those awake

Epiphany and the kingdom

awakening : Kingdom | posted by Shaun O

The church calendar season/time of "Epiphany" will end this week, and Lent begins next week, with Ash Wednesday.  
I've enjoyed this season of Epiphany, and really only thought about it more because I preached one Sunday, helped with music on some other Sundays, and also weekly looked at texts and how to teach them to kids.  Nothing incredible has happened in the readings; but dwelling on the texts (in general) has been centering.  I've had a few epiphanies.   
(Here my mind keeps going to Scrubs rerun from just the other day, about the Epiphany Toilet!)

I've also been part of teaching the Lord's Prayer, and specifically, "your kingdom come."  I tried to share with the middle school students about the type of kingdom that Jesus might have been talking about.  I pieced together some excerpts from Jesus for President and Everything Must Change.  (Ryan, if you're reading, I passed J4P around to the kids and they seemed more interested in the images of that book than they've been in most anything we've done!  It was good to see.  Well done!).
And the moral of the story is that I've come away with new, refreshed, kingdom thoughts.  As McLaren hints, we should feel free and compelled to frame "God's Kingdom" into images that have meaning to us.  Perhaps it's the "dream of God," or the "revolution of God" or the "ecosystem of God."  What I like about this epiphany is the imagination associated with it; so much of what we do with religion is fact and truth and no poetry.  I'm finding out, it's all in who you're reading. 

And reading Henri Nouwen's Making All Things New, a few life-thoughts emerge.  He writes, "Our lives are destined to become like the life of Jesus."  I sit with that.  I imagine.  ... I know Nouwen isn't constricting our lives with this statement, he's opening them. 
Later on he considers that Jesus came to give humanity his own life.  There's that phrase in Phillipians about how Jesus did not cling to equality with God, but emptied himself and became as we are so that we might become like him and thus share in his divine life. 

And here we are with the meaning of this post:  I've struggled with the notion that God needs us.  I was taught that Jesus died, "paid the price," and all is done.  Just believe.  And one day you'll end up in heaven, in the kingdom of God.  But as I experience the world, I see lots that I can do, everyday, in an attempt to bring "the kingdom" to earth.  Every action has a reaction, and many actions of mine have consequences that are either life-giving or life-threatening.  But why does "King Jesus" need our actions to build his kingdom?  Why doesn't he just say the word and the kingdom appears?
Small epiphany today:  God likes imagination.  God likes cooperation and community.  Jesus came to offer a new life to the world.  And he emptied himself. 
I imagine Jesus pouring out his life, and what is poured out is the spirit of God, spirit of love.  And it flows around and it flows to us, and perhaps fills us to some degree.  And so we've been given a gift from God.  

But now, there is no Jesus but us.  We are it.  We are in community with God, and God's spirit, and now we build the kingdom and we bring it here.  God dreams and imagines with us, we do it together.  Jesus is emptied, but now here we are. 

So, may we keep having epiphanies, even as the season ends.  

Access the divine life, then dream, revolt, and build accordingly. 

Ideas in the Ring

awake & reading : Rand and Brueggeman- | by Shaun O'Reilly

I had an interesting, yet unsurprising experience recently. 
I finally sat down to read some Ayn Rand, and I did so at the local university library.  I'm not a student (yet), so I can't leave with any books.  The reading happens on site.
Not a problem.
Especially with Rand's Anthem.  It is short and engaging, making it the quickest of reads.  *And I enjoyed that nuance of objectivism -- when you believe things are straight-up, to the point, and reasonable - then you write books in that way.  It's a pleasure to read something like that.  No mystery, just narrative ... like a refreshing glass of water after too many colas or beers or capri suns (I teach Sunday school, and I get thirsty doing it, okay?).

So, Anthem is a story of breaking free and being an individual.  I confessed to the friends reading it with me that it's a little tough for me to read and detach the narrative story from where I think the "philosophy" is heading.  I hate to be doing that, but I've got some pent up energy with Rand, I guess.  While reading about characters discovering individuality, I kept thinking - "okay, but how far does this go?  Who really wants to break free so far as to disconnect from community?  What does the world look like when billions of people all go after their own needs above all else?"  But, see, that's not the story of _Anthem_.  The story is about a certain character discovering the freedom of possessing will, imagination, and an open future.

I can't argue with that.  And I wouldn't want to.  I celebrate it!

So, the interesting experience was that directly after finishing the book and driving home, I hopped online to check some twitters.  I got one that linked to "here's some old testament wisdom about the current financial crisis."  So, innocently, I click!  I welcome that wisdom.

Enter, Walter Brueggeman... with a genius article on the holistic advice of the Psalms and other old testament texts.  The tagline is, Biblical faith invites us out of self-destruction toward God's generosity and abundance.  After reading it, I can't argue with a lick of his thoughts either - and they all point to covenant, generosity, togetherness. 

So, then I had these two cool ideas swimming the channels of my cranium.  But it was more like a boxing match than a swimming pool.  Suddenly, my Rand point-of-view is tossed into the ring and a fight ensues.  Because the Bible is such a robust and experienced fighter (in my mind), it worked the body and won in a few short rounds.  The thing is, I don't know who I was really rooting for.  I'd love to see Rand fight again, to learn to appreciate the moves.  But I can't help what happened in this specific case.  It was unfortunate, but I've taken good things away from both.  

So, chime in if you've got an idea on how to stew on/with opposing ideas, instead of letting them begin beating each other up. 

Oh, and all ideas on Rand's Anthem or the Brueggeman article above are most welcome.  I really think B. is on to something we can use in the current econ. crisis ... and I think Rand was on to something that can inspire humanity, a challenge to crawl out of the ruts of tradition and conformity.   

Holding Firm on Food

awake & linking : NPR - Crunchy Con | posted by Shaun O

Having happily voted for Barack Obama, I am ready to see change in politics.  I understand and grant that it will take time - I'm trying to be patient - but as the media attests to each day, Obama has big, important decisions as it comes to his cabinet and the partners of his presidency.  I trust Obama, but I would like to sense "change" even in these, his first decisions.  Enter Crunch Con with a post on NPR about agribusiness and a potential pick for Obama's Agricultural Secretary.  I'm with Rod on this one and I hope FOOD is one place our president can begin to initiate the change we need!

Here's a snip of Rod's article below, the entire thing is here.

We have to quit subsidizing agribusiness. We need policies that encourage the building of local food economies, not ones that depend heavily on fossil fuel transport. We need reform of regulatory codes that purport to protect the public's health, but really shield agribusiness from local competition. Joel Salatin is a libertarian Evangelical farmer who is a hero of us "small is beautiful" agrarian types. He argues that the best thing the government can do is to get out of the way and let America's small farmers compete in a truly free market. This is not what you're going to hear from ex-Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, reportedly in the lead to be your Agriculture Secretary. Mr. President, selling out to Big Corn is not change we can believe in.

May I suggest dinner? Let agribusiness lobbyists feed their faces at The Palm. You break bread at the White House with guests like Wendell Berry, Joel Salatin, Michael Pollan and Will Allen, the urban gardener who just won a MacArthur Foundation grant for teaching inner-city folks how to raise their own food. Lend them your sympathetic ear. And by the way, why not set a good example by planting a kitchen garden on the White House lawn?

I'm hopeful and watching.  No free passes.  Come on Obama!  Make clear changes or give us a sense of the "why" behind the appointments.

Useful words

awake & reading : Good Poems- by Garrison Keillor | by Shaun O'Reilly

During a recent trip out of town - on the plane, and on all the public transit I took around the great city of Portland - I finally opened up and began to soak in the wonder of Garrison Keillor's selection of Good Poems.  I've had the book for a while, and only now really read much of what was in there.  Perhaps needless to say, it is a collection of absolute gems.  I can't put it down and I'm very interested to learn more about many of the poets I've never heard of.
So, in celebration, here's a poem I read on the plane and have read maybe 20 times since.  It is right on, within and beyond me. 

To be of Use    by Marge Piercy
 
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real. 

(deep breath)
Reading this, I'm thankful for  friends that are awake; I hope and pray I am of use to them as well. 

Night of Freedom

awake & linking : Orion Magazine | posted by Shaun O

The latest Orion Magazine has a splendid article sitting at the Coda - A Window, by Hank Lentfer.
He writes,

"If I were imprisoned in a windowless cell and allowed out for just one week a year I'd choose seven days centered in September.  I'd come home to my Alaska-cabin-in-the-woods and clean a few pounds of spruce needles out of my neglected kayak, oil up a fishing reel, pack a three-day lunch, and paddle upriver.  I'd float to the top of the tide, tie the boat to an alder, and follow the bear-shit-splattered trail up stream.  I'd sit on the wet grass, listen to the rain tap away on my sou'wester, and watch for the deep flash of coho in a dark pool.  I'd then pray for luck, unwrap a sandwich and wait. 
The luck I'd pray for and the answer I await is the voice of cranes.  ..."

And he goes on to tell the beauty that the cranes impart to his life - opening windows in dark cells.

Tonight I've simply thought, what place and time would I want to be released to for a week?  Where does freedom from a cell take me?
I'm disappointed that my own experience doesn't lend me to foretell of careening up streams in my kayak, following wild bear tracks ... And, honestly, I'm hoping that my answer might be different in the next five years.
Tonight my answer wades back to high school days at church, and specifically to one night.  (I'd be interested to read other's answers in comments!)

------------
It is a Sunday evening in October in Irving, TX.  I am part of a worship service called the "Union" at IBC, and somewhere in the closing set of worship songs (there would be a ton!) ... I slip out and down the dark hallways of the rest of the empty church and out the doors to the kids' playground.  It is dark, streetlights in the distance, and after walking the grounds of the playground a couple times I finally sit on the small picnic bench at the edge of the environment.  I pick up the tiny pebbles at my feet, dismantling pieces of the playground floor, and I talk to God. 
I really talk - cause God is really there; I am not praying.  I aim a fiery monologue at the starry sky, and though the expanse is huge - planets and firmament, clouds, airplanes, rooftops and trees - I still know (beyond knowing) that I am heard. 
I have a moment.
At some point later (because time simply has no meaning at all now) I say goodbye.  I drop, toss, and fling the gravel and pace slowly back inside and back to the rest of life.  The group heads to Braums, or Nate's, or everyone simply goes home.
And I  spend the week trying to live up to what I dreamed and promised (and was promised) on that night. 

That would be my week free from windowless prison.  Free for that open night of back and forth and meaning and change on the dark playground. 

Some Imagine Well

awakening : Imagination/Church | posted by Shaun O

In her book Holy the Firm, Annie Dillard stitches words together like a fine woven fabric.  I stumbled on a passage that almost perfectly describes the "tension" (or you might say "play") between the different waking alarms in my life:  literature, nature, theology, love.  It seems even to  play at the fact that I recently moved 1,650 miles away and left church work intending to begin literature/nature studies ...and just 2 months later have found myself working within the church again.  I can't imagine where this is going.  (Or can I?)...  It is a wild ride. 

And here's what she writes,

"There is no one but us.  There never has been.  There have been generations which remembered, and generations which forgot; there has never been a generation of whole men and women who lived well for even one day.  Yet some have imagined well, with honesty and art, the detail of such a life, and have described it with such grace , that we mistake vision for history, dream for description, and fancy that life has devolved.  So.  You learn this studying any history at all, especially the lives of artists and visionaries; you learn it from Emerson, who noticed that the meanness of our days is itself worth our thought; and you learn it, fitful in your pew, at church."

So I say, again, see you Sunday. -s.o

An American Interview, an independence gift/reminder

awake & linking : Sun Magazine | posted by Shaun O

I was moved reading this American interview in the midst of Independence Day celebrations.  As I thankfully celebrate our country, I also feel like we have big hurdles standing just before us, and we have to be creative and intuitive to do well for ourselves and generations (our family) to come.  With that hunger in my gut, I read this interview and chew on the good food of thought, care, and genius.  I would beg you to read it, study it well, so we could engage each other on it’s issues.  We might point out truth to one another, truth we would miss on our own, leaping the hurdles together.   

Digging In:  Wendell Berry On Small Farms, Local Wisdom, And The Folly Of Greed

Here are outtakes, speaking directly to recent posts here, and in line with questions we've asked about information and the urban role for good land-use in the future:

On Community -

Fearnside: You’re a well-known advocate for local economies, yet you write for a much-wider-than-local audience, which means you must rely on the machinery of the corporate world to get your message out. Is there a contradiction in this, or is it simply an inescapable paradox that you must be pragmatic about?

Berry: There are contradictions in it, no doubt about that. There’s an absolutely lethal contradiction in my driving and flying around to talk about conservation and local economies. But you have to live in the world the way it is. You can’t declare yourself too good for it and move away. You have to carry the effort wherever you can take it. You’ve got to have allies. The thought of the Committees of Correspondence in the American Revolution is never very far from my mind. People have to stay in touch somehow. They have to meet and talk. They have to support each other. But that’s a network, not a community.

On Information -

Fearnside: It seems that we’ve been separated from our local communities by radio, television, and now the Internet. Because these forces come from outside the communities, they often don’t reflect the communities’ values. How can we stay plugged in to information and yet preserve our local connections?

Berry: I don’t know. There’s not much you can do, unless you want to disconnect yourself from those electronic gadgets. I pretty much do. Tanya and I haven’t had a television for a long time; people used to give tv sets to our children, because they felt sorry for us. I think we were given three over the years. I listen to the radio some. I don’t have a computer, and I almost never see a movie. To me this isolation is necessary. It keeps my language available to me in a way that I don’t think it would be if I were full of that public information all the time.

On the Food System -

Fearnside: Should the responsibility for changing the food system lie more with the consumer, more with the producer, or equally with both?

Berry:  When the producers — the farmers — are going broke, it’s wrong to expect them to reform the system. In fact, there are too few actual farmers left to reform anything. So, as a practical matter, reform is going to have to come from consumers. Industrial agriculture is an urban invention, and if agriculture is going to be reinvented, it’s going to have to be reinvented by urban people.

ThoseAwake Links : Week of 6/29

awake & linking

Mr. Electricity : How to Save Electricity - "I explain exactly what a kilowatt hour is and how much you pay for one. And I show you how to calculate exactly how much electricity your household appliances use, so you know which items are guzzling the most juice (and which ones are the best targets for savings)."

Conspire Magazine - A "To Be Released" quarterly coming from Shane Claiborne's camp, with design help from SharpSeven.  You can sign up now to be more than just a subscriber, and contribute to "Plotting Goodness."

Dobson on Obama - Scot McKnight blogs - "What they miss here is that Obama is talking about how to live in a pluralistic society."

Hard-to-Learn Love - Bart Campolo - "These days I encounter lots of people who want to love poor people, just like Shane Claiborne or John Perkins or Dorothy Day or some other radical Jesus-follower they've heard of or read about. Some of them want to move to the inner-city, or to an African slum, or an Indian orphanage, or a Native American reservation. Others want to reach out right where they are. Either way, their enthusiasm for serving God's people in need is positively thrilling to me. And yet...my first instinct is to keep them away from Jaleena and Kwami."

What is a Community?

awakening : Community | posted by Shaun O

It seems that "community" is more than central to political, religious, scholarly, and social life.  From whichever sphere we are focused on at one time, we could probably make a case for the undeniable value of community to the vital health of that sphere.  One question might be, what are these pursuits without community?  (okay, maybe next time)
For now, if we agree to esteem "community," what is it that we are agreeing upon?  I don't look to split hairs here, I guess I'm only hoping for some focus in my road to true community.

It's an interesting topic, with the explosion of "online communities" too!
Quickly, dictionary.com offers up:

1.  a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.

2.  a locality inhabited by such a group.

3.  a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists

Already we have some cases of "specific locality" and perhaps another of just "sharing common characteristics."  I'm wondering about the valuable difference and the meaning of each.

To cut to the chase, a quote from Wendell Berry's What are People For?. 
He writes,

Community:  that is, a neighborhood of people who know each other, understand their mutual dependencies, and who place a proper value on good farming.  In it's cultural aspect, the community is an order of memories preserved conciously in instructions, songs, and stories and both consciously and unconscioulsy in ways.  A healthy culture holds preserving knowledge in place for a long time.  That is, the essential wisdom accumulates in the community much as fertility builds in the soil. 

For me, I get the idea of healthy culture = "in place for a long time."  Is it realistic to see communities this way in the future?  I don't know.  Is it necessary?  Should I worry to try?

ThoseAwake Links : Week of 6/22

awake & linking

350.org - Global Warming, Global Action, Global Future

xkcd.com : SUV - "My Hobby : Renting an SUV and confusing the Hell out of hybrid owners."

Radiolab : Individualism or Interdependence