some folks

Come all you furious

2011-12-15T09:09:00.000-08:00

I've had the tune from the old hymn 'Come Ye Disconsolate' in my head for the last while. I'm working on some other words, and here's what I have so far:

come all you furious
rampant and wanton
bring all your terrified
bring all your lust

come to the mercy seat
come wielding hammers
Jesus has plans for you
come, come and see

where are the wanderers?
where are the lovelorn?
come to the walls of hate
come to tear down

fling wide your arms and songs
your pain and your fabulous
earth has no fury
that heaven cannot beat

we are his hands and feet
his knees and elbows
we are his aching heart
we are his fists

watch out you slaveholders
watch out you haters
Jesus lives in us
and he is pissed.

And now for something completely different (read: practical)

2011-10-27T21:39:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody, Dan here:

I don't like to bug people about things like this unless I think it's really important, but this I think is: a petition to increase funding for elementary second-language eduacation. The text of the petition explains it all: learning languages at a young age improves learning across the board, to say nothing of the invaluable tool that is speaking a second language.

http://wh.gov/TvS

I'm sure you'll all take one look at this and think, like I initially did, "yeah, an online petition; who's going to read it?" Hell if I know, but if any online petition has a shot, I figure it ought to be one offered directly through the White House, and what's the worst that can happen if you take about 45 seconds of your time to try it out? If we don't even attempt to participate in the affairs of our government, who else can we blame when it doesn't represent us?

Please read it, sign it if you agree, respectfully abstain if you don't, and check out other initiatives on the site!

Thanks everyone!

Brick by Brick

2011-10-11T19:51:00.000-07:00

A new song, posted on national coming out day. I guess I'm coming out angry. And strategically hopeful.

This one's for haymarket, and occupy chicago, and all the people who represent the intimate connections between the two. Which is to say, the people who are building a better and transformed world, bit by bit. You know who you are.

brick by brick
intro: (chords in rise up singing style)
D G DD /G D A A / D D G D/ G D A A

i feel too tired, and i feel overwhelmed
can we make a plan here, or a vision for an end?
those of us who care for justice, those of us whose longing burns
what vision can we muster, can we make the future turn?

Chorus:
D D A A / G G D A/ G D A/ Em GAD

brick by brick, bone by bone
til the people have their justice and their bodies are their own
stick by stick, stone by stone
we are building all together, we are dreaming up a home

verses:
D D A D/ G D A / D D DAD/ G A Em/ Bm A D

if i want it tomorrow, then i might as well quit
but if i want it for my children i'll stay in
so together let us promise, and together let us build
brick by brick, bone by bone
stick by stick, stone by stone

CHORUS

the stones i lay today are rage and peace and hope
and tomorrow's might be songs or plans or tears
but if put down enough, with faithfulness and verve
then my people will have walls enough for home
then my people will have walls enough for home

so you'll build a bit tomorrow, and i'll pick it from there
and we'll have a new place to rest next week
and we'll break it down a lot, to move it or to fix it
but hey: if not now maybe next year
if not now maybe next year

chorus

oh, give us bricks that last, and give us bones that mend
and give us living wood to grow and bend
and when they try to stop us, we will break them down
brick by brick, bone by bone
stick by stick, stone by stone

our bricks will break their windows
and our bones will block their streets
and our sticks will pound on office doors and drums
and we'll take on every mountain of injustice and of greed
and wear it down to a stone
and wear it down to a stone

chorus

they will not believe our families
they will put our kids in jail
they will shut us up and crush us if they can
and you'll find our shelters simple, but you'll find them everywhere
and we'll see who really owns the land
and we'll see who really owns the land

we will build together in defiance and in hope
we will all pile on and show up
and slower than we'd like
but fast enough for us
we will build a new world stone by stone
we will build a new world stone by stone

chorus

we are not about to give up
and we're not about to break
but we'll bend and we'll ripple and we'll flow
and when the people ask us how we made the mountains move
(we'll say): brick by brick, bone by bone
stick by stick, stone by stone

chorus

Come to Me

2011-07-16T11:57:00.000-07:00

Here's a little song I wrote to accompany my sermon at Peace Community Church a couple weeks ago. As you might figure out via googling/sword drills, it's "on" Matthew 11:25-30. I'll post the chords here, mostly for my own future reference, and if you'd like a recording let me know and I'll link you to the appropriate google doc.

"Come to Me"
D A
G DA

They say, 'it's not worth all the effort'
they say, 'what are you gonna do?'
they say, 'what are you thinking?'
'It cannot be changed, at least not by you.'

This life has been getting you down
and you're at the end of your rope
when all your plans add up to nothing
the Spirit will give you a little more hope
(she'll say:)

Chorus:
Come to me, all who are weary
and I will give you rest, rest
Come to me, all who are weary
and I will give you rest, rest

This life has been getting you down
this life feels like more and more pain
but the walk gets deeper and stronger
and you find rest out in the reign

You've been doubting the Lord
You've been wrestling with the word
It's not bad to trust and obey
but is it better to argue, is it better to say:

Chorus

How can the struggle feel like the dancing?
How can the mustard tree feel like a nest?
I don't know how, but this is what I'm preaching
when I trust her the yoke feels like the rest

They say: there's qualifications
to keep out the sinner and the liars
but what he says about the peace of the beloved:
you don't have to be anything but tired

Chorus

This is what you say to the terrors
this is what you say from the pit:
just one battle is not what we're here for
and the only struggle that we lose is the one that we quit

they are trying to break you
they would love it if you would just burn out
it would be better for the haters if you gave up,
so please listen to my Jesus longing shout:

Chorus

The Spirit tells us that there's justice bubbling up now
She tells us that we can and we should
such promises that carried on our forebears
she reminds us that they are all still good

So what are you doing in your church or your vigil?
what are you saying in your preaching or your play?
Please remember, whatever else you're doing-
may you make a safe place, and to the people say:

Chorus

okay to be gay/ thunder

2011-07-08T17:16:00.000-07:00

Today at the AWAB member's meeting, we had a couple of young women join us, high-school-age participants in the youth programming at the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America summer conference. At one point, we broke into small groups by denomination: Alliance of Baptists, American Baptists, and so forth. The youth didn't have any particular denominational affiliation, so my friend Francis and I sat and talked with them. They talked about how many young lgbtq youth in their schools and neighborhoods face bullying and violence, about how some of their lgbtq friends were afraid to even leave the house because of threats of violence. And the church is seen, in their world, as complicit in all of this, if not supportive of it. On the one hand, it was pretty heart-breaking to hear all of this, and on the other hand it was so exciting to hear these two young people talk about their energy and passion to change things. We began to talk about what they wanted to do, about ways we could work together, about a vision of sharing a map, proclaiming a web of places that would welcome queer youth. They told us that they didn't know their were groups like AWAB before this week, didn't know there were churches that would welcome all young people. The two young women told the gathered group that, where they're from “Everybody knows that God hates gays.”
Well, they kept strategizing. By the end of the meeting, they asked if they could tell their friends, their fellow students, that people of God loved them no matter their sexuality. The gathered AWAB membership immediately voted to authorize the students to speak with our blessing, and to instruct the board to create a way to officially support their efforts.
At the end of the meeting, I left excited to hear more about their efforts. I expected to hear from them sometime in the next few days or weeks.
An hour later, their new facebook group “It's okay to be gay” had over a hundred members. They and some other peace camp youth posted this message and messages about the love of God to all their friends. One of their friends in Atlanta printed out a bunch of posters with the name of the group, and posted them in her neighborhood. She was afraid that this might provoke violence, so she got her father to go with her as a “dad bodyguard.”
I don't know what will happen next. There's a boatload of Baptists excited about supporting these efforts. But it it is so amazing to have this chance to facilitate a small connection between a group of adult welcoming church leaders and a new generation of young people, facing a new wave of homophobia and violence.
Here's what it makes me think of: on the first night of peace camp, I gathered with some of the other young adults here. At the end of our little shindig, we went around and said something we were hoping for out of this week. People said, “rest.” People said “friendship” and “empowerment” and “hope.”
I said, “thunder.”

Batman saves the day

2011-06-11T07:41:00.000-07:00

I was excited to attend the Annual Conference of the Northern IL Conference of the United Methodist Church, on behalf of The Night Ministry. Often, at such conferences, I set up our little display, and then chat with pastors and lay leaders about our work, having me come visit, ways to get involved, etc.

This time, my assigned table happened to be in a back corner of the conference center. On the first day of the four day conference, I decided I needed to kick my standard display up a notch, in an effort to be noticed by conference attendees.

I drove away from the conference center, looking for stores that might sell helpful materials. Sure enough, within a block, I saw one of those big party stores. I had an awesome moment of deciding which foil balloons to appropriate for my purposes (inspired by the excellent article about balloon banner drops in Recipes for Disaster. Clearly, the appropriate choice for The Night Ministry was Batman. Photos follow.

ordination song

2011-04-10T16:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending Tom Ryberg's installation at First Congregational Church of Battle Creek. I didn't get to to go his ordination, so I was particularly glad to be present for this event.

In the past month or two, four good friends of mine (and many others too!) got ordained. I wrote them a song. It was particularly interesting to write, because one friend was being ordained to be a pagan high priestess, one to be a local church pastor, one to do international peace work, and one to be a hospital chaplain.

Here it is:

Ordination Song

May you be comfortable in hospitals
and honest at your desk
may you have enough hunger
may you have enough rest

May you have find your joy in loving
may you find your hope each day
may you shout with the afflicted
and with the dying pray

It's not about who you are, it's about what you do
but the work to which you're called will be the birth of you

May you bring to this your full self
your ugly and your great
may you be forever faithful
may you share from every plate

May you bring some names to babies
may you bury beloved dead
may you join hearts and hands together
and may you break the bread

May your words fall like raindrops
or hammers or homes
may the Spirit be in front of you
may you follow where she roams

May your community build safety
and hilarity and peace
may its walls stand for welcome
and its windows for release

May your people love like crazy
may you love them full and free
may you know when to hold on as hard as you can
may you know when to let them be

it's not about who you are
it's about what you do
but the work to which you're called
will be the birth of you

may your wield your power gracefully
may you wield your grace with power
may the years keep you strange
and may you keep strange hours
may your family be glad of
the ministry you do
may you leave the work for others
when you rest and when you're through

this is not a life for glory
it's not wealth or fear or pride
but may it be the best life
and may I be by your side

may you be comfortable in hospitals
and honest at your desk
may you have enough hunger
may you have enough rest.

This link might work to download a rough .wav recording of a slightly-earlier draft of this song:

https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B7IjK0aIDVA6ZGEzYzE3NGQtYjZkMi00N2FmLWIxYTUtMmVhMmVmYmM5MjQ0&hl=en

after one year ordained

2011-04-08T15:49:00.000-07:00

Word and font and table.

I'm mostly a Baptist, these days, and when I got ordained, there wasn't any super-clear sense of what it was about. (Well, I was clear about it, but I didn't assume that anyone else was.) But I grew up United Methodist, and they're big into commonality and sharing senses of things, and there was a predominant sense that when one was ordained as an “elder', one was ordained to “word and sacrament” which is to say preaching and communion and baptism. So, I still at least partially think of it in those terms, though much of the preaching and communion I did was before I was ordained, and all the baptisms I've done so far were before I was ordained.

But in any case, as I reflect on the year anniversary of my ordination, here in the not-quite-warm part of spring in Chicago, in a year of tsunamis and revolutions, I'm coming back to those three, and three accompanying dreams.

Word:

In the first dream, which I had well over a year ago, I am preaching in an unfamiliar church. At first, people are sitting up front, but then they are sitting farther back. Of course, (this seems obvious in the dream, and it's obvious to my ministry- but more on that later) I leave the pulpit and start preaching at the front of the pews. (Or maybe I am already preaching at the front of the pews, as my childhood pastor taught me.) The people keep moving back, and soon I am halfway up the aisle, because they are sitting in the back pews of the church.
Eventually, of couse, they leave the church, but I follow them, and eventually I find myself in the lawns and orchards outside of their houses, while they try to eat their lunches and read their papers, preaching outside their windows.
When I woke up from that dream, I found it a little sad. But after talking it over with my spiritual director, I thought it was pretty cool, actually. These days I think it is awesome.

Table:

In the second dream, which I had a week or two before my ordination, Rachael and I are helping to run some youth or church or education event, which is to say any of dozens and dozens of things we've done, together and individually. Somebody mentions that nobody remembered to bring communion elements- juice and bread. So, I make a grocery store run, but for some reason I have to sneak out, like I'm in a spy movie about someone who's not very good at being a spy.
When I come back, I want to go in the front door of the church, but the lawn and the church building have tilted ninety degrees, so that it's a sheer, grassy wall instead of a lawn. In the dream, I feel nonchalant about this, though I am not much of a climber in real life. So, I shift the plastic grocery bag with the bottle of juice and the loaf of bread to the crook of my elbow, and begin to climb. I scale the lawn, and pull myself up the now-horizontal pillars on the front of the church. Rachael helps me climb up through the doorway, and then we go about our work.

Font:

Look: everybody who knows me well knows that I play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons. Something about connecting to a realm of fantasy, or cooperative storytelling, or magic or something, makes me want to do it once a week, for a few hours, with some friends. When I don't play for more than a week, I start to have dreams about it. Or I remember my dreams about it better. Or, I have whatever dreams I'd otherwise have, but they have that kind of mythic medievil fantasy tone to them.
In any case, in my dream, I am in some sort of magical or mythic world, and in that world, I am released from slavery. In the dream, I am both the person being released from slavery, and the person who breaks me out. In this world, one of the markers of being an enslaved person is that you're not allowed to have a name, so the closing, climactic scene of the dream is when I-as-liberator carve an initial into a metal ball or helmet as a gift for me-as-liberated. The carving is a letter, maybe a W, and the letter is a name, and the name is freedom.

Word. Table. Font. Preaching and communion and baptism. These three are not even close to the fullness of my call, but it's true that they're part of my call. (Nevermind that I think they are all part of your call, too.) But they stand for larger things, too.
Preaching like I pick up the phone at my office, and somebody wants to come volunteer with us. Preaching like it turns out the hotel workers union needs somebody in a clergy collar to show up and sit with them during contract negotiations. Preaching like dancing, preaching like shooting the breeze with my housemates in the kitchen, and preaching, yes and fully and difficultly and most lovingly, like preaching.
Table like just ordinary sharing food with people, table like deliberately pouring the communion juice so it overflows when I'm officiating as a guest preacher. Table like spending all afternoon making ridiculous pancakes on Shrove Tuesday with my friends, buying candy bars to put in the batter. Table like dinner at the shelter amidst the voguing. Table like sharing coffee and cookies late at night on the street with people experiencing homelessness, and maybe more than that, being so bold as to share coffee and cookies in the suburbs with people experiencing wealth.
And then the font. Sometimes, when I go to a new place, to a meeting with the bank manager that could help our program or to preaching at a new church, and I need to feel a little more centered, I put a little water on my forehead. Font like Jesus keeps re-newing me, whether I like it or not. Font like having a new title in my name that makes people read me a little bit differently, and deciding when to use it. Font like newness and rebirth. Font like the work, and font like the freedom. Font like healing me. Font like liberation.

In some ways, I am only a year in: it's a year since my ordination, anyway. But however you count it, here I am. One of the characters on 30 Rock psychs himself up in the mirror before a big presentation, and I decided to try it, before a church womens' event out by O'Hare. I shifted the rearview mirror of the borrowed car, and looked myself in the eye.
“Okay,” I said to myself, “This is the work you were born to do.”

Solidarity in Madison

2011-02-23T10:19:00.001-08:00

Awesome video from my cousin in Madison; proud to be a Vandenburgh.

Solidarity from Ashton Mieritz on Vimeo.

Daughterson

2011-02-09T19:41:00.001-08:00

Okay, so I love this song. And it's as close to a blog post as I'm going to right today, certainly, so here you go:

Daughterson

by Joe Stevens
2007

My haircut don't look right
My clothes don't fit just right
Them boy clothes are too big and girl's too tight
My feet they look too small
And I ain't very tall
I fight with my mom every time I go to the mall
If I can't be your daughterson, I ain't nothing at all

The teachers are all thrown
Public school is a war zone
Kids won't leave me or my Queeny brother alone
Don't get picked to be on teams
Though I'm scrappy and I'm lean
Those girls, they seem to look right through me
 
My body has betrayed me
My life, the sun is setting, black as night
If I had only known about those girls
Yeah, they saw me all right

I'm obviously a man
But I sit down on the can
I get shots in the leg by my lady's helping hand
My scars run across my chest
Dr. Brownstein is the best
And ain't no one can make me wear a dress

Just because I've done this
Doesn't mean you have to do it too
You don't know what it's like now, do you?
Well, some of you do…

Well, you say I'm going to hell
But I've been down that well
And God is a big boy, he can speak for himself
Don't mess with God's design
But where do you draw the line?
How bout Botox, diet pills, face lifts, braces, deforestation, nuclear warfare, Viagra….
Well, I think I'm doin fine

You're so scared of everything
You shout these rules that you invent
Who are you to force me
To believe what you think Jesus meant?

I grew up in a disguise
The pain has made me wise
Oh, my people stand, be seen, and we will rise
My body is my home
I won't ever be alone
And I found my place behind this microphone
 
I have chose my consequence
I've chosen my name
And I can be your Daughterson
Cause they're one and the same

"I do not know whether I baptized anyone else..."

2011-01-26T14:12:00.001-08:00

I preached at an awesome church on Sunday, Hope UCC in Naperville. They videotaped my sermon!

Here it is:

Sermon_1-23-2011 from Hope United Church of Christ on Vimeo.

Apples don't have kittens.

2010-12-23T16:58:00.000-08:00

[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

2010-12-08T18:55:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-26T08:08:00.000-08:00

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)

2010-11-17T10:08:00.000-08:00

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

2010-09-20T06:24:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-09T12:51:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-08T13:13:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-14T17:20:00.001-07:00

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

David

Zombie Theology Podcast

2010-07-30T10:03:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-20T20:12:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-05-19T13:13:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-05-16T12:40:00.000-07:00

“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

2010-05-03T08:05:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-15T07:02:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-11T19:21:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-03T21:57:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-03T21:53:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-03T21:45:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-24T09:35:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-10T15:24:00.000-08:00

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

2010-03-01T13:18:00.000-08:00

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

2010-03-01T13:12:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-15T09:11:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-09T12:17:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-15T20:33:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-02T08:39:00.000-08:00

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

wings, crooks, straw

2009-12-24T12:40:00.000-08:00

These are the draft texts for the three stories I'm going to tell tonight at the First Baptist Church of Berwyn Christmas Eve Service. So, if you're coming, don't read them.

Merry Christmas, internet.

wings

tone: regal, bold, ancient, majestic. Stand tall, move gracefully.

I've been an angel since the dawn of time, but I don't pretend to understand the mind of God.

Look: being an angel is pretty simple: you adore the throne of God, and you deliver messages for God.

I was good at it, I guess, as good as you can be at something that's just in your nature. Are you good at breathing? Then, I guess I'm good at delivering messages for God.

Most of the time the messages were pretty straight-forward; You, So and so, daughter of such and such. Go to this appointed place and do this appointed thing.

Other times, it was giving someone a message to pass on from God. Tell Pharoah to let my people go, that sort of thing. Big things and little things, scary things and hopeful things. Since the dawn of time, as I said, I've been delivering messages from God.

Things were always straight-forward: people were people, God was God, and I was an angel. You could tell I wasn't one of the people, because I had wings. You've seen them in paintings, but mortal paintings don't do angel wings justice. They are pure reflections of the glory of God. You can tell when you're seeing an angel, because of those wings.

Then came that night. That terrible, holy night. For the first time, since the dawn of time, I didn't know what to do when I got the message. It didn't make sense. It's not like I always know why God wants so and so to go do such and such, but this!

God was becoming incarnate. God was going to have a body. God was going to be a human being, a person.

I would have argued with God, but such is not in my nature.

And there was more- the people I was supposed to tell about it! Sure, God talks to all kinds of people, and I've delivered some messages to all kinds of people, but this! The most momentous event since the dawn of time, and I wasn't supposed to tell the rulers- the kings, the emperor. I wasn't supposed to tell the priests in the temple, and I wasn't even supposed to tell that many people. Just some homeless shepherds, out in the fields.

But I went. Because I am an angel of the Lord, and I've been delivering messages from God since the dawn of time.

Look. I should mention this other thing.

I like being an angel, I do. But it's often kind of lonely work. You're delivering messages to people, you see, you know, once. And you're adoring the throne. And there are other angels, but you don't ever see them, really- it only takes one of you to deliver a message, after all.

So the first thing that night, was what I was proclaiming.

And the second thing, that night, was who I was proclaiming it to.

And the third thing, that night, was that after I gave my message, I looked and saw another angel, there in the sky, and another and another until the sky was full.

...

So... After that night, after that child, things have been different.

I don't know about the wings thing, anymore. Used to be there were clear differences: God and human beings, angels with wings and people without them.

But now...

On that night, heaven and earth kissed one another. And they haven't stopped embracing since.

And now, whenever I see people: all people, any people: I see them all with wings.

Crooks

tone: almost broken, tired, world-weary, unflinchingly tough. Shrug a lot.

I suppose I shouldn't have been suprised. It's been happening this way for hundreds of years. When I was a kid, things were okay for us. I was the only daughter. We had a little farm. But the Romans said my parents owed too much in taxes, and they sold the farm to a big landowner. Whether they actually owed the money or not, what could we do?

So, with no land there was no money, and with no money there was no dowry, and with no dowry, I didn't have a lot of options. I'm grateful for how it worked out, I guess. The shepherd job I got, for that same big landowner, is much better than what some women in my situation have had to do.

But it's not a great job. The pay is lousy, just enough to scrape by, and you're deeper in debt every year. The conditions are bad, too: sleeping out every night. It gets cold, even this time of year. You can never really sleep when you're looking after sheep- you never know when one will get attacked or injured or sick. And there are other dangers, for a woman shepherd, in the wilderness. It got to the point where I was a little bit cold all the time, and tired all the time, too.

The other shepherds were alright, some of them, but they didn't really think women should be shepherds so they were allies at best. When I was a kid I would have laughed at what shepherds thought: dirty, poor, foul-smelling shepherds. But now, here I am.

And this is all to say nothing of the sheep. Dirty, stupid, mean. Just as soon bite you as look at you, these sheep anyway. So, I was surviving, but...

And then that night. I don't know whether it was more miraculous that God became a human being or that God wanted to tell me about it. Me and my shepherd friends. Angels came. To us. To us!

So we went, to see the child. What else could we do?

When I went to see the child, I didn't feel tired. I didn't feel outcast, I didn't feel poor, I didn't feel foul-smelling.

Instead I felt faithful. I felt joyful. I felt triumphant.

And it's how I feel now. (shrug.)

Straw

tone: nervous, anxious. Excited, a little bit. Until the end. Wring your hands and scratch, awkwardly. Talk kind of fast.

I guess the funny thing is that I was feeling like everything was coming together for me. I was starting off in my father's business, and like, I finally had some money coming in, and my family set me up with this girl, that everybody said would be, would be a good wife.

But then, the girl- Mary- she got pregnant, and it wasn't my baby, I knew that much, and people were saying all kinds of things about what I should do, but I decided that I should just you know, break things off quietly, not make a big deal about it, not get her into trouble. I was just trying to do the right thing, you know? And she had enough problems without me adding to it.

So that's what I was going to do, and I was all set to do it...

when...

I had this dream or this vision or I don't even really know what it was, but after that it seemed like I should stay with her, like I should still marry her.

But then, right away, she left for three months to visit her relative, and I don't blame her, but it was just hard to be on my own in all of that, and people in the village were talking about her, and us, and they were talking about me. And I was worried that it would hurt my business, hurt my family, and everything...

So when she came back, and then things looked like they were going to get easier, then of course the romans decide they haven't been keeping us under control efficiently enough, so there's this whole census thing and I have to go back to where my family is, and of course Mary is just so pregnant, and I don't have to tell you it was a difficult trip for her.

And through it all she was just remarkably calm, you know, even when we got to Bethlehem and I couldn't find anybody who knew where I was, and nobody would let us stay in their inn because I think they were waiting for somebody with more money because it was crowded there from the census and anything. And pretty soon we were desperate just to find a place out of the noise and cold and awful of the streets. Nobody wants to sleep on the street, and definitely nobody wants to give birth on the street and Mary was pretty sure it was her time.

And the way she looked at me, when we walked into the stable, as it was becoming apparent that it was this stable or the streets, and the way she looked at me, the way we looked at each other. It was like, “well, here we are, and we sure as hell didn't plan it to happen this way, but this is what's happening, so hey, here we are.”

Because there were animals everywhere, and it was out of the wind, sure, but it wasn't all that warm, and it was a stable, you know, which is to say it was filthy, and there was straw on the ground that was matted with dirt and muck, and that was going to be our bed, that was where she was going to give birth. Not a bed, or even a mat, but just dirty, smelly straw!

And all through that night, while she was in birth pain I was just worrying. I mean, I was trying to help, but there was only so much I could do, and so there was a lot of time just to worry.

And I worried about my business.

And I worried about my family.

And I worried about Mary.

And I worried about the Romans and their census and their taxes and their soldiers.

And I worried about this child, this baby, I worried about whose it was, whether what the people said about it was true, whether what I dreamed about it was true, and I just worried, all night long.

But.

After the baby came, there was a moment. There was a moment that seemed like it was going to be brief, but truth be told, it has continued. When I saw the baby, when I held the child still covered in blood from the birth.

I knew that things were going to be different. That all of the things that I had been worried about- my job and my family and the Romans and who the father was. All of that didn't matter. This child, this baby scattered all of those worries to the wind. He scattered them like straw.

Apocalyptic Love Song Stop-Motion Animation

2009-11-23T08:05:00.001-08:00

Lisa made a killer (ha ha) stop-motion animation of the love song that Corrigan and I wrote.

dispatches from the bad-ass side of the family

2009-10-26T14:39:00.000-07:00

My sister started a blog. Lately, she's been talking about her trip to Greece for climbing. If you want to see pictures of her halfway up a cliff looking totally badass, and/or read a story about cute kittens, see below:

http://katemcginnis.blogspot.com/

yes we can: my forehead is in the new york times

2009-09-25T19:22:00.001-07:00

The New York Times published a photo of an action I attended last night in Chicago. You can see my eyes and my forehead. The hotel management in Chicago is trying to cut health insurance for many of their workers, and the workers are fighting. Some of us from the seminary went downtown to get in on that. The article (and photo) are here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/us/25boston.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=chicago%20hotel%20workers&st=cse

anniversary powerm

2009-08-30T18:40:00.000-07:00

so, i definitely counted wrong when i wrote this. but what's a month between friends? or maybe it's just almost a month late, i don't know.

three months feels appropriate.

like the rule of threes the law of threes, the one that echoes so resoundingly in jokes, in legends, in mediocre sermons.

the city clicks and whirs like a great machine starting up. the pieces of my life shuffle and blur a little bit at the edges, but maybe it's just the coffee they have downtown, downtown where I can see the ley lines, which is to say the el lines, start to come together in the city of chicago.

the lay lines which are the el lines, the great veins of mystical elven power which are the great waves of people power, political power, “power for social movements,” a force more powerful.

and here we are in the midst of it. you are starting seminary, and i am starting whatever this thing is that comes after seminary. things shuffle and grow.

you married trickster energy, and so did i. adam kotsko messaged me on gchat:

did you know

he said

did you know that your new chosen name can be read as “weasel-like.”

“Yes.”

I gchatted back to him.

that was entirely on purpose.

and i sent him a link to the wikipedia article on the least weasel, and gchatted back to him:

“as wise as weasels, as innocent as least weasels” etc.

so, the city whirs and clicks, kind of like my camera when you first turn it on, and you should hold the button down halfway before you take the picture

so that things can come into focus

and you should turn off the flash.

And you're written everywhere I go in this city, as the Holy Spirit inscribes her name way down low in the edges of planters, in the edges of dying rhododendron leaves, in the edges and sides of towering skyscrapers, towering libraries, towering academies and seminaries, that take the script like paper drinks up ink when you leave the pen on the paper, until it is a great dark well.

and when i turn my head right, catch the light on the harold washington library

on the rockefeller chapel

on the trump tower and the business school and lowly old demolishable haymarket

i can read the script

it's three months we've been married, and three months i've been in chicago, and things are starting to whir and click, or I'm hearing them whir and click a little more clearly. loudly. brilliantly.

and every step i've taken in this city has been holding your hand. the places i walk, the great lines of bus and train, you've been sitting next to me, or your absence which is also your presence has been sitting next to me.

in some ways, when i go to the public library, to my favorite spot on the literature and language floor, by the microfiche machine that i've only seen used the once, where they have the outlet, where i can teka teka teka and the only people who smile at me are also working on their own projects, their work projects, their school of drama projects their filling the homeless hours projects their grinding the mental illness gears projects- in some ways, when i go to this place, and others like it, i am by myself.

and in other ways, there you are next to me, reading jerry spinelli or psalms or that ruth duck book you haven't read yet or anne.

because you're on every page, and you're in every sermon, and you're in every book i read. even the crappy superhero comics that i'm not sure why i read, and maybe there especially.

am i forcing this into a love poem when it's just more of an ecstasy, a prophesy?

(because, just so you know, i've been reading this dnd book about the eberron campaign setting, and they've got this draconic prophesy, you know, and sometimes the words of the prophesy are inscribed on human beings and elves, and sometimes they're foretold in the movements of fabric or the stars, but sometimes they're written “in no human hand,” in actual ancient script, in tiny or giant letters on rocks and bushes and cliffs, and boy howdy shazam motherfucker is that a cool idea, and also one that is true.)

but this is true about you, whether this is a love poem or not.

but you're on every page of my constructive-ordination-novel, and when will tanzman came to my room last night and we were talking about hope, and i started to give the book tour to someone else, and will tanzman asked if i knew any hopeful novels, i flailed at the bookshelf for some time, and i gave him stargirl, and secret life of bees, but i wasn't really happy with it until i remembered, and my eyes got wide, and i said, “o will,” and i went to my closet and pulled down my butterfly-clipped folio of my novel, with notes in blue ink, and every page has you on it, and that is true about you.

so i could start calling you hope, and that would be true.

and i believe in buying a gallon of paint, and you help me trust that. i believe in planting jeremiah's field, and you help me dig there. make the furrows from wounds into fertile places, in all that complexity and problematicness and aw and awe.

so i could start calling you ruach, and that would be true.

and that tattoo, which i drew on your back: yes, it's important that the mustard tree is a home for all the birds of the air, but it's also important that it's a home. for. me.

and so that's an appropriate thing for you to have on your belly. because i could start calling you home, and that would be true.

i don't know what our ven diagram looks like, but the fact that we have half (or a third or whatever) the same name now, that's alright. that's all right. which is what i say at the end of men's group when i don't want to say 'amen.' i hold hands with my siblings, and look around at each one of them. and things whir and click like holy batteries, like holly batteries, like visions and bus cards and the kind of dancin that looks like lying on the floor. and i say:

“alright?”

alright.

honeymoon photos

2009-08-28T13:48:00.001-07:00

Hey,

I just posted a bunch of photos from our honeymoon. It was a pretty great trip. Included in the photos are: a week at the Glasco family cabin (most of the photos), visiting the Arbogasts, falling water, and the Fayette County Fair. Not included in the photos are Wii bowling against my grandmother, an awesome exhibit at the Contemporary Art Museum in Chicago (free on Tuesdays!), Oberlin, the new Harry Potter movie (so many weasleys!) and Poseidon!: An Upside-Down Musical.

David

ps- For some reason, I had trouble posting more than four at a time.

Honeymoon Photos 4

2009-08-28T13:44:00.000-07:00

honeymoon photos 3

2009-08-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

honeymoon photos 2

2009-08-28T13:42:00.000-07:00

Honeymoon Photos 1

2009-08-28T13:41:00.000-07:00

carolyn is going back to seminary: a song

2009-07-25T19:57:00.000-07:00

My friend Carolyn is going back to seminary for her phd. We've been talking and thinking about it, and it was her birthday recently, so I wrote a song about it. The chorus is inspired by a capoeira event that my friend BJ was in. May there be more theology like that.

Here it is, and maybe I'll post a singing version should I record it. It has a lot of Carolyn-specific stuff in it, but a lot of it is true for all of us. So there.

"Carolyn R. is going back to seminary"

C Am C G/
Am F C G

It's kind of like fighting
It's kind of like dancing
and when the Spirit starts to move you
you'll find it so entrancing

we don't need more dead white guys
or more bad ideas
we need all our bodies
and better shmideas*
This path won't be easy
and not always fun
but Jesus fights with you
until you are done

It's kind of like fighting
it's kind of like dancing
and when the Spirit starts to move you
you'll find it so entrancing

if you're not enough mighty
or not enough bold
then just be enough clever
just be enough bold
This work is for trouble
this work is for joy
this work is for playing
with a new set of toys

It's kind of like fighting
it's kind of like dancing
And when the Spirit starts to move you
She'll find it so entrancing

The women are hungry
the children need fed
so return to the tower-
and come back with bread
In writing and teaching
you'll nurture deep roots
show up with eyes open
and teach us some truths

It's kind of like fighting
It's kind of like dancing
And when the Spirit starts to move you
They'll find it so entrancing

And when you are ninety
and backwards you look
you won't just have children
you won't just have books
These are your blessings-
these are your glories-
so go make some room for
some yet-unheard stories

For Laurel and Leanne
for Mike and for me
for yourself and for Hazel
for mountains and trees

It's kind of like fighting
it's kind of like dancing
And when the Spirit moves you
we'll find it so entrancing

it's kind of like fighting
it's kind of like dancing
And when the Spirit moves you
you'll find it so entrancing

-dw

*long story

Summer: What they didn't teach me in first aid merit badges, polity without a polis, etc.

2009-07-23T13:56:00.000-07:00

I've been planning to post for something like six weeks. So, here's something:

I went to street medic training this past weekend. It was pretty awesome. It was only a twenty hour course, but it was a good first-aid review, and I learned some stuff that they didn't cover in first aid merit badge. Street Medic training is designed for folks who want to be medical resource people at large-scale and small-scale non-violent political actions: protests, demonstrations, etc. Turns out that the major difference between first aid merit badge and this particular training is that it covers a lot more herbal medicine, and a lot more about how to respond to injuries from police violence: flushing pepper spray out of folks' eyes, etc.

There were ten or twelve of us, and we sat in a circle on the ground in Humboldt Park, and listened to the trainers. One of them worked for an ambulance company, and the other was an herbalist. It was a pretty good mix. I think this training will be really good for the next time I attend a large-scale protest, particularly if I'm, say, bringing along a church youth group. If you ever have the chance to do such a training, I'd certainly recommend it.

In other, perhaps related news, I'd been planning to write here about some of the stuff I'm reading this summer. The one that comes to mind right now is Here Comes Everybody, which is allegedly about "organizing without organizations." It's primarily focused on crowd-sourcing, and websites like flickr and wikipedia that enlist volunteers on a massive scale, without worrying too much about bureaucracy, hierarchy, or structure. It offers a pretty starry-eyed view of the situation, without much attention to the way such power can be mis-used (eg, the opening chapter includes the story of a wealthy woman losing her blackberry, and then using crowdsourcing to harass the young, lower-class woman of color who found it in a cab into giving it back.) However, there's definitely some interesting stuff going on. As new media, new communications, new networks develop and mature, it will be interesting to see how things go. It comes to mind in relation to the street medic training because of how little infrastructure there seems to be in this particular movement. Apparently, if I want to help out with medical stuff at, say, the big G20 meeting in Pittsburgh in September (Sept. 20-25, for those playing along at home), I just show up, find the clinic, and find somebody else who will help me out. There's no certification, there's no single organization; there's just a listhost and a bunch of people who kind of know each other. It's inefficient, sure, but that kind of cellular organizing might make it really hard to disrupt.

So: what does a church without organizations look like? And what does this movement ('here comes everybody') mean for, say, the American Baptist Churches, which recently voted against a big structural overhaul on the denominational level?

Vamos a ver, right?

Three Times Under

2009-06-25T21:28:00.001-07:00

Going under is a scary feeling. I can imagine that it feels close to death—as the light and faces fade around you and your thoughts drift to memories and white lights. To be afraid of this feeling requires experiencing it more than once. The first time, it is only fear of the unknown, but the second, you know the loss involved. You will lose your time and space, your friends and relatives, your beliefs and values. For the time that you are under, you are just a speck of sleep on God’s realm of surgeries.

Tomorrow, I will go under for the third time, and I am scared to death. I remember the night before my gall bladder surgery, David asking, “Megan, do you want me to stay?” At first, I said, “No!” After all, I have experienced BRAIN SURGERY! Surely a little cut along my abdomen isn’t going to phase me. But as the nurse put morphine into my I.V. I panicked, “Yes, yes, please stay.” For the first time since my brain surgery, I was reminded of that “going under” feeling. I needed David there to keep me in the present. He was my connection to the living world, when the rest of my mind and body felt only the dead.

I don’t think it is an accident that I have been so fascinated with graveyards. The connection I feel with the dead is indescribable, and most would consider it crazy. When I feel that sinking feeling of “going under,” I feel death with me, on the other side of the door, just waiting to be greeted. At the same time, it is scary beyond belief. I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to be with those people. Studying them, writing about them, that’s all okay; but I don’t want to be them. And as I sink into the deepest sleep, I beg for life.

When Mike Young saved me from the Mediterranean Sea in Italy, I didn’t know that I was yet to encounter two surgeries that would put me at the pearly gates. Looking back on that experience, it was the sinking feeling I related to in all of my surgical conquests. The closing of the eyes, slowness of breath, and ultimate relaxation of body…all of it made me afraid and yet, at peace. That is what is so frightening about going under: it is scary and peaceful.

I have been told that given my history with brain surgery and emergency gall bladder removal, my wisdom teeth will be a breeze. I didn’t hesitate at all when asked if I wanted to “go to sleep.” I know what’s coming, I guess, and I also know that I shouldn’t be afraid. The sinking feeling is a memory, now, and unlike its one time occurrence amongst most people’s souls, this will be my third. How many times can I escape the drowning purgatory of anesthesia? The more I experience it, the more I fear that moment.

And then, as all liberals might do in such a situation, I realize my privilege. I have dental insurance. I have medical insurance. I am privileged enough to get my wisdom teeth out. I have a father to drive me to the procedure and stand by my side. It is selfish to be afraid, when I have been so lucky in the past. After all, after tomorrow, I will have had three procedures that could have been pushed aside due to financial conflict. Three procedures that made my life easier and made my heart stronger. Three procedures that, though many of them might need it, most of my students will never even get the option to have.

So, is it okay to be afraid? Can I justify my fear of the drowning of elements? Can I cling to my father in immature, unneeded anxiety? I have to. My fear overwhelms my liberalism and nests in my doubt. It conquers my past experience and settles into my worries. What if I just keep sinking? What if I never wake up?

Daddy will be there. Thank God for that.

wedding stuff

2009-05-19T11:04:00.000-07:00

Friends,

There's some other wedding stuff up at our wedding site here, notably a couple of the speeches about why we should get married, and liner notes to the wedding cd. Also, if your cd begins with a half dozen hip-hop songs, congratulations on receiving the rare variant version. Actual Rachael and David tracks follow those. If you have not yet received a Weasley Wedding Album, let me know and I'll mail you one.

http://sites.google.com/site/bigparadewedding/

Perhaps soon I will post on the existential new realities I face as a married and graduated person. Or something more interesting.

Speaking of more interesting, a couple of nights ago I dreamed that Bean (haymarket's dog) and I successfully robbed a bank in a scheme involving pneumatic tubes. See, it's always worth reading to the end around here...

David

Top Ways Married Life is Different from Before

2009-05-05T16:58:00.000-07:00

1. I no longer return home from work and spend the rest of the night on wedding prep (YAY!). Also, my wedding dress is Done instead of In Progress.

2. David and I have joint bank accounts

3. I wear a wedding ring

4. My Spanish students now call me Señora Raquel instead of Señorita Raquel

5. David and I have lots of candy and quilts and honey and seasons of Simpsons and sweet cards from lots of people. :)

IT IS OUR WEDDING.

2009-05-02T09:45:00.000-07:00

Well, I thought it would be cool to set up an auto-post thing that would post right about when the gathered community is pronouncing Rachael and I married. So, here it is.

Yay!

(That's right, you just heard about a wedding on google reader. Welcome to the stupid future.)

from the back cover of 'recipes for disaster: an anarachist cookbook' by crimethinc

2009-04-22T09:12:00.001-07:00

"You must always have a secret plan. Everything depends on this: it is the only question. So as not to be conquered by the conquered territory in which you lead your life, so as not to feel the horrible weight of inertia wrecking your will and bending you to the ground, so as not to spend a single night more wondering what there is to do or how to connect with your neighbors and your countrymen, you must make secret plans without respite. Plan for adventure, plan for pleasure, plan for pandemonium, as you wish; but plan, and lay plans constantly.

And when you come to, on the steps of the presidential palace, in the green grass beside the highway, in your cell's gloomy solitude, your secret plan finished or failed, ask your comrades, ask your cellmates, ask the wind, the waves, the stars, the sea, ask everything that ponders, everything that wanders, everything that sings, everything that stings- ask them what time it is; and your comrades, your cellmates, the wind, the waves, the stars, the sea all will answer: "It is time for a new secret plan. So as not to be the martyred slave of routine, plan adventure, plan pleasure, plan pandemonium, as you wish: but plan, plan secretly and without respite."

This has been resonating in my head lately.

Happy planning.

New PCC Church Website

2009-04-08T08:16:00.001-07:00

My church in Oberlin, Peace Community Church, has a new website. You can check it out if you live in northeast ohio, or if you like church websites. Or if you're coming to the wedding and looking for a nice place to be Sunday morning.

http://pccoberlin.org/

homebrew wedding, aka 'sorry, wedding industry.'

2009-03-25T07:06:00.001-07:00

So, as most (both) readers of this blog likely know, Rachael and I are getting married in May. We've got a pretty simple shindig planned, but this stuff is all really expensive still. Turns out we're going homebrew on a lot of stuff. B and T might loan us their lovely car as a gift, to save us from renting one. Digger and I are just going to build a tent, rather then renting at exorbitant rates. And everybody's bringing potluck food to fill out the meager restaurant food we're buying.

I like the improv, medi-awesome aesthetic that is slowly arising out of the muck of phone calls and emails to various professionals and acquaintances. Rachael's making her own dress. Everybody's making their own parade costumes. It's more work, in some ways, but only in some ways.

It also highlights my own resources. In some ways, I don't have a lot of wealth: I don't have too, too much money left in the bank, and I work minimum wage these days, mostly. However, I know a lot of great and generous people, and that social wealth is not to be underestimated. Moreover, it is entirely tax free.

I like this rising aesthetic also because of what it signifies: our wedding is not going to be traditional, and it is going to arise out of the sweat and creativity of those closest to us. (And some helpful strangers.) Similarly, our marriage is not going to be traditional, and instead of coming as a packaged deal, it will arise, slowly, messily, and organically, out of our creativity and sweat, and out of the joys and sorrows and gifts of our community, and of the strangers that also surround us.

I feel grateful about it, lately.

13 Homes

2009-03-14T20:43:00.001-07:00

Jotted down in an annoyingly small journal, too late at night, on Friday, March 13, 2009 by Megan Highfill.

Moving out on my own has already proved both rewarding and disappointing. Now, as I sit in my bed, I’m realizing that this is the last time I will probably call this house my home. The house itself is no big deal—houses come and go, and I’ve seen seven do as such in my lifetime. What terrifies me is that this may be the last time that my true home is the same place as my mother, father and brother. Even in college, I “came home” for Christmas and over the summer. Now, there are two separate entities: My home and what I’ve tried to start referring to as “my parent’s house, a reference that is proving to be more emotional than expected.

I’ve felt this once before—when I was driving out of Oberlin for the last time, on a cold December morning. After that morning, I would never again call Oberlin my home. It’s the feeling of never coming back as more than a visitor that really gets to me. And though I can return to “my parent’s house,” I can’t do so in the same way I’ve done for 25 years.

Perhaps this is why I cling to the artifacts of my parents and grandparents and hesitate to store anything of my own as a keepsake. Home is the people in it, the things they say, create and use. So I am faithful to every dish, every gift, and every old piece of furniture. The things that are now mine that were once my mother’s, my grandmother’s and even great-grandmother’s—they are a way for me to maintain that connection. That human emotion that molds, breaks and puts back together a home.

I’m not sure if I’m ready to create my own building blocks here. Seeing that empty space makes me expect aspects of Oberlin and Kansas to walk in the room and start constructing. Surely Leah, Matt, Rachael, David, Megan and Beth are on their way. Of course, Mama, Daddy and Tavy are right outside the door. If they aren’t there, then why am I not hightailing it back to them, back to my home?

To some, this may seem silly. Why am I so emotional about a move that takes me less than 10 miles? In my new apartment, though, my mother seems just as far away as in-Guatemala Beth Peachey.

So, I draw them close. Steal a bit of the homes we have already built together. For Rachael, I have the books and the scriptures we shared, strategically accessible on my bookshelves, complete with the Secret Life of Bees. Megan, remember those plates we made and mine said “Your mom”? Well, don’t worry—I won’t be putting your mom in the microwave. Matt, our kitchen in Oberlin, including the plastic Sesame Street cups, has been reincarnated in Mission, Kansas. David, I have an original NES hooked to my TV with your name on it. The heartfelt, thoughtful style of Leah Faleer has affected just about every aspect of my apartment, and I will sit close to the television to watch So You Think You Can Dance. Bethy, your kindness and genuineness is so much a part of me that the picture of me eating ice cream and playing Super Mario Brothers on my computer can’t explain it. Daddy, I’m pretty sure a 6-pack of beer will be christening my refrigerator very soon. Tavy, the TV is in a central location and you have your own TV tray and chair. And Mama, well, that place is a glowing representation of how well I was raised. A girl couldn’t ask for a better mother.

There are touches of others, here and there, of course. And a rice cooker large enough with rice enough to serve this 10+ person family. In 2009, on March 13, I brought the total number places I’ve lived, including college, to 13. I hope to make this one as awesome as the first 12.

Thank you for my homes.

~megan

Happy Birthday Clarence Darrow!

2009-03-13T11:06:00.000-07:00

Today I went to a wonderful event, namely the Clarence Darrow Memorial Celebration at the Clarence Darrow Memorial Bridge.

Yes, it had a retired alderman with a wheelchair and a megaphone. Yes, it had haphazard throwing of flowers into the lagoon behind the Museum of Science and Industry. Yes, it had invocations which were not prayers, because prayers would be inappropriate at the Clarence Darrow Memorial Celebration. (All of these, especially the last two, made me wish my Ritual Studies professor was there.)

It also had this story:

Apparently, one time Clarence Darrow was hanging out with some spiritualists. (At this point, you might be thinking that I should be posting this to the Spurious Facts About Long-Dead Famous People blog, but the retired alderman with the megaphone said it, so I believe it.) He told them that he didn't believe in their spiritualism, but in case it was true, he would show up on the bridge behind the museum at ten'o'clock in the morning on his birthday.

And so now, and for the past fifty years, a small but formidable crowd has shown up, at that time and location, to remember Clarence Darrow and to celebrate his life and work.

And to see if he shows up.

It was bizarrely similar to an Easter-sunrise service, and the invocation used a formula that I've heard at those services. ("We're gathered to remember, but also to think about the future...)

This post doesn't have much of a point other than to celebrate this lovely and localist little observation. Except this:

Last night, in preparation for attending today's celebration, I read Darrow's wikipedia page. You should too, he's a cool and interesting guy, and it is his birthday.

Then I read William Jennings Bryant's Wikipedia page.

And I felt oddly sad. Because, like: all these early Christian opponents of Darwinism were largely objecting on social justice grounds. Darwinism must be opposed, yes because it's against the Bible, sure, but MOSTLY because it justifies the strong oppressing the weak. Bryan, and many others like him, opposed teaching human evolution in order to guard against teaching social Darwinism. I think this is fascinating, and I mark it as a place where American evangelicalism kind of lost its way. I don't hear much about this critique in contemporary Creationist arguments. (Now, granted, I haven't been to the museum...)

When you read their Wikipedia pages, at least, Darrow and Jennings both seem like heroes to me. And it's sad to think of them as opponents.

Maybe they are friends in heaven, and if I am to believe what I say about the dead, then they work together with us in the struggle, both of them, different as they are.

And maybe the meet at the bridge and hang out, when nobody else is around. And admire the flowers that we dropped in the lagoon.

Three Ways to Carry a Futon

2009-02-01T19:45:00.000-08:00

I just moved into the cooperative house where David and I will live for the next 3 or more years while we're married and I'm in seminary. As part of the move-in process, I helped two other women carry a futon mattress up 3 flights of stairs. We lifted it onto our heads and the mattress hung down toward each shoulder. I was the third woman in single file; all I could see was the back of the person in front of me.

At first, it was like being in a fort. The soft (if heavy) mattress fell tent-like around me. We were sort of huddled inside; the mattress ceiling was too low, just like a sofa fort.

Then, it was like being on an amusement park ride. As we went around a corner, there was the exhilaration of my head being squeezed between the futon and the walls. We slowed down to go around the turn and then-- free again! Just like a roller coaster slows down before a fast part. Or like a log canoe ride going around the bend in the river.

And as we went up the last flight of stairs into the attic, pushing with all our strength to get through a soft but narrow tunnel, the narrow staircase made me think of being born.

Constructive Theology: Special Guest Star, Bob Dylan

2009-01-23T13:21:00.000-08:00

So, my friend Lauren sent me a link to a youtube video, with the advice "long but worth it."

Today I handed in my Constructive Theology paper, the major systematic work which I've basically been working on since June. You can read the paper if you want, but you might get a better idea of what I'm trying to say with it all if you just watch this youtube video.

Thanks to all for your prayers and support as I worked on this project. Next up: ordination paper, then novel revisions. But first: goofing off!

by popular demand: spurious facts

2009-01-09T17:44:00.000-08:00

Look, there's been a lot of clamoring in the comments thread (read: none) for an internet blog-related home for daily posts of spurious facts about long-dead famous people. And that said blog should post daily for at least a week and a half.

Well, clamor no more! My first spin-off blog: spuriousfacts.blogspot.com. Subscription recommended.

eschatology and gaza

2009-01-08T08:09:00.000-08:00

I've been writing the eschatology section of my constructive theology. It is a hard and appropriate time to do it, focused as I am on Israel's ground invasion of Gaza. (A friend of mine works for maannews.net/en, if anyone wants to read about it from a Palestinian source.)

It's pretty weighty to try to write about the coming new creation when there's so much of the violent, senseless one going around today. Here's a quote from an old friend I keep coming back to:

"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 this earth."
- John Wesley

Well?

[Thanks to Noah and Emily for the address correction. The above link should work now.]

2008-12-26T09:57:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas!
¡Feliz Navidad!

Here are some photos from assorted Christmas gatherings and traditions.

Lots of fireworks coming from all directions at midnight on Christmas Eve add greatly to the excitement! (this is the street in front of my apartment) Note the one just taking off out of the plastic jug...The fireworks start at about midnight, and run for about half an hour. This is not a controlled fireworks show, but every family in the city setting off their own fireworks in the streets, on the roof, everywhere!

Christmas tree in Sololá.

Melany and Irvin with an Irvin-sized tree.

My landlady and her family, waiting for midnight.

Commercialism and capitalism at it's best; a Christmas picture
with my friends Astrid, Lourdes, Irvin...and millions of teddy bears.

And, the fireworks on New Year's to top it off, video taken from the roof of my friend Shannon's apartment. (On Christmas it's just as exciting)

Everyone in the city setting off fireworks, coming from all directions!

Kites!

2008-12-24T12:30:00.000-08:00

This is November 1st in Santiago Sacatepéquez. It's the day of the dead, or all saints day. They make these kites, fly them, present them and the town cemetery fills with people, flying kites, building kites, eating, watching, taking pictures, sitting on the tombs, etc. It's an amazing event.

These kites are possibly my favorite thing about Guatemala. These are the giant ones...not fly-able, but just look at how beautiful they are!! And how long it must have taken each team of young adults to make them...out of tissue paper, packing tape and bamboo.

And here's a video: fun stuff!

Grace and Mercy

2008-12-06T13:55:00.001-08:00

I just had a wonderful lunch with two young women who are from Central America. One is Nicaraguan and has studied law, and the other is from El Salvador and is a doctor. They came over to my apartment and we made rice, beans, plantains, and a salad of cabbage, cucumber and tomato with key lime juice and salt. The food, and the Spanish we spoke, were Central American. It was lovely to hear them say "Fíjate que..." and "vos." We danced in my studio apartment to Nicaraguan marimba music and I sent them home with lots of leftovers. We talked about living in a foreign country, and we praised and criticized the United States and Nicaragua. They thought Chacocente was a great project for its attempt to help people become independent, instead of giving them charity. It was a wonderful conversation about religion, architecture, race, poverty, culture, homeplace, Spanish grammar, stress, and family. I am so grateful. Sometimes I feel so alienated from my experience in Central America, and from the person I was while I lived there. Talking with them helped me feel more reconciliation between my two selves. When they left, I felt I was the precious participant in grace and mercy, which seem so often to arrive unexpectedly. Aleluia.

Guatemala #15: The story of 2008 part 4

2008-11-26T10:34:00.000-08:00

Okay, I lied, this is also the best!

Ángel, playing and singing a song that he wrote:)

Here are the words (loosely translated)

I'm just a little bird, who wants to know more about God
When I go to school, I'm happy, singing to the Lord

Guatemala #15: The story of 2008 part 3

2008-11-26T09:59:00.000-08:00

And.....the best for last! These are pictures from an activity we did during the past two weeks (the equivalent of a summer camp) with children every weekday morning. We did games, and songs and prepared a musical drama for the Sunday church service, called "The Red Guitar". It was about a cricket who got a red guitar for his birthday that didn't work! No music came out of the guitar! So, the cricket's friend, the worm, goes searching for musical notes for the red guitar.

It was amazing! We did one week in Zone 11, and another week in La Brigada. The first two photos are from the games and arts activities during the week, and the last three are from the performances.

Game in Zone 11

Making the red guitar, in La Brigada

Mosquito, canary and cicada in Zone 11.

The frogs give the worm the note G for the red guitar!

Full cast in Zone 11, singing with the now functioning red guitar!

Guatemala #15: The story of 2008 part 2

2008-11-26T09:24:00.000-08:00

Concert in Zone 11

Concert in La Brigada

Two students receiving guitars that they were able to buy paying little by little, thanks to a donation we received to buy instruments.

Visits to three different nursing homes, to sing and play for the residents.

Erin Weaver, a wonderful volunteer who helped us out in June, gave several classes explaining how the violin and other stringed instruments work, and helped Yeimi begin to learn to play!

Preschool music class in the church Pacto Renovado in Carranza. This church runs a preschool, and we helped out every Thursday with musical activities.

Guatemala #15 : The story of 2008, part 1

2008-11-20T13:50:00.000-08:00

So, once upon a time (in 2006), a girl named Beth went to Guatemala. She lived with families, and learned spanish and learned to like beans, and a whole bunch of other new foods. She started working, and helped start a music school in the Mennonite churches in Guatemala City. She faithfully reported to her family and friends for one year, but then, she might have dropped off the face of the earth for all they knew, as her blog posts completely stopped appearing for months and months. However, she continued working hard and completed 2 years in Guatemala on November 2nd!

Here, at long last, is an update from Beth:

Hello! I've been busy for a long, long, time, but thought that maybe someone out there might like to see some pictures from this year (this year!). I don't think I've posted anything since January. Okay, I just checked, and I posted a couple in January, and one in April. How embarrasing!!!

So, first, some lovely pictures from activities we've done this year in the newly named Academia Menonita de Artes y Recreación (AMAR), or Mennonite Academy of Arts and Recreacion. The acronym spells the verb "to love" in Spanish, which expresses what we hope this space to be for people, a space of love, respect, learning, creativity, expression...a safe space. These first pictures are from concerts we've done this year with students from three different communities in and around Guatemala City (Zone 11, La Brigada and Bárcenas Villa Nueva, for those keeping score at home, haha). The distance between the two farthest communities is 2 to 2 1/2 hours by bus.

A picture's worth a thousand words! (or at least I hope it is, at least these pictures will give you a bit of an idea of what we have been up to).

Blessings, Beth

p.s. - look for more updates soon, I've got a bunch more pictures and possibly videos I'd like to put up!

Children miming playing the recorder and the keyboard to the music that I played with another teacher.

Children demonstrating their newly acquired music literacy!!

Second year guitar students from Mixco playing and singing at the Mennonite Church Jesús Luz y Vida in Boca del Monte. (Jesus Light and Life Church)

First year guitar students playing a chord progression in Bárcenas Villa Nueva.

Giant musical notes! Kids demonstrating music literacy in La Brigada, Mixco.

alison bechdel

2008-11-16T14:12:00.000-08:00

I have a lot to say about the anti-Prop 8 March I went to yesterday, but that's not what this post is about.

I went to an amazing book talk by Alison Bechdel, one of my favorite cartoonists/graphic novelists/etc, the other day. I don't usually post just to link to other blogs, but, I mean, seriously, when I get mentioned in famous people's blogs, that's pretty damn cool.

http://www.dykestowatchoutfor.com/that-toddlin-town

a break in mood

2008-11-08T15:16:00.000-08:00

It's been too long since I posted something silly. And since today I'm writing the "sin and suffering" chapter of my constructive theology, I must post someone else's silliness.

For those of you who haven't been keeping up with Alison Dennis: the silliness only increases. It is deep and wide, like the love of our Lord.

Note: Alison Dennis is a former housemate and fellow devotee of Jeebusism, one of the best fake religions I've ever helped make up.

more vision, less perishing?

2008-11-05T07:48:00.000-08:00

Look, as I said before, I'm not sure how much I even believe in this stuff. But I went home after the spirituality and sexuality performance, and I watched the returns with my friends and housemates.

When they called Illinois, I thought about my theology prof, an old-school southern liberationist, who told me months ago that an Obama win, for him, having grown up in the Jim Crow south, "would be like redemption."

When they called Pennsylvania, I thought about my grandma, eighty-six years old, who broke her arm a couple weeks ago, but who got a ride with her son to the polls. She was not going to miss it.

And when they called Ohio, I thought about Jesse Stinebring, who led the Obama campaign in Oberlin. He ran it out of his house for the last ten days. Sending volunteers out to cover that whole part of the state. Making calls and teaching people how to knock on doors. I went and knocked on some doors when I was in Ohio over the weekend, more out of a commitment to Jesse than a commitment to Obama. Jesse's seventeen.

And you know, when the called California, I thought it was a good sign for my sisters and brothers in California seeking to retain their constitutional freedom to marry. (Now, that looks unlikely.)

And yes, I'll admit, when they called Colorado, I may have shouted "Focus on this family!" and given a terrorist fist bump to my married lesbian couple friends.

And when they called the whole damn thing, I didn't know what to do. I screamed and shouted, and the thirty people in the co-op basement flooded into our front yard, chanting and singing and weeping. When I walked Rachael home after the speech, everyone on the sidewalk was happy. "Barack Obama!" called a woman from her front porch. "Yes we can!" we called back.

I believe that we are the ones we've been waiting for. I don't believe anyone can ride into Washington and save us. I believe in Jesus Christ for president (in the manner of Woody Guthrie) and everyone else is just going to be a better or worse commander of the empire.

But to have a president who's less Constantine and more Saul Alinsky?

After the speech, April went and got the flag. It had been leaning against the wall by the free box for some months. I don't know why we didn't give it away before now; somebody had ended up with it after an immigration rights rally. But we had it, and April took it outside, and set it up on the front porch. I watched.

Vamos a ver.

voting day hymn

2008-11-03T13:40:00.000-08:00

Look, so I'm not even sure that I believe electoral politics can enact long-term meaningful change, under the current system. But I do believe it can make things at least better or worse.

And my theology professor, who is sometimes one of the most cynical guys I know, says he's "beginning to lean into the hope."

And whoever we elect tomorrow, the day after the inauguration, we'll all still have to start a whole new cycle of working to end government-sponsored racism and war and torture and environmental degradation.

But I'll be at the polls when they open. Here's a hymn to get you going. May it guide your heart at the polls, and in the days to come. If you don't know it, look it up on youtube or something; as DTH says, it's one of those hymns where the tune really fits the words.

Once to every man and nation

Once to every man and nation,
comes the moment to decide,
in the strife of truth with falsehood,
for the good or evil side;
some great cause, some great decision,
offering each the bloom or blight,
and the choice goes by forever,
'twixt that darkness and that light.

Then to side with truth is noble,
when we share her wretched crust,
ere her cause bring fame and profit,
and 'tis prosperous to be just;
then it is the brave man chooses
while the coward stands aside,
till the multitude make virtue
of the faith they had denied.

By the light of burning martyrs,
Christ, thy bleeding feet we track,
toiling up new Calvaries ever
with the cross that turns not back;
new occasions teach new duties,
ancient values test our youth;
they must upward still and onward,
who would keep abreast of truth.

Though the cause of evil prosper,
yet the truth alone is strong;
though her portion be the scaffold,
and upon the throne be wrong;
yet that scaffold sways the future,
and behind the dim unknown,
standeth God within the shadow,
keeping watch above his own.
Words: James Russell Lowell, 1849
Music: Ton-y-Botel (Ebenezer), Yn y glyn

reformation sunday

2008-10-27T14:09:00.000-07:00

Let our bones be broken,
and re-knit anew.
Will you break our walls and teach us how to fight?
Will you break our genders and classes?

Our hates and habits are calcified:
Sedimented with the weight of race and nation.
Are you strong enough?
Are we strong enough for the breaking,
and for the reforming?

Make our pretty old churches new and ugly,
marked with the dirt of tragedy and fertility.
Mark us with ashes,
make us your own.

We are always in need of re-forming,
and we are always being re-formed.

(words are not enough... we must resort to bread...)

What I'm Up Thinking About

2008-10-22T22:20:00.000-07:00

(I was up late thinking. And maybe it was the coffee I had too late in the evening, but maybe it wasn't, so I got up to write, and I wrote a letter to my pastor. And I edited it very slightly and posted it here.)

A few things, that feel really related, and might even sound related in the morning:

Today I drove with my friend to _______. She had to drive up to take her mother to the dmv, so her mother could get her license back, because her mother lost her license driving drunk. She said to me, "What's sad is that she was a really good mom, up until the drinking and the mental illness started." And I believe her. Because I could see little glimpses of it in the way they interacted, in the way her recently-drinking mom told her that she was a fine young woman. In the art in her mom's garage, and in the story about going to see her dad sing a concert seventeen years ago. But all of that changed when her mom started drinking, when ___ was in the fourth grade. What a tragedy. And now she contends with a legacy of family broken-ness, and she contends with her own self-doubt and commitment issues, and she contends in a very real way with her mom. And she plans out with her sister who will drive her mom to the dmv, and who will have a stern talk with her about drinking and driving. And the whole thing is so heart-breaking. Just so heart-breaking. This, E., my same friend whose life has had more than its share of curve balls and awful in the past year, where periodic abusive text messages from her mom are just part of the fabric, the background of it all. And I asked her on the way home if she feels like there's anything else she could try, and she listed all the things they have tried, and I have to agree that it seems like there's nothing else they can try. It just makes me shake my head. It just makes me snap at my girlfriend. It just makes me sad and angry.

Except that it doesn't just make me sad and angry. Because we ride together, the whole way to ________ and back. And we leave her mom's house, and I say to her, "We're getting ice cream, right?" and she says, "Oh, yeah." And we do. And our rides, both there and back, are full of life and integrity and deep heart sharing and laughing like crazy at the joy and awful in the world. And we stop at the library on the way back, and I pull five good comic books off the shelf for her, because she's been in such a superhero mood lately. That makes me shake my head now. The superheroes in my life don't wear capes one can see.

And then, I ride the train to where I'm meeting Rachael after her bookclub, and I find a lovely little coffee shop to hang out in, and I just take out my little paper sketchbook and draft the rest of my constructive theology paper. It's just little sketches, but it's pretty much all there, everything I think is important enough to write about Jesus, about sin and suffering, about ecclesiology, about ministry, about eschatology. I thought I would have to take long breaks in between drafting one section and drafting the next, but it just flows and flows like crazy. And now I figure that it's probably the whole weight of the day, just pressing me and pulling me, and the Spirit moving through that, and coming out in quotes and dotted lines and question marks, like fingerprints in clay.

And also, today, I talked to my other friend and colleague Nate, who's writing a sermon. And she's having a hard time of it. And somehow, the conversation came around, and we just ended up talking about how what you learn in seminary is to have two contradictory things, two things that are utterly opposed, and that are both utterly true, and to hold them together. I think I went so far as to say that such a thing basically describes what seminary is for: to learn how to hold two contradictory things, ideas, whatever, together. I might even stand by that statement in the morning. And it feels like such a thin place, now, thinking about how we spoke to one another, me on my cellphone on the el platform, she in her apartment with her books and her tv.

And I think about my own people. And I had a frustrating interaction with someone close to me a few months ago, where he came to the city briefly, and it was just exhausting in its falseness and its emptiness. And I went back to my house, and I complained about it to two of my housemates, because they were there, and they totally just held it all. And Corrigan, my housemate, said, after all of my complaining and lamenting, he said, "Well, what's the anarchist version of 'we'll keep him in our prayers?'" And he just meant it from his heart and it makes me cry to think about it now.

And I think about the orientation to American Baptist life that I just got back from. And hearing about missional churches, churches that are built first on mission and only later on the other parts of being church, and I found myself wondering: can I do that backwards? Instead of taking totally disengaged Christians or whoever and making them engaged in the struggle, can I take people who are already ferociously, life-and-death engaged in struggles for justice and give them a place to rest and pray and eat and take heart, and people to hold them and love them and challenge them and give them a little sabbath before they burn out five years into their careers? Well?

"What's the anarchist version of 'we'll keep him in our prayers?'" I think it's probably just that.

The only reason that I think I can do this, is that when I came from a day of walking through heartbreaking tragedy and beloved community, walking in between, the theology just flowed like water out of my pen. And tonight I feel heart-broken and spirit-woken, and I'm writing this.

Oh yeah: And this: Jesus is in a house, healing and teaching, and the man who is paralyzed, he can't get in to Jesus, so his friends, the ones who are carrying him, dig through the roof. Most days I feel like that man.

love from chicago.

david

Hope

2008-10-18T08:30:00.001-07:00

I just watched Strictly Ballroom, a movie I used to watch with my high school girlfriends. We even analyzed it once for an English project, comparing it to the hero's journey. Watching it today, I am situated in several contexts that are new since high school. It is now an important part of my belief system that Jesus does not coerce people, that he is a liberator. Montessori's philosophy of teaching also stresses the importance of following the child, letting the child have choices, giving the child freedom. I have dated David for over 5 years and he is all about liberating the people from the power structures that try to control them (a la Walter Wink). Finally, I have recently been so angry at the brokenness and injustice of the world (see my last blog post).

These new contexts practically make Strictly Ballroom a holy text for me. When a dozen minor characters, not necessarily sympathetic, band together at the end of the movie to support the subversion and defiance of the two protagonists, I cried. There's a line in David's novel about people doing the same thing, banding together against the forces of coercive power, and in his novel each individual acts on behalf of the hundred more who cannot. I cried reading that line, too.

I also love that the defiance takes the form of art, of dancing together. Art is powerful partly in its danger to systems of power. The moral of Strictly Ballroom is not to live in fear, another key tool of the powers that be to coerce the masses. I may add that this tool is especially relevant to the experience of our country today.

Apparently these days I am hungry for reminders that groups of people I don't even know are working alongside those I do know to bring more wholeness and justice to our world, more joy and defiance and beauty and risk and cooperative, mutual power. Hope is just as important as food for my survival. This movie was like eating.

Love and Anger

2008-10-11T18:57:00.000-07:00

I just read the first draft of David's novel, which is about the struggle to bring the Kindom, and for book group I'm reading Persepolis, which is about the Iranian revolution. And so for the last week or so I've been very cranky and crabby and irritable and sensitive and wondering why... finally today I had a big wave of grief for all the hard-to-swallowness of this world and realized my irritability is probably just misdirected rage at injustice. I'm still haunted by the horrible parts of the life stories of the people I know in Nicaragua and so my grief today had some specific faces. At the wonderful school where I teach, each appreciation I have for a positive aspect of the education there is also like a knife of wonder: "why is every school not like this? nothing about these children makes them more deserving of a quality education, and in so, so, SO many schools equally deserving children receive fewer opportunities and resources in their education. If they go to school at all. And again, I am contrasting the two schools I taught in, last year and this year. Last year the children sometimes were sent home at lunch because there was no food to give them and hungry children can't concentrate in school. In my current school, one of our main concerns is how to more fully incorporate experiential learning programs into the curriculum. The contrast leaves me reeling, baffled, confused at this world I live in.

When I was done crying I looked for ways to respond to my grief symbolically as well as actively (actively is a whole nother blog post). David and I came up with these ideas: write un-naive wedding liturgy, read about the crucified Christ, go to Quaker meeting tomorrow morning, write in my journal, write a song, (pray). I also lit a candle, anointed my own forehead with oil, watered my plants, fed myself soup, read feminist folk tales AND......(and here's the inspiration for this post)

...listened to music compiled by the Iona Community from around the world: "Sent by the Lord" and "Love and Anger". I had gotten these CD's and songbooks for Christmas and what music could have been better today! They were so very appropriate and there is even a Nicaraguan song in there in two languages. It's so heartening to put faces to those building a better world. The notes about the songs, for example, are mindful of the ways wealthy worshippers can't completely authentically sing words written for poor Christians. In Spanish the words are: "We are a people who walks by the path of pain/ The invited humble and poor are of God" and in English "For the world and all its people we address our prayers to God/ All the powerless, all the hungry are most precious to their God" with the note "In the original Spanish, the text is very much the song of an impoverished people, and it would be impossible for most British worshipers to sing the words with full integrity. The English text attempts to keep some of the deep passion of the original but allow for wider use." There are some readings in between songs and one of them is a prayer that all peoples be fed, even if it means forgiving debt and seeing stocks lower, or if it means a reduction in dining choices for those who are not hungry. I turned toward the CD player in my kitchen and shouted "AMEN!"

I am even thinking of using some of these songs with my voice students (I have 2 now). I already gave "We Shall Overcome" to one student. :)

In a song I wrote recently, one lyric is "I hope they never leave off haunting me, the lives in other lands." I feel this grief will come and go in waves my whole life long, as someone who cares (as in David's song, every lament is a love song). But the encouragement will keep coming my whole life long, too. Here's to the Beloved Community, here's to calling in Paradise with song, and here's to imagining the better world we're longing for. Amen.

PS The title of the second album comes from a prayer wherin we ask God to use our love and anger to spur us to work for justice.

don't trust the living

2008-09-18T15:35:00.000-07:00

I re-installed windows, so I was looking for some snazzy picture to replace the pre-installed generic desktop. My last desktop wallpaper (ah, the mixed metaphors of GUI) was the ancient Orthodox Trinity icon, but I was ready for something new. While looking for pictures of Jesus, I came across this:

http://www.mccullagh.org/db9/1ds-17/dont-trust-the-living.jpg

Now, I think this is actually excellent advice, in addition to being pretty hilarious. I think it's particularly useful to see everyday as I start my Constructive Theology paper. At my seminary, we finish off the MDiv program by writing a big paper that's supposed to lay out much of our theology: a status report of what we actually believe.

My temptation in doing theology is to only trust the living. My ideas are better than the church fathers, and the ideas of liberation theologians are better than, say, the Lateran Council. Or Martin Luther. Or Kant. And, you know, I stand by that, to a certain extent. But if I'm really trying to listen to the voices of the disenfranchised and marginalized in my theological work, then I must also pay particular attention to the dead.
And one way that I can do that is by listening to what the tradition says about God, Christ, Sin/Suffering, and Ministry. (These being four of the required "loci" for the constructive paper.) I think that too often the temptation among liberal theologians is to privilege contemporary lived experience, without trying to understand the ways that written and oral tradition can represent the lived experience of dead believers.
The corollary to this, lest you think I be taking a turn to the Ultramontanist, or that I am suddenly advocating apostolic succession, is that I must also look for the places where dissenters have been erased. I must watch for times when the forces of domination have sought to wipe out their opponents, and this is also rife in the Christian tradition.
Perhaps I don't fully agree with the zombie, but I should at least not just trust the living. The disappeared, the martyred, and the plain old dead must have a say in my theology, if it is to be holy.

Zombies are on their own.

on donuts

2008-09-10T12:28:00.000-07:00

My friend asked me a question a month ago, and I'm still thinking about my response, so I thought I'd post it.

She's from Germany, and we were eating at Dunkin' Donuts (dollar= two donuts after 2pm) and she asked me what the big attraction was of Dunkin' Donuts for Americans. Since, you know, they're not very good.

I thought for a long time, then said, "I think it's that they're good enough to fend off the despair for a little bit, but not good enough to make you believe that things can be better."

I stand by my response.

fired up tone of voice

2008-09-09T06:40:00.000-07:00

So, I may be sometimes-lukewarm in my support of presidential candidates, but I am rarely lukewarm in my support of my friend's mother. Here is an excerpt from an email my friend sent about her.

"Good news: Some guy picked a fight with my mother about Barack Obama when she was tabling at her new part-time local-campaign job. About taxes and the pharmaceutical industry. He was antagonizing her about how corporations are the backbone of America and what, she didn't want pharmaceutical companies to have the money they needed to research new drug therapies because it was all eaten out with taxes? Did she not care about new medical advances? She said, in her "fired up" tone of voice, Well, no, she didn't care, because she was part of that part of America that didn't have health care at all, couldn't even go to the doctor, so, no, she didn't really care at all about what new fancy drugs his pharma company could make, because she and lots of America wouldn't be able to buy that either. He turned around and left. I am super-proud of her."

There you have it.

Thank you, thank you, thank you

2008-09-03T20:41:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I think it is so difficult to get my needs met. People need all sorts of things: community, food, shelter, meaningful work. Since I moved back to the United States from Nicaragua almost one year ago (it still seems so recent!), it has been difficult for me to get these ducks all lined up at the same time. It has been easy to be happy about being engaged to David, but also difficult to be happy in general. I have been making my new apartment into a home, developing new friendships with people here, and searching and searching for meaningful work. The months of commuting an hour to different temp jobs have taken a toll.

I cannot truly express how grateful I am for my new job. Today was the first day that parents left their children with my head teacher and me at school. Yesterday was the First Day of School, but today was also a first day. I worked at my Montessori school until 12:30, then biked home to cook lunch for myself and do chores and errands. Then I returned to school for the 3:15 weekly staff meeting where we learned about brain research with regards to learning, went over to friends' house for dinner, talked on the phone with Beth for a long time, and here I am in my lovely apartment where I once again have internet thanks to meeting my Slavic languages-studying neighbor while we did laundry in the basement last weekend. I'm borrowing his wireless network.

I am really happy. I had a great second first day of school today. I just love my new job. I love that it is permanent, that I speak Spanish there, that I fit into the school's culture and values. I love biking 13 minutes to work with a friend, I love cooking lunch at home, I love my growing familiarity with this neighborhood, I love building on the friendships that have been established in the last 10 months.

For the first time since Oberlin, I have good shelter, good community, and meaningful work, all at the same time. It feels so good. I sleep well and wake up singing thank you, thank you, thank you.

For Sarah's Birthday: An In-Depth Analysis and Compilation of Disney Movies

2008-08-20T09:13:00.000-07:00

Rachael electronified this for Sarah's birthday, and I'm trying to put this here so she can read it. The internet says this will work, but the internet is not always reliable. As you may have noticed. Enjoy, if you're into this sort of thing.

Disney spreadsheet pretty version - Upload a Document to Scribd

Summer Moltmann Blogging: Golgotha and Auschwitz

2008-08-10T14:13:00.000-07:00

From The Way of Jesus Christ, p. 210.

"This means that it is neither religious poetry nor a disregard for the dignity of the individual and alien suffering of others when we see Golgotha and Auschwitz together, and say that Christ too was murdered in Auschwitz. The apocalyptic Christ suffers in the victims of sin and violence. The apocalyptic Christ suffers and sighs too in the tormented creation sighing under the violent acts of our modern human civilization. We therefore have to extend the remembrance of Christ's sufferings to all those in whose fellowship Christ suffers, and whom he draws into his fellowship through his sufferings. It is only when the remembering extends to their sufferings that hope will spread to the fields of the dead in history. But where forgetfulness is the order of the day, the dead are slain once more and the living become blind."

Summer Moltmann Blogging: the Solidarity of Christ

2008-08-05T16:07:00.000-07:00

From The Way of Jesus Christ, p.180. (I've changed the male God language to female God language, leaving it otherwise unchanged.)

"Let us sum up:
'The sufferings of Christ' are God's sufferings because through them God shows her solidarity with human beings and her whole creation everywhere: God is with us.
'The sufferings of Christ' are God's sufferings because through them God intervenes vicariously on our behalf, saving us at the point where we are unable to stand but are forced to sing into nothingness: God is for us.
'The sufferings of Christ' are God's sufferings, finally, because out of them the new creation of all things is born: We come from God.
Solidarity, vicarious power and rebirth are the divine dimensions in the sufferings of Christ. Christ is with us, Christ is for us, and in Christ we are a new creation. In what sense is God love? God is the power of solidarity, the vicarious, the regenerating power."

Our Weekend in Oberlin

2008-08-03T10:49:00.000-07:00

Here are the lyrics to the song we sang on Sunday in Peace Community Church in Oberlin. David and I bussed to town for our first two sessions of premarital counseling with Steve and Mary. I did two solos in church today: I sang about the day when peace will come, and I sang "Give Me Jesus." Lately my mourning for the brokenness of the world has been so close to the surface that a song like the one below just undoes me; I long so painfully for "slaves set free and children fed". I've noticed that my yearning for justice, my mourning of the suffering in the world, requires a balance of personal devotion to a Jesus-person who specifically loves me and cares for my wholeness. As in, Jesus washed the disciples' feet before he defied the Empire. One day I was doing music with Tom and we were singing about laying down our weapons and being faithful and serving the world, and then we sang "Give Me Jesus", and I could put everything aside and just be broken and simple and needing just love. After working for a better world, we just need some arms to rest in. So the song "Give me Jesus" in church today was a good balance to the one below. David spoke about Ezekiel, and the dry bones of despair and death and violence and poverty in our world. He spoke about bones coming together when healing happens, when unlikely folks learn to love one another, when we find those who will walk with us. He talked about running from the tomb when the stone has been rolled back, because we can't bear the thought of resurrection; and he ended by saying that Jesus pursues us and we cannot outrun him. He sat down and the congregation shared communion. Then we sang:

When all is ended, time and troubles past, shall all be mended, sin and death outcast? In hope we sing, and hope to sing at last: Alleluia! Alleluia!

As in the night, when lightning flickers free, and gives a glimpse of distant hill and tree, each flash of good discloses what will be: Alleluia! Alleluia!

Against all hope, our weary times have known wars ended, peace declared, compassion shown, great days of freedom, tyrants overthrown: Alleluia! Alleluia!

Then do not cheat the poor, who long for bread, with dreamworlds in the sky or in the head, but sing of slaves set free, and children fed: Alleluia! Alleluia!

With earthy faith we sing a song of heaven: all life fulfilled, all loved, all wrong forgiven. Christ is our sign of hope, for Christ is risen: Alleluia! Alleluia!

With all creation, pain and anger past, evil exhausted, love supreme at last, alive in God, we'll sing an unsurpassed Alleluia! Alleluia!

Words: Brian Wren (Rachael's favorite hymnologist!!!), 1998
Music: Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1906

copyright 1989 Hope Publishing Co.

I think it is a good time for me to be getting married; it gives me a deep celebration in a world full of reasons to despair.

summer moltmann blogging: sabbath and autonomous zones

2008-07-30T13:14:00.000-07:00

I've talked before about Hakim Bey's book Temporary Autonomous Zones. The idea is that it's important to create small, even temporary places where domination-free life can be experienced. This is more effective as a revolutionary tactic than overthrowing a dominating state or system, as such a system will immediately crush you the moment you get enough power to threaten it. With the T.A.Z. thing, folks can experience what this other life is like, and get excited about starting their own autonomous zones. Bey stresses that these can be the size of a city or a bed. I see good churches at such zones, and Moltmann has turned me on to the temporal power of such an idea via sabbath. (This time I've made the God language gender neutral, but it's otherwise unchanged...)

This is from God in Creation, p.282.

"In [God's]rest all created beings find their won rest. In the presence of God's existence is the blessing of their existence. Everything that is made has been called by the Creator from non-being into being. Everything that exists is menaced by non-being, for it can again be made a nothingness. That is why everything that is, is restless and on the search for a place where this menace cannot reach it- for a 'resting place'. It is not merely the human heart which is 'restless until it finds rest in Thee', as Augustine said. The whole creation is filled with this same unrest, and transcends itself in the search for the rest in which it can abide."

I got a job!

2008-07-26T12:29:00.000-07:00

Beginning on August 26, I will be an assistant teacher in a pre-primary/kindergarten classroom at a local Montessori school. Since I moved to Chicago in October, I have been working through a temp agency, doing office work that I turn out not to be very suited for. In addition to being an assistant teacher during the mornings, I will teach a few short sessions of Spanish language to kindergarteners each week as a head teacher. Since this still leaves me with an 80% time job, I'm hoping to fill out the rest of my annual income teaching voice lessons and getting jazz gigs with my piano-playing friend from college who's moved here to go to CTS with David.

Needless to say, I am very, very excited about this wonderful new development in my life here in Chicago. No longer will I commute 2 hours a day back and forth from office jobs which range from "just fine" to "depressing". I will bike 10-15 minutes to work, interact with children, speak Spanish, and develop my skills teaching and performing music. I feel very grateful and look forward to the coming year.

Here are some edited-down highlights from the Wikipedia article on the Montessori method:

"In the elementary, middle, and upper school years, Montessori schools ideally adhere to the three-year age range of pupils to encourage an interactive social and learning environment. This system allows flexibility in learning pace and allowing older children to become teachers by sharing what they have learned."

"The premises of a Montessori approach to teaching and learning include the following:
* That children are capable of self-directed learning.
* That it is critically important for the teacher to be an "observer" of the child instead of a lecturer.
* That there are numerous "sensitive periods" of development (periods of a few months or even weeks), during which skills are learned effortlessly and joyfully.
* That the school room environment is prepared to encourage independence by giving students the tools and responsibility to manage its upkeep.
* That children learn through discovery... Through the use of specifically designed toys, blocks, sets of letters, science experiments, etc., children learn to instinctually correct their own mistakes instead of rely on a teacher to give them the correct answer.
* That children most often learn alone during periods of intense concentration. During these self-chosen and spontaneous periods, the child is not to be interrupted by the teacher.
* That children must actually touch the shapes, letters, temperatures, etc. that they are learning about."

In Nicaragua, children were often yelled at or smacked. I am really looking forward to working in an environment where children are treated with respect and spoken to calmly.

summer moltmann blogging: resurrection hope

2008-07-25T15:48:00.000-07:00

from "God in Creation", pp. 92-3. Sexist language included so as not to paint too rosy a picture of Jurgen.

"Does this [resurrection hope] have practical consequences? It does not lead to the kind of optimism that overlooks the negative. But it does offer the strength to hold fast to what is dead, and to remain mindful of those who have died. The hope of resurrection brings the living and the dead into a single fellowship of hope. In this fellowship death is not suppressed, nor are the dead given over to oblivion. The messianic community of the church of the risen Chrsit has always been understood as a community of the living and of the dead.... The protest against the annihilating Nothingness must not lead to the suppression and forgetfulness of the annihilated; and equally, hope for the annihilated must not permit us to come to terms with their annihilation. The first is obviously the danger for revolutionaries; the second is the danger of the religious.
...What accords with this faith is the expectation of the transformatio mundi. The expectation of 'the end of the world' is a vulgar error. Like the expectation of the annhilatio mundi it is gnostic in origin, not biblical. It is the means by which many people would like God to win acceptance at the world's expense. But eschatology is nothing other than faith in the Creator with its eyes turned towards the future. Anyone who believes in the God who created being out of nothing, also believes in the God who gives life to the dead. This means that he hopes for the new creation of heaven and earth. His faith makes him prepared to withstand annihilation, even when there is nothing left to hope for, humanly speaking. His hope in God commits him to faithfulness to the earth.

baptist polity: form leads to content?

2008-07-21T11:13:00.000-07:00

Here's most of my weekly response paper for my Baptist Polity class... It's about whether Baptist Polity lead to any necessary content, or whether it's just a very flexible form...

In reflecting on whether historical Baptist principles point to any content beyond a form, any policies beyond polity, I’ve actually become gradually convinced that they do, especially when functioning as designed and proclaimed.
Consider the right of the individual to join a church, and to act as his or her own Biblical interpreter, his or her own priest. This is a pretty strongly anti-authoritarian polity, and the autonomy of the local church and the seperation of church and state act to reinforce its anti-authoritarian tendencies.
If Baptists have an anti-authoritarian polity, then I would certainly argue that it will (at least usually) lead to other anti-authoritarian policies, practices, and tactics. Hakim Bey, in Temporary Autonomous Zones, argues that once individuals have experienced life beyond the bounds of domination by some ruling authority, even in a small and/or temporary context, they learn about the possibility and desirability of such domination-free living.
This raises an obvious question: if Baptist polity leads to anti-authoritarian policies, why are so many Baptist churches so grotesquely hierarchical and authoritarian? Why do authoritarian governments thrive in the US, under the hearty support of so many so-called Baptists?
I think this contemporary failure of Baptist polity to be actualized in anti-authoritarian policy is partially the victim of the lack of concern for historic Baptist principles in most Baptist churches. Many of these churches have also used a single interpretation of the Bible as an authoritative break on the individual freedoms of their members.
However, I would point out that this polity is very strong, when it functions. It is not necessarily efficient, and it is often not simple. However, it is very difficult to take over, partially as a result of that lack of simplicity and efficiency. As such, once more and more Baptist churches (and others!) start practicing the freedoms that their forebears taught, it will in theory inspire additional Baptists to start similar churches, or to transform existing churches into places that are more averse to authoritarianism. That is to say, the second answer to the “Why are Baptist churches not actually like this?” question is simply, “Give us some time.”

netroots nation

2008-07-17T07:37:00.001-07:00

friends,

Today I'm at the Netroots Nations conference in Austin. I'm here through the weekend on behalf of CTS, tabling for the seminary.

The Conference hasn't really started yet. It's a conference of progressive internet activists. Me, I always thought that the revolution would not be led by white people with computers, but I suppose they have a valuable role to play. We'll see how it goes, and I brought my mandolin so that I can use folk songs to lure people to the Chicago Theological Seminary booth.

In other news, most of the folks here have cool blogger names on their nametags. "Progressive Grandma," "Common Sense in CT", that kind of thing. I'm trying to think of a fake internet name that I can use on the back of my nametag. It should be both nerdy and Jesus-related.

So far, my best ideas are "Just Another Anarcho-Baptist", "John the Whaptist", "M/Human/Cleric 3/Bard 1", and "Optimus Christ." Your suggestions are obviously appreciated.

The best part of my trip to Austin so far has been going to ice cream with my long lost friend. I warned him of the dangers of gnosticism.

I'm a progressive blogger at a conference of progressive bloggers! Clearly I'm a little delirious about it. I swear, I'll post some Jurgen Moltmann quotes soon to make up for it.

Thinking back to Nicaragua

2008-07-13T14:52:00.000-07:00

I've been answering questions for a prospective Chacocente volunteer by email. She sent me a list of questions that were easy enough to answer. But the last question, "what was your favorite part?" was really bittersweet and really took me back into my memories of my time there. Life there was just so MUCH. Everything was intense: the sun, the loudness of peoples' voices, the strength of their opinions, the poverty, the separation from family and friends, the pace of teaching school, the commute, the religion of one of my host families. I resisted remembering if there WAS a favorite part, but when I did I got a big feeling in my gut, you know? Tears in my eyes. There's a lot from this experience I have yet to work through.

Here's what I wrote to the prospective volunteer in response to her emailed question "What was your favorite part?". I'm really glad I was asked. Since sending my response to her, which I've posted below, I've begun seeing a counselor in part to talk through my experience of living in Nicaragua, and of coming back to this country.

Rachael

My favorite part:

This was hard to think of because it was such an intense experience and so colored by loneliness and frustration and being overwhelmed. I did not have an adequate support system to help me confront the poverty I lived in, to help me do my job in the school, to ask me how I was and just sit with me and listen and encourage me. There weren't enough people saying, "how are you? you're doing a great job. thank you! keep up the good work!"

Anyway, the best parts were in the Project. I loved being outside so often. It's just beautiful. Sunsets, the stars, the sounds of animals and the lush greenery (I liked the rainy season best, Marchish to Octoberish), the crops sloping up and down soft hills, the kids running through the corn, cuddling in hammocks with kids, having my students fall asleep in my lap as I chatted with their parents in the cool evenings. I liked going home with Yamileth and watching soap operas with her mom, both of us with our tired, washed feet propped up on chairs, sipping sweet coffee together. I liked rinsing the shampoo out of my hair at the end of a long hot dusty day under a luke-warm tap with good water pressure in an outside shower made from concrete with a view of the sky and plaintain trees and of the haphazard corrugated steel roof of Yamileth's house. I liked biking through fields stretching far to either side with the mountains distant beyond and a volcano smoking to the west, I liked walking to the post office alone to mail long letters to my now-fiancee and then stopping by my favorite vendor on the way to the second bus to pick up my favorite cosa de horno, cornbread. I'm really getting choked up writing this. These were the moments I felt alive. Also hiding in the tall grass to get alone time, or chatting in a dark room with Yamileth and her son in the next bed after lights out but before falling asleep.

How long are you planning to go for? I was there for 9 months. If I had had a friend with me, someone like those 2 volunteers who came for 2 months in the middle of my time there and became my friends, I could have stayed for the whole 12 months I had committed to. Other volunteers in the past who have stayed the whole 10 or 12 months spent a whole month in the middle visiting home to rest. Everyone's different so you should just search yourself and make your own decision. I look forward to your next set of questions.

Peace,
Rachael

Michigan to Palestine

2008-06-24T09:53:00.000-07:00

Friends:

Many of you know Nate Dannison, or, as my mom calls him, "your friend who rides the train." Nate is a friend, brother, and CTS colleague, and he's doing an FTE summer ministry program in Palestine this summer. He's about a week into his Palestine time, and he's posting some pretty incredible stuff over on his blog, http://michigantopalestine.blogspot.com/

He was originally planning to build a playground while he's there, and he's still going to that, but he's added studying Arabic, investigating the architecture of the church of the nativity, and serving as an emt with the Red Crescent. (True to form, Dannison, true to form.)

Check it out, and keep him and his new friends in your prayers.

God and Suffering

2008-06-20T16:55:00.001-07:00

What I've been doing for a month and a half: Moltmann.

From The Trinity and the Kingdom, p. 49:

God and suffering beyond together, just as in this life the cry for God and the suffering experienced in pain belong together. The question about God and the question about suffering are a joint, a common question. And they only find a common answer. Either that, or neither of them finds a satisfactory answer at all. No one can answer the theodicy question in this world, and no one can get rid of it. Life in this world means living with this open question, and seeking the future in which the desire for God will be fulfilled, suffering will be overcome, and what has been lost will be restored. The question of theodicy is not a speculative question; it is a critical one. It is the all-embracing eschatological question. It is not purely theoretical, for it cannot be answered with any new theory about the existing world. It is a practical question which will only be answered through experience of the new world in which 'God will wipe away every tear from their eyes'. It is not really a question at all, in the sense of something we can ask or not ask, like other questions. It is the open wound of life in this world. It is the real task of faith and theology to make it possible for us to survive, to go on living, with this open wound. The person who believes will not rest content with any slickly explanatory answer to the theodicy question. And he will also resist any attempts to soften the question down. The more a person believes, the more deeply he [sic] experiences pain over the suffering in the world, and the more passionately he asks about God and the new creation.

This summer at somefolks.blogspot.com: Block quotes from Jurgen Moltmann! Yay!

the name of jesus

2008-04-30T12:56:00.000-07:00

an excerpt from my draft christology paper, for my womanist & feminist christologies class:

I’ve been saying “Jesus” more lately. It’s not necessarily that I’ve been talking about Jesus more lately, those this might also be true. It’s become what I say under my breath, whenever I hear about or see something awful. The chimes that rang in chapel every six minutes to remind us that in the US, a woman is sexually assaulted every six minutes. The police officers that shot that unarmed guy 51 times getting acquitted. All the little kids in my church knowing that polar bears are going extinct. Jesus.
I always resisted saying it, even though a lot of people do it. For me, it was always in that dim “Lord’s name in vain” category, which started out as profanity and has moved into more nebulous regions of sinfulness.
In chapel, my friends were talking about sexual assault, and they hung a torn and tattered t-shirt on the cross. They talked about the radical need for presence through the awful, presence through the silence into speech, presence through the broken into the beginning of healing. I am convinced of this radical need for presence. And when God shows up, radically, I name that as Jesus. In thinking more about the cross, in thinking more about the power of/in the blood of Jesus, I have become more ready to call on Him, more ready to invoke him or name the ways that he is already present in the horror.
Jesus.

saving jesus by carter heyward

2008-04-23T12:20:00.000-07:00

from p 22:

"What I have suggested previously, and will again in this book, is that the connecting threads among justice-making, erotic power, and the JESUS story is the struggle toward "right" or "mutual" relation that meets us in each of these human experiences that can be powerful conduits of the divine. In this project, however, I go a step further in suggesting that our sacred power in mutual relation is so deeply the root of our yearning for right relation that we honestly can describe God as the yearning, God as the desire for justice and compassion, solidarity and friendship. Indeed, not only is God "in" the depths of our longing for mutuality and justice-love, God is the depths."

invisibles vol. 2, issue 19

2008-04-22T10:03:00.000-07:00

general: "Which side are you on?"...
jack frost: "I'm on the side that's got butter on it, I am."

We are All Starbuck

2008-04-16T14:32:00.000-07:00

I’ve been reading Moby Dick in preperation for class tonight. It’s not really a literature class, but it’s about colonialism and empire, and Moby Dick is also very much about Moby Dick and empire. I was fortunate to have a reason to read it (the assignment), otherwise I migth have let myself be intimidated by its weighty reputation and heft.

So: Moby Dick is an awesome book. I don’t necessarily recommend it to everybody… if you don’t like the first three pages, it’s not going to get much better until the last fifty pages. But I loved the wry humor, the setting, the rich characters. So maybe you should check it out. The Dover Giant Thrift Edition (biggest dover edition ever, let me tell you) is five dollars. You might want one you can mark up.

But the point of the post is this: one of the major characters in the book is Starbuck, whose name you might recognize. For those who came in late, and hit themselves in the face with a rake on the way in, there’s an international coffee corporation named after him. I kept wondering why one would name a coffee corporation after him, and I never figured it out. I did, however, come to a new appreciation of having Starbuck’s name strewn so thoroughly and insidiously throughout the land.

You see friends, we are all Starbuck. Starbuck is the second in command of the Pequod, behind Captain Ahab. I read Ahab as representative of the West’s insane lust for power, the mad and maddening drive to categorize, control, and consume everything that is other, everything that is wild or different. Starbuck is a pious, good man, a guy who just wants to do his job well, to serve the Lord, and to return home safely.

And: Starbuck is perhaps the only one who ever has a chance to stop Ahab. There’s a moment, when Starbuck is alone, outside Ahab’s quarters, when it’s become clear that Ahab’s rage and drive will likely lead to the deaths of all aboard. There, outside of Ahab’s quarters, Starbuck takes a rifle from the rack on the wall, and considers ending it all there, by smashing through the door and destroying Ahab. But he doesn’t. After a moment of consideration, he puts the rifle back, and the Pequod continues on its fateful errand.

Sisters and brothers, we are all Starbuck. I believe that if we look carefully, we all can see the deep trouble in our nation and our world. We can see the way our violence and imperialism, our destruction of the earth and our deeply ingrained racism, are driving us slowly to destruction. And we have the power to derail it.

Like Starbuck outside Ahab’s cabin, we suspect that this system can only function with our consent. When we begin to object to it, to drop out, to resist, to throw our bodies and words and passionate hopes under the iron wheels of the Empire, we can destroy it. We can derail the insane lust for domination. I’m talking especially to you: white people, rich people, straight people, US citizens, men, non-disabled people. We have a measure of power that our fellow global crewmates might not share. We are like Starbuck, with access to the power that can stop Ahab.

We stand outside the cabin and wonder.

May you consider this, as you walk by all those coffee shops…

My Data Entry Job

2008-04-10T09:08:00.000-07:00

Technically I'm an administrative assistant through a temp agency, but most of what I do is data entry. I just wanted to put the following out there: some tidbits I've picked up in this line of work.

1. I can type "<0.05" SO FAST!!!!!!!!
2. The detection limit of Mercury is <0.0002 mg/L
3. The abbreviation for boron is just B, making it my favorite.

Maybe I'll add more later.

Engaged!

2008-04-10T08:31:00.000-07:00

So, everyone, David and I got engaged! It's great! Please see the youtube video below. You will now be the insiders on the fruit stand joke. Years ago, in the space of two months, David made two unrelated comments to me.

I was telling him the story of when I was about 6 years old and left my still-beloved stuffed dog, Shep, at a fruit stand. I had my parents drive back when I noticed Shep was missing, and Shep was still there among the fruit! So one day I was appreciating still having Shep, who would have been lost to me 18 years ago if we hadn't gone back, or if there had been a stuffed-dog-napper while we were gone. So I told David this story and his response was to point out the silver lining in being left behind at a fruit stand. He said, "Rachael, if you ever break up with me, that's how I want you to do it. Drive me to a fruit stand, make me get out of the car, and drive away." Since then he has made up good reasons to support this idea, but at the time I believe he just thought it would be a relatively positive place to find oneself after a sad event.

Some weeks later he (I think randomly?) told me how I should propose. That's how David rolls, I guess, keeping me on my feet. When he first told me he loved me it was right after telling me he didn't always feel like kissing me (we were easing slowly into the whole dating thing) (five years ago). I do admire his comfort level for ambivalence. Anyway, he said I should propose at a baseball stadium or other public place, in a ridiculous way like dressed as a mascot. He said, don't worry, I would want the wedding to be sentimental, but make the proposal ridiculous. Also he wanted his friends present, and he wanted it to be a surprise.

I've suspected I would marry him for years, so I filed this information away in my mind and he forgot all about it. Then when I started contemplating engagement, I meditated at length on all the possible proposal ideas that would fit his casual request years ago.

To make the proposal ridiculous, I wanted to strike a little fear into his heart by proposing AT a fruit stand! How ironic! But I couldn't wait til warm weather; I was way too excited! The paradox of it is just like the Trinity and other theological concepts. And the fact that he came out through an unexpected security exit is like the unexpected surprises of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

HOWNOTTO: Name Your Band

2008-04-05T19:30:00.000-07:00

Corrigan and I have been getting up before dawn for Morning Activity. While our significant others engage in gainful employment, we do some sort of... activity. Recently, we tried our best to come up with bad band names: the opposite version of one of my favorite activities.

So, we then did some analysis of the final list, of about fifty names, and found some general principles that one should avoid in naming one's band.

Here goes:

HOWTO: Name your band.

AVOID:
a) Incompleteness, superfluous suffixes. Example: "Distinctiveness."
b) Terrible puns. Example: "The Tree Tenors."
c) Narcissism. Example: "Welcome to My Mind."
d) Un-clever Imperative Verbs. Example: "Question Authority."
e) Trying too hard, over-exaggerated silliness. Example: "Day-Glo Waffle Monkeys."
f) Using more than one gimmick/ clever play per name. Example: "Budget Rent a Kar."
g) No. Just, no. Example: "I have AIDS, Please Hug Me."
h) "Songs R Us." Example: "Songs R Us."

There are a lot more bad band names where this came from. Many are on a piece of paper in my bedroom. The rest are on myspace.com.

PS- We also came up with some bad band names for Christian rock bands specific. The following two fit both in this category, and in the category of really good names for Christian rock bands made up entirely of gay men: "All Out for Jesus." "Fishers of Men."