amplify the divine poetry
My new friend Alexis posted this on her Christmas CD blog and I thought it was just too good to not steal. 
The story goes that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church.
He took his woes to God.
“They won’t let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner.”
“What are you complaining about?” said God. “They won’t let me in either.”
The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning
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I often think and write about the existential dichotomy of light and darkness, but it is rare to come across an issue that is so publicly polarized as the issue of Prop 8 here in California. (If you’re not familiar, Prop 8 was an amendment that we just voted on to re-deny the rights of gay couples to be legally married. I say “re-deny” because we just granted the right a few months ago.)
A couple weekends ago, Allison and I went with our good friends Jon & Shan to Yucaipa to pick apples, drink cider, and eat those freakin’ brilliant little donuts. As we were driving back through town, we came to what looked to be a main intersection and saw groups of people gathered on two corners, diagonally opposing each other. On one side we had a group of rowdy peoples with “YES ON PROP 8″ signs and on the other side, of course, the equally rambunctious “NO ON PROP 8″ folks. (On the other corner was a guy in a Little Caesar suit, but we didn’t ask which way he was voting.)
It was quite a sight: people equally passionate about complete opposite stances of the same issue.
And the “Pizza Pizza!” guy. Hm. (I do love that crazy bread.)
I recognize that this was (and IS) a big deal for a lot of people. But I can’t help but wonder if sometimes we let the fact that “we are doing what we think is right” stop us from really thinking about what we’re doing.
Despite your feelings on the issue, if you’re reading this, I hope you’ll put your preconceived ideas aside for 6 minutes and 29 seconds, and watch Olbermann’s video.
I found it incredibly meaningful to witness the passion of this newsman; to take a sizable chunk out of his limited airtime to make an appeal on behalf of love… well, no matter what you believe, you gotta respect that.
(Full transcript of his speech is here.)
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One of my favorite people, Mr. Rob Bell, has a new book out, written with a friend of his named Don Golden. It’s called “Jesus Wants To Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile.”
What’s it about?
Glad you asked… here’s how it describes itself:
There is a church not too far from us that recently added a $25 million addition to their building.
Our local newspaper ran a front-page story not too long ago about a study revealing that one in five people in our city lives in poverty.
This is a book about those two numbers.
Well, then. You certainly have my attention.
RELEVANT recently did an interview with Rob about the book; here are a few of my favorite excerpts from that conversation:
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In your book you say, “To preserve prosperity at the expense of the powerless is to miss the heart of God.” In what ways do you believe the church in America has “preserved prosperity” at others’ expense?
I think it’s wise to avoid generalities such as “the church” because whenever I hear people make sweeping generalizations about “the church” I always think “yes, but I know lots of churches where they are compassionate, where they are intellectually honest, etc…”Perhaps one obvious question a church can ask herself is “What percentage of our budget is spent on us and what is spent on others?
The Church has missed the heart of God by speaking out against abortion while keeping silent about war. Both are forms of violence used to preserve prosperity. Abortion is prenatal war against the powerless child. War is postnatal abortion that destroys innocent life. The kingdom is life for the fetus and life for the civilian. The church embodies this life in a world of expedient and preemptive killing.
How can churches aid in subverting the myth of redemptive violence?
At a personal level, gossip and slander and divisive language is evil to the core. It causes stress fractures in us, our churches, and our culture that destroy any sort of common good. On the larger, national level, “question war.” The Roman Empire had this phrase “peace through victory” that is simply not true. Yet people still use it today. Jesus taught a third way—not passive acceptance because “that’s just how things are,” and not violent revenge, but a third way. Where are the experts in third way? Where are those Christians so thoroughly versed in third way that world leaders call them in when things get dodgy to give courageous, innovative, creative, freedom-loving (!) counsel on how not to resort to the same old guns and bombs.
As the title of the book suggests, Jesus Wants To Save Christians. In your opinion, what are the biggest things we need saving from?
Boredom. Which is really despair in its non-caffeinated form. And boxes. Where we live in fear and where we put those who unsettle us.
You describe the plan of God for the church to be a gift to the world. Many people today would say that the church is anything but. What are some crucial changes that our churches need to make to become a Eucharist that is broken and poured out for the world?
1. Master the art of doubt. Faith needs it to survive.
2. Surrender the compulsive need to constantly remind people that according to your worldview you’re going to heaven forever when you die and they’re going to burn in hell forever.
3. Celebrate the good and the true and the beautiful wherever and whenever you find it regardless of the label it wears or the person it comes from or the place you found it. All things are yours.
4. Remember that the tax collectors and prostitutes loved to feast with Jesus and the religious establishment gossiped about him and dissected his teachings and questioned his commitment to orthodoxy and eventually had him killed. There’s a lesson for us there.
Post your thoughts below, or read the full interview here.
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a few fries short of a happy meal
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Wanted to share an idea that has been rolling around in my head.
This might seem like common sense: the amount of talent in an individual (or group) is inversely proportional to the amount of preparation they need to create something excellent in their particular field of talent.
Simply put, the more natural ability you have to play the piano, the less you have to practice to get good.
Like I said; pretty common sense.
If this is logical, then the reverse would be equally true: the less talent you have (or a group has) at doing a particular activity, the more time it takes to present an acceptable product in that field.
Also fairly widely accepted. If you are bad at math, it takes you longer to do the homework.
As I parenthetically mentioned above, this fact can also be extrapolated to groups of people, and even further out to organizations as a whole.
This is where much of a company’s “culture” comes from. Where the natural proclivity of the leadership lies, therein you will find the ethos that trickles down and over time becomes engrained into the very fabric of that culture.
Apple, Inc. is innovative, tight-lipped, can be a bit bully-ish, and has a high appreciation for aesthetics — much like what I’ve heard about Mr. Steve Jobs.
The Virgin Group is daring, eclectic but a bit scattered, experimental, and adventurous — much like its founder, Sir Richard Branson.
These things are not coincidences.
The nonprofit I work with is, as a whole, almost unthinkably bad at two things (likely two heads of the same beast): organization and communication. These two things have plagued the staff and community for quite awhile now, and IMHO, even occasionally stymied our ability to welcome new people into the family.
Now, to be fair, it should be said that we are extremely good at being real, unscripted, highly adaptable, and organic.
But if the two facts I started with are true, why is it that we spend the LEAST amount of our time on organization and communication? Isn’t that just exacerbating our problem? The answer is that we are not intentionally making things worse, we are simply doing what comes naturally to us: as a group, we are very good at being chaotic and raw, so that’s what we do.
As you probably know, I am a huge proponent of strengths-based leadership, and focusing on what you are good at is definitely not a bad thing — unless you are ignoring your weaknesses. If our lack of organization and communication is truly keeping people from being engaged, then we have a problem.
Strengths-based philosophy does NOT mean ignoring weaknesses. It means managing them.
If we want to get better, it seems to me we have two possible responses.
1) We stop ignoring our weaknesses and spend more time “practicing.” Even if you don’t have much natural ability at playing the piano, there’s no question that if you practice 8 hours a day, you WILL get better… if only a little.
2) We stop ignoring our weaknesses and find somebody to do the things we’re bad at for us.
Also, what if your job REQUIRES you to play the piano, even if it’s just a little? Well, then if you want to keep doing your job, you better damn well practice.
I imagine that in our situation, we will need a mixture of these two solutions. There’s no way around it: leadership of any kind requires some amount of communication and organization. We simply can’t get around it. So, we better start practicing, and we better find some people to help us pick up the slack.
Strengths-based leadership requires leaders to have an accurate picture of reality; it demands that we stop ignoring what is common sense. Some of these truths may seem harsh, but maintaining an inaccurate, Pollyanna-ish paradigm won’t help anyone. It won’t help you, and it won’t help your followers.
Where is your organization weak? Where is your leadership weak? Do you need to spend some time with the piano or hire a session player? Maybe both?
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Steve and I have had numerous conversations over the past few months about a vision we have to hopefully create a new group in the AV to engage 18-to-35 year olds in Jesusy spirituality. I’ll probably share more about it here as it (hopefully) gets off the ground in the next few months, but for now I wanted to share the below article.
We’re hoping to call our group “The Way” or “Followers of The Way” and this is why:
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Arthur F. Burns, former chairman of the United States Federal Reserve System and ambassador to West Germany, was a man of considerable gravity. Arthur Burns was also Jewish, so when he began attending an informal White House group for prayer and fellowship in the 1970’s he was accorded special respect. No one in fact knew quite how to involve him in the group and, week after week when different people took turns to end the meeting in prayer, Burns was passed by—out of a mixture of respect and reticence.
One week, however, the group was led by a newcomer who did not know the unusual status Burns occupied. As the meeting ended, the newcomer turned to Arthur Burns and asked him to close the time with a prayer. Some of the old-timers glanced at each other in surprise and wondered what would happen. But without missing a beat, Burns reached out, held hands with the others in the circle, and prayed this prayer: “Lord, I pray that you would bring Jews to know Jesus Christ. I pray that you would bring Muslims to know Jesus Christ. Finally, Lord, I pray that you would bring Christians to know Jesus Christ. Amen.”
Arthur Burn’s prayer has become legendary in Washington. Not only did he startle those present with his refreshing directness, but he also underscored a point about “Christians” and “Christianity” that needs repeating regularly. It highlights another important aspect of the truth of calling: Calling reminds Christians ceaselessly that, far from having arrived, a Christian is someone who in this life is always on the road as “a follower of Christ” and a follower of “the Way.”
Think of the three terms Christ, Christian, and Christianity. How would you describe the progression from the first to the second to the third? Conjure up all the associations each word has and you find yourself moving in one of two directions; either from the personal to the impersonal or from the fresh and direct to the institutional, ideological—and, too often, corrupt. For everyone attracted by Christ, there are scores bored or repelled by “Christianity.”
In the broken world in which we live, living things tend to decline and die. Our relationships with people and with God are no exception. They must be nourished, sustained, and fanned into flame again and again or they will die.
We must safeguard ourselves against this slippage from Christ to Christian to Christianity. We cannot legitimately call ourselves “Christians” (followers of Christ) without truly following Christ. Following (obeying) the Person of Christ—not embracing a religious tradition—is the point. As Jesus Himself so pointedly asked, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?”
To be “a follower of the Way” is to see life as a journey, a journey we will never finish in this life. We are all at different stages along the way and none of us alive has yet arrived. Trouble comes when we forget this fact and pretend that life is static and settled, as if everything were a matter of sharp lines, clear boundaries, precise labels, and final assessments. We may have discovered a path that we think makes sense, but we are still just travelers on the road.
We must always recognize the different stages people are at, and that there are many more who are followers of Jesus and on the Way than we realize. To forget this and insist that everyone be as we are, at the same stage and with the same stories as ours, is to be a Christian Pharisee. For the Gospels tell us it was the Pharisees who were shocked at those following Jesus. Is this situation any different today? Are we saved by following Jesus or by trusting theologically correct formulations of believing in Jesus?
I don’t know who wrote this, but I found it on the Navigators website, here. Also, I edited it a bit.
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Yes, this is an actual church sign.
Makes you really wonder why people don’t like christians, right?
You know, I appreciate that there are a lot of folks out there who think they’ve got it all figured out and that the bible is “black and white” on this issue, but you know what? Until you have a close friend who is gay, I wish you’d all just shut the hell up.
Amen.
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When in a position of leadership, how much does a leader’s lack of faith in a subordinate actually create their downfall? Is there some kind of derivative of a self-fulfilling prophecy that happens here?
Or, to put it another way, will I, as a leader, only ever get as much as I expect out of the folks I try to lead? Is there some kind of projected glass ceiling of progress or productivity that I fabricate over their heads?
Conversely, can a leader’s unwavering belief in a person actually help propel them towards success?
It seems plausible that this would be the case; I personally have seen a variety of situations when it appears as though a protege simply needs someone else to believe in them… and, perhaps most, to believe in them even when they can’t believe in themselves.
I am hopefully always learning more about myself. It is one of my constant projects: to figure out why I act the way I do. One thing I have learned is that I’m so confined within my own skin that it’s often a Sisyphean battle to even understand WHAT I’m doing half the time, as most of my movements have become completely rote programming. But every once in awhile something breaks through, and a light bulb turns on.
I imagine I’m like one of those Lite-Brite machines from the 80’s… eventually — just maybe, someday — I can light up enough LED’s to actually get a complete picture of me.
At the church I work with, we’re currently looking for a person to take over our kids ministries. I’ve learned that I have an overwhelming tendency to be extremely optimistic when it comes to people (i.e. I always think they can accomplish great things, often more then they may even think), but at the same time I’ve learned that such a myopic view of only seeing “potential” and not necessarily “reality” can also have a dangerous edge. I know how crucial it is to have the “right people on the bus” and that making a hasty decision on the front end is a very costly error, in more ways than just financially.
But as we look to add people to our staff, or to grow the participants we already have for that matter, isn’t it more dangerous to set expectations too low, instead of too high?
In any kind of relational setting, be it an organization or a friendship or a marriage, isn’t there just something about the complete audacity of hope (to quote that other guy); hope that each person involved can change and grow and become more than they currently are?
Isn’t there just something grand about always looking for the best in people instead of expecting the worst?
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It’s not really a big secret that I had a pretty hard time with LA when we first moved here, over two years ago.
Now that I’m older and obviously so much wiser (well, older at least… 27 on Thursday! Eek.) I know there’s good and bad in pretty much everything. The trick seems to be hanging on to as much of the good as we can.
Los Angeles has grown on me (kind of like a fungus) over the past couple years. I mean, let’s face it; there are things you can do here that you can’t do in most cities. If you play your cards right, you can get paid to do such fascinating things such as:
Seriously, it’s crazy. (And if you have others I should add to the list, post me a comment!)
But for all its magic, Hollywood continues to drag around its share of baggage. There is an addiction to vanity here that borders on dangerous. It’s repulsive to me, mostly because most of the time, it’s completely invisible. Our LA obsession with fashion and style has bought us some pretty cool-lookin’ folks, but what’s never displayed is the destruction it causes behind the scenes.
Whether we’d ever admit it or not, us Southern Californians are constantly in comparison mode when it comes to “the look.” We are constantly renovating some kind of fashionista Potemkin village, adding on wings and digging out pools, to eternally prove that we’re “enough,” and that we’re really worthy to hang with the rest of the wannabes. It’s like impersonating some sick Ken & Barbie Beach Village, all the time, everywhere.
Frankly, it’s exhausting.
I know some people are more acutely tuned to this pressure than others; and sadly, my wife and I definitely fall in the “squeezed” category. For us, fashion has always been about communication; to an extent, at least, the way we dress tells a story about who we are (or who we’d like to be). Even before we moved to such a façade-conscious place, we cared about our presentation… but again, it’s because clothes aren’t just about presentation for us.
In Hollywoodland, though, these expectations are dangerous because they have become an assumed thing… an undercurrent. It’s assumed that we’ll spend $250 on a pair of jeans, beause, seriously, who doesn’t? Ladies, you simply must have 600 pieces of jewelry accessories, and just as many shoes, because — I mean, REALLY — God-forbid you can’t match your belt. (I really do feel for you ladies; this game has almost an infinite number of rules just for playing on Team Girl.)
No, LA’s not all bad. But it’s not all good, either.
Honestly, I’d like to import some reality every couple months. If somebody from Colorado can come down and slap me in the face with a pair of flip-flops or something once in awhile, that’d be great.
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Yesterday morning Allison and I woke up at the upper thigh of dawn (which is just before the butt crack of dawn, if you didn’t know) to head off to the glorious desert, where I attempted, as I do every week, to get a bunch of half-asleep people (whom, at that point, were likely sleeping in their soft beds twenty minutes ago) to sing along with a bunch of songs they’ve heard 800 times but somehow still can’t remember.
As our residence is in the “almost-nice” part of North Hollywood, we generally hear a few sirens now and then, but this morning it seemed a bit much — even for NoHo.
I walked outside to get something out of Blue (now that we have two Focuses, they are simply known by their color: Silver and Blue) and notice a dark, creepy looking cloud overhead. Didn’t think too much of it until we went out the other way to Silver, parked on the street.
Universal Studios was on fire.
And Universal Studios is, essentially, right in my backyard.
Well, I guess it would be my front yard.
Anyway, this is pretty much what we saw:
That’s Allison and I, there in the center.
Just kidding. This is actually much closer to what we could see from our place (minus the trucks):
Looked like we were on friggin’ LOST or something.
Then we noticed that poor ol’ Silver was covered in ash, and pieces of what looked to be large-ish burnt chunks of paper, or something. Of course at that point we had NO idea what was going on, and it hadn’t even hit any news stations yet (believe you me, we checked Alli’s Treo internet), so naturally we assumed the world was ending and went back inside to skip church and have sex all day.
Wait, no, that’s not what happened either.
Back in Realisticland, we found out that windshield wipers miraculously work on ash, and chugged on up to the wonderful AV.
Here’s a few more pics, for good measure… this is some crazy shit to have in your backyard. Or front yard. Whatever.
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My good buddy Zach turned me on to this guy; his name is Chris Martenson, a Ph.D. scientist specializing in neurotoxicology who has shifted his empirical, research-based mind over to economics. He’s currently developing an online version of what he calls “The Crash Course” on topics like money, debt, growth, investing, assets, demographics, etc., and the social and political triggers and effects that intersect at all those points.
Obviously my Connectedness just eats this kind of stuff up, but I wanted to make you aware of it, because I think there is information in here that absolutely everyone living in America right now, in 2008, simply must have.
This goes back to a statement I made in one of my previous posts, where I said that “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing,” quoting Sergei Bondarchuk. Well, in this case, the evil is the greed and complete lack of foresight (or complete disregard for the future) of our last few American generations, and how their inconsideration for, frankly, US (who are, of course, the future of this country) will pose myriad challenges over the next 20-30 years, specifically in regards to our economy and general way of life.
I’ve posted his intro video below to give you a taste for his style. Please consider taking the time to watch a few or all of Chris’s video segments. Some of them may be slightly uncomfortable, but I’m guessing that more so, they will “connect the dots” for feelings you’ve had gliding under the surface for awhile now.
P.S. I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of his videos, if you’d like to post a comment below! What really surprised or shocked you??
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