Plastic Bags Parody

It is kind of a parody in itself that plastic bags have not been banned completely. They are so blatantly a terrible thing for the environment that it I challenge anyone to contest why they should stay in use. This is a cool cool video:

My Immovables, Advice to College Seniors

I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the "future." A new season of life is approaching and it has had me analyzing and pondering my life. I have been asking myself these questions (that hopefully every one asks them self often, but especially all my fellow seniors.):

When and doing what do I feel the most alive?

Are there times when I say to my self, "yes, this is what I was created to do"?

What wakes me up in the morning?

What injustice bigger then myself just grinds my gears?

What am I passionate about?

etc.

I've been having conversations, asking these questions, and visiting places. I refuse to be stressed, anxious, to do pro's and con's list, to take tests, to look over job listings, etc. What I have been focusing on figuring out what the "immovables" of my life are. What is it that is in my essence that I want to be about? Because thats what I want to do, how I get there and the details of what some "job" or grad school look like are just not that important. I want to be tapping into and living out of what is uniquely me.

My immovables so far:

Ministry, faith based non-for profit, or teaching are really the only fields I can see myself in.

I want to be in a diverse community.

I want to be in an urban environment.

I want to be in the middle of the brokenness of this world. Especially, brokenness that is a result of the evil systems of this world, i.e. poverty, homelessness, addiction, etc.

I want to teach high school and college kids one day. Not immediately but I want to be hired not because I have a ph.d from Harvard but because I have invaluable real life experience.

I want to connect the youth of the wealthy "burbs" with a Jesus who will burst their conception of a Christianity that only sits around in a circle and talks about masturbation.

Those are my immovables. I think this is a good first step (really the only step I know to do). I am willing to bet that 99% of college seniors in America are not thinking about this process like I am. But this is the only way I know how.

I am not suggesting that every college senior should choose a path of "ministry" or to move into the city and hang out with poor people.

I learned a long time ago to avoid doing anything I just have to do because I have to. Surely, you have heard your parents say "you just have to work for a few years, get some money under you and then do all this humanitarian stuff". Nahh, mom, nahh Dad. I dont think so. The fact that we feel like we HAVE to go to college to be successful is a myth of its own and was forced upon us since we walked through the doors of our first day of elementary school.

Don't just do something to do it, to be comfortable, because it is a good start.

Don't just do something for a little while that will be miserable, but will give you six figures a year. While in the back of your mind you are waiting for the day you can quit and do what you really want.

Gosh what an injustice. My advice to college seniors is to search for what makes you feel most alive. Find and note those moments that you stop and say..."yes, this is life, I do not want to be any where else, this is what I was created to do." Figure out what it is about those moments that elicits that reaction and let that dictate your future. Not job security, comfortability, what you are good at, or what you parents think will be a "good" and "successful" future.

And. If when you figure this out begin presently to let it dictate your life. Not waiting for some arbitrary graduation date that we have been programed to expect, plan, and wait for the last 16 years of our education.

Seeing Jesus

“Seeing Jesus is a discipline of stillness. If, I really want to see him. I’ll need to avoid being consumed by always trying to do things in his name, and I’ll need to be motionless, intent on beholding what is in front of me.”

—

Greg Paul

Tolstoy on Christianity

I have probably sounded like a Marxist lately. This wont help.

This is a quote from a Count Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Leo Tolstoy. I found this in a book that is a collection of different religious voices for peace. I am not an expert of ole' Leo, but I am pretty sure in his later years that he denounces Christianity, probably for the contradictions in the faith he identifies here. Either way, this is a cool quote.

Enjoy

"This pervasion was accomplished long ago in the time of that scoundrel the emperor Constantine, who for doing it was enrolled among the saints. All subsequent governments, especially our Russian government, do their utmost to preserve this perverted understanding, and not to allow the people to see the real meaning of Christianity; because having seen the real meaning of Christianity, the people would perceive that the governments, with their taxes, soldiers, prisons, gallows, and false priests, are not only the pillars of Christianity they profess to be, but are its greatest enemy." -Leo Tolstoy

Dorothy Day Quotes

Here are a couple of quotes from my main lady Dorothy Day. She was an activist, a writer, a catholic, and never swayed from calling herself a Christian anarchist. Anarchy gets a bad wrap in America because we believe in a big government with a lot of control. But it actually is something a lot different than the common misconception of a society in pure chaos. Anyways, thats besides the point. Enjoy these quotes from an innovative and faithful lady.

“To be a follower of Jesus, one would certainty not seek after authority, or look for political office. It is thrust upon one by ability and recognition of that ability by others, as it was in the case of St. Peter. St. Abros, Dius XII and so on.”

“The social order which depends on profits which does not consider the nature of man’s needs, as to living space, food and work, is a bad social order, and we must work to make that a kind of order in which it is easier for man to do good.”

Life as a House

I watched the movie Life as a House for the second time this weekend. This go around my attention was drawn more to how broken and down right f'ed up the character's lives were. Sexual brokenness, addiction, unloving fathers, illness, crappy marriages, homosexuality, etc plagued the lives of the different characters. One man's realization of his brokenness and his quest to redeem his life through building a house, transformed his life and everyone around him. By inviting others into the process of redeeming his brokenness others were changed, grew, and became new.

Is this not what we do as followers of Christ? As readers of the Gospel we are acutely aware of how broken and incomplete

this world is. We also know just how shattered the individual can become in this broken world. So really ... are Christians anything more than people that have a more realistic view on ourselves and this world that we live in and know someone (God) that is in the process (with or without us) of redeeming and reconciling the brokenness of the entire creation? With humility, hope, and patience we enter into a relationship with the creator who is redeeming the world. Knowing that while working to redeem this world alongside God that God will in fact redeem us, and by working on our own brokenness we will also join in the process of redeeming creation. Kind a vis versa or paradox concept.

Last night, we celebrated and remembered Jon and Annie Houghton's house they have lived in for the past 6 or 7 years. Unlike other people, their lives were not their own, the house was not their own, their family even was not their own, food, couch, tv, etc was not their own. And because they were aware of their brokenness and knew the creator that was redeeming them they invited literally thousands of young people to come into their home ask questions, laugh, cry, and pray all in the hopes that they themselves would be offering a safe place or a sanctuary for young kids to come to move forward and out of their brokenness. Praise God for their willingness to sacrifice privacy, comfort, and quiet for all some many lives to be transformed.

A house is never just a house. It is not inherently anything. The people living in that house get to decide what it becomes. And how powerful of a thing for a family to realize that their house has the potential to become a direct tool for ministry. To offer a place for questions to be raised, maybe answered, for hope to be created, and for love and grace to be poured out on those that walk through the door.

A few year ago I wrote this piece during my internships as a community organizer in urban Indianapolis. Also called Life as a House, but with a different perspective.

Our Western Conception of God

Today in Buddhism class, we watched a movie on Zen Buddhist "hermits" or ascetics who live in the mountains FAR away from society. They live off only what they need and read and meditate when they are not farming or doing other necessary work to sustain life. They all live completely alone.

I do not know what came over me, but I took a scrap sheet of paper and just started writing. This is what came out: (these are just thoughts, not formed ideas or conclusions by any means)

Maybe, our conception of God as a "being" or any other contained force is just way off.

Almost every religion has this idea that we are all of the earth and will one day return to the earth. Also, almost every religion I have studies is more concerned with what is under the surface. Ideas like desire, meaning, purpose, substance, intention, etc. are all central religious themes.

In the west, we think of God as a contained being that has a home. Heaven or something. But when we talk about and describe God, we use language that beckons transcendence, omnipotence, and more simply; that God is everywhere all at once.

I think, eastern religions have a better, and more logical way to describe God.

Scientifically, we know that heaven is not just beyond Earth's atmosphere, In fact, it is no where to be found so far. (granted we have and never will search every square inch of the universe). But more importantly, do we really think that heaven and God are contained in some space anywhere? I think, in the west we think like that and even talk like we believe that sometimes. Theologically and scientifically, we can throw out the idea that heaven or "where god dwells" is a physical contained space that we will ever be able to see.

God is everywhere? How is this possible unless God is either IN everything, a PART of everything, or God actually IS everything. I suppose, that God could also be in the space in between everything invisible to us.

I don't know.

But any person that uses a conception or rhetoric that makes God out to be trancendent, omnipotent, or all at once everywhere, and uses any other conception or rhetoric that confines God to any sport of space or describes God as a confined being; is in error.

I have no answers.

But just as Eli Wiesel would say, there is just a big question mark hanging over my head.

These are just thoughts. Not meant to persuade anyone but merely to vent what rambles in my mind.