Another guest post today from Tarah Van De Wiele, an amazing theologian and Biblical scholar living as an ex-pat in England. You can read more about her and her adventures and her adventures living outside the U.S. at ever popular blog: 2 People, 2 Dogs & 10 Bags. I am a pacifist. But historically I am an incensed one. This is why it has finally become dire that I expend the energy built up inside me from the endless culture wars that inform our language, plague our dinner tables, and crawl across the TV screen like some bug you can’t seem to swat away. Are you pro or anti? Red…
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Taxes, Caesar and Living Like Hobbits: Jesus’ take on the Culture Wars.
Here is a guest post in our series on the culture wars from a friend, one time fellow barista, and former student of mine, Fr. Matt Boulter. More about Matt can be found at his blog: Religiocity. In about the year 6 AD in ancient Palestine, with winds of revolution blowing in the air, a Jewish militant called Judas of Galileerose up in defiance of the oppressive Roman government, at that time brutally plaguing the Jewish people. In his revolutionary zeal Judas does three things: Rids the Temple of Gentiles by force. Preaches for people to forsake Caesar in favor of hi view of the Kingdom of God. Calls Jews…
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Bumper Stickers Don’t Change Hearts, and Other Reasons the Culture Wars are Hurting Everyone.
What good are bumper stickers? So far in my life I have never seen anyone pull the car over and say to the passenger, “You know what? You CAN’T hug the world with nuclear arms, can you?” or, “I just visualized world peace and it was awesome.” They are not really arguments, let alone compelling ones. Bumper stickers don’t really change people’s lives. Nevertheless it is nearly impossible to go anywhere for a short drive in just about any town and not see the simple black “W,” a Shepherd Fairey, “Hope” illustration of Obama, a name followed by a “2012,” or a pithy statement about how just such-and-such a…
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Sit with the Surprises: How finding out you are wrong can bring you great hope.
I was terrified the first few times I went to confession several years ago. I mean, I had grown up in a church that really didn’t like the practice of making confession at all. In fact they thought it was a bad thing and defied one’s personal relationship with Jesus. We kept a lot of things private back then. So most of what I thought confession would end up being was based on bad scenes from movies that made priests look either like bitter curmudgeons with a bone to pick or like sick, judgmental voyeurs. Nevertheless, I felt like this is something I needed to do and wanted to do.…
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A post by Kyla Cofer.
When Deserts become Oasis
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How to Avoid a Panic Attack While Leaving the Hospital. A note from the Gospel of John.
It was more just panic than panic attack. I had faired pretty well and even stayed in the hospital a couple extra days this time after I had my second foot hammered and puttied back together and I am glad I did. I stuck around where I wouldn’t have to worry about getting my own food and water and where I had access to what you might call, “the good stuff,” to help stave off the pain. So why I had a sudden sense of panic when the young nurse told me I was about ready to check out is as much a bit of surprise to me as…
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Loaves, Fishes, and Brisket at Flipside: Fear doesn’t have to drive our friendships or our economics.
In the story of the loaves and fishes, Jesus takes the little bit of food offered to him from a small boy and breaks it, blesses it and gives it to those who had been following him for days who had become hungry. That small gift ends up feeding several thousand people to the point where there are several baskets full after everyone has eaten. It is another one of the miracles a lot of people love to reference to show Jesus’ supernatural powers. But I spent some time with some friends this weekend that reminded me of another reading of that story. It is one…
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Be the Burn You Want to See in the World: The way the week before Burning Flipside makes me want to change the world.
(dedicated to my dear friends from RedCamp) This year will be my eighth year at Burning Flipside. While I certainly have a lot of amazing memories and moments (like, I dunno, burning a two story hula dancer for example?) my favorite time at flipside is always the hours right at dusk. Things quiet down just a little as people return to their camps to get a little grub, cover themselves in paint, fetch their poi for fire dancing, grab all the fabulous they can fit in a fanny pack, and rinse the cup to carry with them. It is a moment of both frantic scrambling around and wild…
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When the Bough Breaks: A fallen limb in a friendship is not a dead tree.
Its is the second worst storm I endured since I moved to Texas, making it the second worst storm of my life. I had been praying, trying to center, and needing to be present. The storm hit my house exactly within the first five minutes of sitting down with someone for spiritual direction. The wind was rattling the windows and tossing bits of the back yard around. The whole house chilled. I considered ending our time together because I was able to give the moment only 99% of my attention. I was being tugged away by one haunting thought. Will the tree hold?
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End of the Story: Most of the truths we live by are things we cannot prove. Beauty is just one of them. (Faith for Reasons)
We live in a moment in history in which truth is only found in this fairly new thing we reinvented called a ‘fact.’ “This is a table,” we say. It is a fact that the thing I just set my cup on is a “table.” Ta-da! End of story… It is an idea that seems pretty hard to argue with until all of a sudden I take that same table apart and plan to build a flower bed out of it. Fairly quickly it becomes lumber. So it is now not a table after all. Er… right? That is the case until I decide without making any changes to the pile,…