2 more reading rules

books are read in chapter segments I won't switch books in the middle of chapters

following Jamie Smith I wil rotate between american, british, and "other" for fiction

Rules for Reading

I shall only read five books at a time

1. will be a book of significant cultural-political-sociological studies in preperation for grad school in the near future
2. a book for general enrichment
3. a novel
4. the current book club book
5. the novel S and are reading

These are the rules I shall not break them. I can't possibly give proper attention to more than this.

31 Songs

my first crack at a Nick Hornbyesque list

U2: Stuck in a Moment
Jeff Buckley: Haleluah
Bob Dylan: Every Grain of Sand
Johnny Cash: Hurt
The Band: The Weight
Bruce Springsteen: Promised Land
The Beach Boys: Sloop John B
Ben Harper: Like a King
Beck: Where it’s At
Nickel Creek: Doubting Thomas
Wilco: Shot in the Arm
Billy Joel: Lenningrad
Coldplay: Everything’s Not Lost
Death Cab for Cutie: I Will Follow you into the Dark
Fugees: Killing me Softly
Grateful Dead: Uncle John’s Band
Neil Young: Helpless
Jimmy Buffet: He Went to Paris
John Francis: Susquehanna Sleepwalk
Led Zeppelin: Over the Falls and Far Away
Josh Ritter: Girl in the War
Ryan Adams: Sky Turns Blue
Marvin Gaye: What’s Going On?
Over the Rhine: Jesus in New Orleans
Phish: Waste
R.E.M.: Everybody Hurts
Radiohead: Everything in its Right Place
Simon & Garfunkel: Bridge over Troubled Waters
Talking Heads: Once in a Lifetime
Van Morrison: Caravan
Tom Petty: Yer So Bad


I limitde myself to one song per artist so as Dylan, Bruce, and Cash didn't completely dominate. Everyone should now work on their own it's a very enjoyable process

It's Happened...

the unthinkable, the Kingdom is here Christ will return any day. New issue of "Harper's", fiction by Wendell Berry about the death of Big Ellis with first person narration by the one and only Burley Coulter. The Burley Coulter book is coming I can feel it in my bones.

People I could beat up

In the spirit of my last post I have decided that not only can we not worship a God we can beat up but that we shouldn't listen to anyone we could beat up.

Stephen Hawkins is so going down!
And Desmond Tutu? The guy weighs about 100 pounds I'd so make a better bishop than him.
Has anyone ever met John Caputo? i've usually disagreed with his work that I've read and now I know why. He's shorter than I am! How can I respect a phenomenologist I can beat up?


Ok I'll stop being obnoxious now.

Wanted: A Weak Church

I was reading the new issue of Relevent (they were free at Jubilee) and there is an interesting conversation with some young Christian voices. And one question is about challenges facing the Church in the future and one respondent-Mark Driscoll-is concerned about the tendency of emergent churches to make Jesus into "a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with alot of product in His hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life" he contraists this to Revelation where "Jesus is a pride fighter with a tattoo down his leg, a sword in His hand and the committment to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up."

Stop the presses! We've been making a horrible mistake all this time Jesus was not scorned, beaten, and killed and he most definitely did not cry to his Abba in the garden. All this time we've been worshiping a God we could beat up.

(I know nothing about Mr. Driscoll so don't read any more into me using his quote as a jumping off point except that I think it represents a dangerous line of thought that permeates the Church.)

Jesus continues to this day to challenge our thinking as to who God is just as he challenged the thinking as to what a Messiah was.

"Several of Jesus’ close comrades were probably Zealots, members of an anti-imperialist underground movement. Judas’ surname suggests that he may have been one of them, which makes his treachery rather more intelligible: perhaps he sold out his leader in bitter disenchantment, recognising that he was not, after all, the Messiah. Messiahs are not born in poverty; they do not spurn weapons of destruction; and they tend to ride into the national capital in bullet-proof limousines with police outriders, not on a donkey." ~Terry Eagleton

Remember the question was "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" The answer really was no. Because Jesus was not good as they describe it he was a hick, a geek. "what carpenter took the time to read the scriptures as much as he obviously did".

Jesus was not tough or heroic he was a failure he fought the law and the law won.

Why do we now ask different of God? Why do think that God didn't accurately reveal God's self? Did not accurately reveal what it means to be a human in realtionship to God?

The Church is to obsessed with strength, masculinity, and success. At our best we make space for the ill, the handicapped, the screwups but we do not celebrate them, to thank God that we are allowed to receive God's body (each other). The Church forgets that we are the weak ones. Strength is not a value the Bible or the early Church prized very highly. It's too assocaited with hubris it is too connected to the good as the world measures it.

Children and Responsibility

One of my favorite celebrerity blogs is CrunchyCon. I enjoy Rod's somewhat cantankerous writing style and have fond many diamonds of thoughts amongst some rough. For every post on immigration or Islam that bother me I find enjoyable notes on homemaking and points to good authors (I loved E.F. Schumacher's " Small is Beautiful" and found Russel Kirk's book on Edmund Burke very thought provoking see Jamie Simth's blog for a good reflection on this) but one issue that I just can't decide on is children. Rod is a firm suporterof having large families and bemoans the fallinmg western birth rates. I think this is both a result of his belief that big families are culturally good things and his fear of a coming Eurabia (I'm going to pt aside the question of whether or not xenophobia is a good reason to have children).

I want to have children and am a firm believer in Brian Walsh's a statement that having a child is one of the most profound acts of hope in a scary world. But I just can't get over my belief that falling birthrates in the west are a good thing (the extent to which this is due to abortion is a bad thing) and that with the rising world population it is simply irresponsible to have lots of children.

I vividly remember a TV special that pointed out that a suburban couple with two kids contribute to overpopulation more than a nepalese family with seven. This is of course because the American lifestyle puts a greater strain on the earth than the Nepalese lifestyle. I wonder if it is an important dual single of christian faith to have one child in order to say that the world is not lost and there is hope but that God expects us to be responsible. But, I love my brothere and love having a bother and would have loved having more siblings and think good families are important cultural and communal forces (this of course doesn't imply to the Gambino family or the Bush's of course).

I haven't read Bill Mckibben's book "Maybe One" which his reasoning for why he and his wife decided on one child.


Malcolm Gladwell had a good New Yorker article on how the falling Irish birthrate contributed to their economic upswing.

I need help thinking through this, it's possible the only people who read this are Ross, Sarah, and my mom but that's ok I still need input!

A Love Observed

I just finished "A Grief Observed" by C.S. Lewis and enjoyed it immensely. The book consists of notes taken from his journals following his wifes death. What impressed me most is that Lewis and his editors did not feel the need to smooth over the text Lewis goes back and forth and does not make steady progress but rather struggles in his relationship with his wife and with God.

The most striking aspect was Lewis yearning for his wife and not the idea of his wife that he has left. "All reality is iconoclastic. The earthly beloved, even in this life, incessantly triumphs over your mere idea of her. And you want her to; you want her with all her resistances, all her faults, all her unexpectedness. That is her foursquare and independet reality. And this, not any image or memory, is what we are to love still, after she is dead". This calls to mind the scene in Good Will Hunting where Sean remarks to Will that what he remembers of his dead wife is that she uses to fart in her sleep.

Truly one of the greatest gifts of God is to be joined to another person and not merely to seek the satisfaction of the idea of the other person. If Lewis only really loved what his wife gave him he would not have grieved so but he grieved because a part of him was missing. This is a tremendous gift from God that two broken imperfect creatures can become one, not whole or perfect because we can't be but one. And that oneness is human, hard, and ugly but it is the reality that oneness is true that makes the difficulty a gift as well because you know that you are truly with your beloved.

The reality that in our difficulties we find our truest grace and love for each other has been haunting me in regard to God. I have long desired to be orthodox. and I still do I still desire to be faithful to what God has revealed and to the spirit of Christ. But I am realizing more and more how thoroughly protestant I am both in church polis and in epistemology. To be protestant in this regard is to affirm that truth comes to the individual and the community of believers anew through a daily relationship with Go.

The connection is that God in his faithfullness and the spirit shatters our strict idolatries, our attempts to codify the love of God. God is a God of pathos, not that he is the victim of whimsy like the Greek or Roman Gods, but rather we can have an actually relationship with him. A romantic relationship where one is so constantly worried about maintaining the relationship that he can't let his gaurd down and be weak is not a healthy one. If we do not share our doubts, pains, and fears with God then we are not truly living in a relationship if all we think God wants is our praise and thanks (he wants and deserves these things) then we are not truly entering in a relationship with the one who loves us.

In the last few months I have been more and more realizing what it means to trust someone with my faults and to feel exposed and to feel safe and secure in that and this place of nakedness is not only the place to find love with another and with God but a place to learn the truest theology.

Culture and the Habits of Destruction

Despite my constant frustrations with him one of the reasons I still read CrunchyCon is his emphasis that it is culture and not politics (I use politics here specifically as the political process) which is most important. This was by far the overwhelming experience of my short lived life as an organizer. One of th greatest obstacles to real change in America is not the two party system or campaign finance but our habits. Our habits of passivity, consumption, and search for pleasure are what stop us from seeking change. In his excellent film An Inconvinient Truth Al Gore says that what is really lacking in the fight against global warming is the political will of American politicians. This is true but the whole truth is what is wrong with the world is me and my own habits of passive consumptivity. It's not as if the fact that George Bush has little to no contact with reality or science makes me drive to Philly every week or use more appliances than I should. so brothers and sisters don't look for the government to ratify Kyoto ratify it yourself in your community and your church and build connections with others who are trying to live the same way in this we can build a new culture. not a culture of rigid dogma but a culture of common habits. We will know each other by our bicycles, reusable cups, and window herb gardens.

For the record I have the best reason in the world for going to Philadelphia I should just use mass transit.

"One man with a garden does more good than the entire environmental movement combined"~Wendel Berry

this post also brought to you by espresso

Defense Wins Championships

Now I should preface this by saying that I'm happy for Tony Dungy (a coach who represents what can be good in professional sport) and Peyton Manning (a guy who obviously has put everything he's had into his chosen vocation) for winning the Super Bowl. But...does anyone have any idea how Peyton Manning won the MVP!? If you were going to give it to offensive players how about a split between Joseph Addai (one rookie that leaves people saying Reggie who?) and Dominic Rhodes the Indy backs who controlled the game. Or how about Rex Grossman as Howard Dean said after the Democrat November Triumph "I'd like to thank the President we couldn't have done it with out him". For my money I'd give it to Bob Sanders or the Colts defense in general they were maligned all season and they came out- a dome team in rough conditions -and absolutely smacked the Bears while both offenses were busy fumbling the Colts turned the somewhat palatable Rex Grosman into the Rex Grosman who makes Chicago fans say hmm how much would it take to get Jake Plummer? Jeff Garcia? or even trade up to try for Brady Quinn? after all the only key player they might lose to free agency is Lance Briggs and that's what the franchise tag is for. I know you've never used Chicago GM but there's nothing wrong with using it it's the nature of professional sport. So congrats to the Colts and to Lovie Smith for getting Chicago there who'll hopefully get the contract boost he's earned and it's good to know that the future of minority coaches isn't result as much of the NFL's aggressive affirmative action policy but rather of the sheer talent of black and hispanic coaches now: Dungy, Smith, Marvin Lewis, and it looks like Dallas might be really interested in Ron Rivera to name a few.

This post brught to you by espresso and my overwhelming desire to be like Peter King. I hope my football loving friends(RossandAngela anyone else? anyone...) enjoyed this post for everyone else I will return to my regular content immediately.