked with them,
we who slept and fought with them,
we who played and ate with them.

We gather on this day,
when they tried to kill Jesus-
and when they succeeded.

This moment is inscribed on our hearts-
just like the death of far too many others:
King and Romero, our family members,
our friends, our lovers.

We wish they weren't dead. We hate
their absence. We will seek justice
for those who killed them,
and for those who allowed them to die.

Though the ones who killed them
would like us to forget-
we will never forget.
We will always remember.

We who love the fallen.

Ordination Vows

I got ordained on Sunday by a whole crowd of wonderful and strange people.

The whole service was awesome. I don't know what else to say about it.

Here are the vows that I made, drawn from a wide variety of traditions and colleagues.

---Ordination Vows

We will begin with a reaffirmation of the vows made for you at your baptism and made by you at confirmation:

On behalf of the whole church, I ask you:
Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?

DW: I do.

Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms the present themselves?

DW: I do.

Do you confess Jesus Christ as your savior, put your whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as your Lord, in union with the church which Christ has opened to people of all ages, nations, and races?

DW: I do.

And continuing with new vows:

Do you believe that you are truly called to the work of the pastor as your vocation and ministry in this season?

DW: I do, God being my help.

Will you be faithful in prayer and devotion, in reading of the scripture and in examining of your own heart?

DW: I will, God being my help.

Will you invite others into the holy work of God, into the proclamation of the Gospel, into the movement for the coming Kindom of God? Will you seek to empower everyone you encounter in their own vocations, their own ministries and calls?

DW: I will, God being my help.

Will you refuse to follow the biases of the world, and seek to follow only the biases of God?

DW: I will, God being my help.

Will you be faithful in preaching and teaching the Gospel, administering the ordinances and rites of the church, in exorcising demons and in exercising pastoral care and leadership? Will you bear faithful witness to the history and practice of your Baptist tradition?

DW: I will, God being my help.

Will you endeavor to seek, always, the further edge of possibility? Will you bring a radical hope to mundane moments, a radical joy to terrifying moments, and a radical love to difficult moments?

DW: I will, God being my help.

Will you endeavor to know, always, the nearer shores of comfort- the solace of God's own embrace, through prayer, fellowship, rest, and play? Will you maintain friendships, interests, and intimacies outside the congregation of your service, as a commitment to your own full living?

DW: I will, God being my help.

Will you endeavor to release your grasping, to cede that which is not yours to control? Will you uphold your calling as a sign and agent of God's saving work in the world, remembering that you are no savior, but only the teller of salvation's story?

DW: I will, God being my help.

Will you care for all of God's creation, in its radical diversity, both in its present Now and its future Not-Yet, including your own self and body?

DW: I will, God being my help.

Will you be brave and honest, loving and clear, in understanding that people will sometimes look to you as a way of looking for themselves, the lost truth of the Divine Within, and in helping them in that search?

DW: I will, God being my help.

As an agent of truth, will you love the dishonest? As an agent of justice, will you love the unjust? As an agent of reconciliation, will you love the divisive? As an agent of kindness, will you love the cruel?

DW: I will, God being my help.

Will you relentlessly serve the cause of Jesus in the world until you cease to draw breath or until justice is won and we all feast together at the Great Welcome Table?

DW: I will, God being my help.


And now, after those 3 and 12 vows for the ordinand, there is just one for you:

Will you the gathered community support David Weasley in the ministry of Christ? (If so, say, "We will.")

The People: We will.

faces of a new generation

So... as many of you know, my ordination is coming up. I don't know if this is related or not, but here is an awesome youtube video my friend helped make a few months ago. I don't know what else to say about it.

Shame-Related Confessional Sequence from Emily Jones

Emily Jones wrote a great confessional sequence for a class she's in.
Me: "You should put this up somewhere where people can get it!"
Emily: "Like where?"
Me: "Like... the internet?"

Anyway, it's based on the first creation story, and is in opposition to some popular interpretations of the second one...

Here it is: (apparently we're doing blogging liturgical elements for Casimir Pulaski day...)

God created all people in God's own image. God affirmed, at the first moments of creation, the goodness of all that God had made. Yet, we have rejected God's creation, blasphemed against this Holiness, drowning ourselves and each other in a culture of shame, rejecting what God named good, in one another and ourselves. We have come to repent of the ways we have shamed others; we have come to refuse the shaming we have received. We have come to see God's creation more rightly and ready ourselves for action.

Come. Gather with me in a moment of prayer, as we earnestly open our hearts to God and to one another.
Hear, O God, our prayers.

Jesus, we come to you a shamed and shaming people.
Release us, God, from this bondage.

We have swallowed shame, which we did not deserve.
Heal us, for we are your good creation.

We have force-fed shame to others, which they did not deserve.
We repent of our sins and look to be made anew.

We have learned and forced on others this falsehood, too often,
teaching others to be ashamed, learning to be ashamed:

for the color and texture of our hair
but you, O God, created our hair
for the shape of our desires
but you, O God, are in our wanting
for the thickness of our accents
but you, O God, are in our voices
for the appearance and abilities of our bodies
but you, O God, made our holy flesh.

Learning and teaching shame, also:
for our dreams, too outlandish to be real,
but you, O God, are in our dreaming
for our tears, too messy,
but you, O God, are in our struggles
even, sometimes, for the unseemliness of our joy
but you, O God, made all people in your likeness, your good creation.

Under powers and principalities too numerous to name, we have learned shame.
We have not only learned, we have also taught; we have been oppressors as well as oppressed.
Come, God, and enter into our brokenness.
Let us be cleansed of the evil done to us.
Let us repent and turn from the evil that we have done.

At this time, some moments of silence will be observed.

God says to us, clearly: You are beloved in ways beyond your knowing. You are the flesh of my body, born of the first waters, born of my own blood. You are the good creation, a people fated to wholeness. I give you my strength. Go, now, into God's good creation, rejecting all that is evil and turning towards God in all you do. Go now to one another and offer a sign of God's presence, a mark of God's peace.


At this time, please greet each other with a sign of peace, remembering the fullness of God's affirmation.

welcome: your citizenship is in heaven

At the church where I've been working, it's customary to share some piece of poetry or inspiration as part of the welcoming time in the service. Here's something I wrote up for yesterday's, inspired by the bit in last Sunday's lectionary about citizenship in heaven.

Your Citizenship is in Heaven
Phillipians 3:18-4:1

When they tell you that you have no place here
when they tell you that you are not important enough,
not ordinary enough, not quiet enough
to fit in here:
say it, out loud or silently:
My citizenship is in heaven.

When they mock you, when they fear you,
when they refuse to sit next to you in the bus
or in the church sanctuary
tell them, out loud or silently:
My citizenship is in heaven.

When they tell you that you don't belong here
because you have the wrong papers
because you weren't born here
because you don't have a job or
because you don't have a family:
write it on your protest signs
and door frames and hearts:
your citizenship is in heaven.

When they try to keep you in your dead-end job,
your dead-end life;
your category, your gender, your nationality:
Remember: you cannot be contained
you are in league with the Risen One
your citizenship is in heaven.

some days all i see is the cloud #2: three clouds, and me here wondering which will outlast the others

this is a poem that I brought to my friend C's birthday ritual the other day. for a while I thought it was going to be a song, but then I was too lazy to rhyme it.

some days all i see is the cloud #2: three clouds, and me here wondering which will outlast the others

some days my sidewalk seems clear:
lik the fog has lifted,
like my friendships are all easy,
like there is nothing to fear.

other days i only speak failure
i can't trust even my own heart
i can't walk for the murkiness:
some days all i see is the cloud.


some days i am absolutely certain
where Jesus is sitting,
and where he's patting the ground,
for me to lie down with my head in his lap.

other days, God is more invisible than immortal,
and i can't eat mystery,
and the unknowing will not sustain me:
some days all i see is the cloud.

on days when God and despair hang together
like thunder and lightning-
it is good to have some witnesses:
the sacred few and many-those pieces
of myself that walk the wider world.

some days, though leagues and odysseys would claim us separate,
they, like bread, like salt, like water in my body
are close enough to carry me
(with their arms entwined like a zipper
like keys on a piano
like books on my shelf):
some days all i see is the cloud.

on my ordination council

As many readers will already know, I was approved for ordination by the Rochester Gennesee Region of the American Baptist Churches USA on January 31. I'm pretty happy about it, and it has been a long time coming, by some measures.

You know, when I sat down beforehand, I thought I might try to think about what kinds of questions I was likely to be asked, and what my answers might be. The story is that they go through your ordination paper, which talks about what you believe about God and the church and your call and your life and stuff, and they can ask you whatever questions they want. ("They" being a mix of pastors and lay folks, basically whoever shows up. There were about 25 or 30 people at mine, I'd say.)

Here's the thing: when I sat down to write about this, to brainstorm possible questions and my own possible answers, here's what I wrote instead. I liked it, so I read it to open the Council, and I'm putting it up here. There's three of these, in good Trinitarian format. (I only read the first one out loud...)

in no particular ordre:


by the harrowing of hell
by the wounds transformed
by the dry bones walking
by the tenacious widow
by the sea that makes way
by the star, by the bush burning:
by the tongues of fire,
and by the empty tomb:

the Risen Jesus demands
my presence in this place.



---

by iorek byrneson
by poncho starboard,
by maniac magee-
by wonky the duck,
by bearface and kleeborg
by charles finney,
by ammon hennacy,
by rick lance, gamma boy:
by the Right Reverend Stuckle Ninehammer,
and by Jeff Jones aka Klanky Pankelsmank:

the Spirit of God demands
my presence in this place.

---

by rachael and by my mother,
by emily jones and digger,
by mary and steve and ted,
by becca and kyle,
by sharon yetter and the wynns,
by mark peoples and mark winters,
by joanne terrell and lee butler,
by arlen vernava and alan newton,
by david gregg and larry greenfield,
by my dad and my sister and randy and kenneth,
by phyllis toback and pastor rosa,
by eliza nad nate metrick,
by nate dannison and tom ryberg
by madeliene, chris, korie and lauren,
by corrigan, brian, will, and ben,
by lisa, bj, megan and grace,
by liang and floyd and sophia,
by becky and mary, by layne and raisa,
by susand and emo,
by dave and tena,
by carolyn and mike
by all of the peacheys
by sylvia and carolina
and by their children:

God
demands my presence in this place.

---

standing on the shoulders of giants,
dw

Jared Malsin held in Israel

Here's a press release from Ma'an, the newspaper that my friend Jared works for in Palestine.



Dear Friends,

American jounalist, Jared Malsin, was detained Tuesday by immigration services at Ben Gurion airport, Tel Aviv, as he returned from vacation with his girlfriend Faith.

Jared is the chief editor of the English language desk at Ma’an News Agency in Bethlehem, and also my next-door neighbor. He was due to be exported yesterday morning, but thankfully an attorney hired on his behalf by Ma’an managed to file an injuction that has kept him in the country and scheduled a deportation hearing for Sunday.

He is currently being hekd in detention, and is receiving little of the rights he should be afforded. Jared is a professional journalist, and is in no way, shape, or form a security threat to the state of Israel.

He is suffering due to the desire of the Israeli government to suppress any voice that challenges the continued heinous actions of the Israeli state, in Jared’s case through his work as a journalist.

Israel is trampling over the freedom of the press, and seems to only grant this to those who toe the line.

Due to time constraints and the fact that much has been written in the last few days about the situation, I emplore you to read the following articles and grant me a tremendous favour.

What we are asking of you is to contact the Israeli embassy in your home country to express your disgust at the suppression of the press, and the unnecessary suffering that Jared has experienced in the last few days.

A phone call would be remarkable, but if you would prefer not to please, please contact them via email. If anyone would like a sample letter to use I can forward you the letter that I emailed the Israili embassy in London.

Time is of the essence. This afternoon is the final opportunity to contact the embassies before they close for the weekend, and the final chance before Jared’s hearing on Sunday.

The following are some of the articles that I have come across that provide excellent information:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mya-guarnieri/israel-cracks-down-on-the_b_422994.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8458566.stm

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/13/world/AP-ML-Israel-Palestinians.html?_r=1

http://mondoweiss.net/2010/01/american-journalist-critical-of-israel-is-detained-at-ben-gurion.html

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=253864

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=254286

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=254303


Please contact the Israeli embassies in your home countries. It would mean the world to us here, and also pass the information to everyone you know via email, facebook, etc. and request that they follow your lead. It could make a huge difference.

For updates on this continuing story please visit the Ma’an website.

Thank you so much for any help you can provide.

Nathan

Megan's New Project

Hey Friends,

Megan consolidated her "10 Churches in 10 Weeks" posts into a new blog- and she's going on another 10 visits!

Check it out: 10churches.blogspot.com.

Happy visiting, Megan!

-DW