UCC General Synod Speakers

Here are two GREAT presentations from the United Church of Christ's 50th celebration and 26th General Synod (all church, national gathering.) Both speakers are UCC members and I'm sure you will recognize their names. Great testimonies, relations of faith to civic life, and the prophetic power of faithful people.

Moyers is especially good at describing the threat of INACTION by people of progressive and inclusive faith...

Bill Moyers

Barak Obamma
-- Text of Senator Obama's speech --

Too poor to pay attention...

I received Bono's book On the Move for my b-day a few weeks back (thanks Ellen!) and in addition to the interesting graphics and images it contains most of the text of Bono's speech at the February 2, 2006 National Prayer Breakfast.

I highly recommend giving it a read or a listen... Bono speaks as a person of faith to those who are gathered together, calling themselves faithful.

His main point is that poverty, whether around the world or around the corner, is a destabilizing force. It pulls families apart, causes a very visible divide in the "fabric" of society, and is ultimately a prevailing cause of political and religious extremism in our world. The affects of AIDS and other diseases only accentuate the chasm between those who have, and those who don't.

Bono ends by challenging the leaders of America and the Western world to increase their foreign aid budgets by 1% in an effort to address poverty, hunger, agricultural development and disease control (hence the ONE Campaign.) He also challenges our notions of justice and equality - asking how greatly they are influenced by race and economic opportunity...

The "rock star" comments are a little tiresome but overall there have been few better speeches/sermons on the issue of AIDS, poverty, and western ambivalence.

Mission Minded Moneyed

We talked a bit about Acts 8 and the disciples being thrown out of their comfort zones this last weekend. We were challenged to find the "borders" we need to cross for the cause of the gospel. Here is some great satire as a funny follow-up.

Please remember - it is satire...

Compare with the Vrettos/Barton mission team.

Cortney Haley in Greece and Turkey

Good friend, and Nexus Church member, Cortney Haley was part of a tour group last month (March '07) that went to the Mediterranean and followed Paul's missionary journeys. She has posted photos and comments of her trip HERE.

I especially LOVE the shots of the baptismal pool at Philippi! So much symbolism - the running water, the steps down and back up, the narrowing/widening channel... (OK, so it turns my crank as an Early Church historian - YMMV.)

Thanks for sharing Cortney!

Article on John's Gospel

In conjunction with some freelance writing I have been doing for DisciplesWorld Magazine I was asked to offer reflections on a few books of the Bible. Their project began in Genesis and has been going on every month for a few years. April's edition highlights the Gospel of John and mine is the second reflection on this page. An overview article and two summary articles are offered for each book. It is a really interesting series - you can go back and browse old issues too.

Homeless Families in the US

Two of my latent passions are photography and journalism. I finished high school (20 years ago!) looking toward a career in this field but was diverted by joining the Navy to become a machinist on a nuclear submarine. (Huh?) Yeah, a big divergence.

I've done some writing for religious journals recently and have stayed active in photography but haven't pursued them together.

On March 21, 2007 I had the opportunity to take part in a "24 hours" project for photography. I turned the occasion into a self-assigned photo essay on homeless families. The full story and selected photos can be found HERE.

I'm grateful to the people and leadership of my congregation, Nexus Church, who graciously gave me the day off to pursue this opportunity. I am blessed to have the support of these people in documenting the needs and work of social justice in our communities as part of my ministry.

Roots of learning

One morning last week I was watching my one-year-old, Gus, as he explored his room. He made his way over to the spring-ey door stopper mounted on the wall.

He pulled it to the side - "thwoongggggg" - it bobbled back and forth. "Thwong... thwong... thwong thwong thwong thwong thwong." OK, Gus processed, "When I pull this thing to the side it goes back and forth for a while then stops."

Next he pushed the door against the stopper - "bump!" - but no "thwong."

So back to pulling the stopper to the side - "Thwong... thwong... thwong thwong thwong thwong thwong."

Another shot at pushing the door against the stopper - "bump!"

And so it went for about two minutes. Finally, he grabbed the stopper and pulled the spring straight out and let it spring back - "bump." Then to the side, "thwong." Then straight again - "bump." Then to the door again - "bump!"

Aha! Gus figured out how springs work - when forced from the side they "spring" when pulled straight out and released they return to their original place.

The next thing he did totally amazed me - Gus crawled to his crib and compressed one of the springs on the rail stopper and let it go - "bounce!" up the metal rail and back down. He did this again and again - and then back to the door - "thwong" - "bump."

Two springs, similar but different responses. The neural pathways have started to fill in through this amazing experience of physical properties.

Is this not the "essence of learning" based in experience and cross-reference? It made me realize that sometimes we believe a lot without ever really learning it for ourselves. So much of what we are taught as "truth" (i.e. dogma and doctrine) has been certified from the outside but has no expression in reality and no root of experience or self/group learning.

Sometimes you have to crawl around with the babies to learn something essential.

Sick and sicker

Excuses for not blogging are many and varied. My most recent reason is that for the past two weeks I've "caught my death" with a terrible cold. I realized it was bad when I didn't have the energy to open up the bubble-seal on the cold relief caplets. A few entries will follow that I saved up while convalescing. Easter season is an inconvenient time for a pastor to be sick...

Nexus and Crosswalk!

Last week I reached out to Eric Elnes, the author of The Phoenix Affirmations: A New Vision for the Future of Christianity and founder of Crosswalk America. I sent an email explaining how we had used the Phoenix Affirmations in our small groups and that we were just concluding a worship series focused on the Affirmations. He called a few days later and we talked a lot about the possibility for curriculum based on the Phoenix Affirmations - including a video series that introduces Christianity from a progressive perspective. He was very encouraging about the opportunity to have more resources so we'll see what we can do!

Well Eric blogged about our call an how EXCITED he is to have a church start-up that used the Phoenix Affirmations as its springboard. It is really a great blog entry - read it HERE.

(NOTE: Some of the info Eric wrote in the blog is the result of cell-phone communications - "can you hear me now?" The administrative location of our Springboro PO Box is listed - we'll have to fix that soon. I mentioned that we had seen about 65-75 faces at Nexus, including the 40-50 regular attendees which got translated into 65 regular attendees. The small group involvement is also overstated - where I think I said about 1/3 of the regulars were in small groups but nearly everyone had picked up a copy of the Phoenix Affirmations...)

What a great shot of energy and connectedness. Eric was a very down-to-earth person and supportive of our efforts and what we have accomplished in a short period of time.

Thanks to everyone - keep up the faith and great work!
Gregg

El Gato

So we got a cat today! A mouse in the house was freakin' my spouse. Cy (cyber) was her name from the friends who have "loaned" her to us. We need a more ferocious moniker so we have renamed her "Xena - Warrior Cat" for the time being.

GO CAT GO!

Living next to a field has its advantages - and its disadvantages... Mice, voles, moles, poison ivy, etc, being the major disadvantages.

Xena (Cy) had been adopted by some friends about two years ago. Seems she was left by her family when they moved and became a neighborhood cat. Our friends called her "the garage cat" because their own house cats were too territorial to let her in. No problem here, she just has to put up with a one year-old.

Xena is a pretty tortoise-shell cat with black and brown/red markings. If she had white blotches she would be a calico. So far so good.

Nothing like a cat in the house to let you know who is boss. We expect great hunting stories to follow...

Newbingin and the Camera Saga

A parable: Even if I believe that a camera is going to suit my needs, and everything I read about it or see in the test results indicates it will be OK, it does not always equal my perceived truth. I will need to keep searching until I find an acceptable camera that captures reality as I perceive it.

That parable pretty much summarizes Lesslie Newbingin's "The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society". Our culturally conditioned view of truth more often than not limits our ability to perceive other truths - it is a filter we use to discern belief from truth (or truisms) and fact. Belief = Jesus fully embodied God for humanity. Truth = the Bible says Jesus told his followers that the meek, merciful and peacemakers are blessed. Fact= no one can prove Jesus said this.

Our truth is conditioned by the relevance we put on fact. Our beliefs are conditioned by the relevance we ascribe to truth.

OK, I had a few $$$ from a refund that happened through PayPal so I decided to get a new compact digital camera. I ended up getting the Panasonic DMC-LX07. Unfortunately the images were not acceptable to me - when I blew them up to 8x10 they were soft and had a lot of noise in the dark areas. I REALLY wanted to like this camera as a carry around shooter but it has been returned. Not as a replacement for my Nikon D70s or Leica, but just for something to keep in my bag. Some of the images from the Panasonic, when the sharpening was adjusted, came out looking as if they were watercolor paintings!!! One of my other purposes was to have a camera to capture images for a few worship-arts projects I'm working on. Again, I'm really sad this camera didn't work out because it had a great Leica lens that went from 28-105mm, it was small, it had image stabilization and it was QUIET. Bad images can't make up for great styling though...

After some more searching I've ended up ordering the Canon A640. Again this isn't to replace my film rangefinder or dSLR, it is a convenience carry-around camera. This camera isn't as sexy but my understanding is that it produces some of the nicest images available in a compact camera. It also has a stellar macro mode which I make use of a lot.

Fact: Photographs capture reality (infinitely small and sometimes abstractly...)
Truth: I need images that accurately represent what I perceive
Belief: The Canon A640 will deliver these images (conversely, the Panasonic DMC-FX07 did not)

Newbingin in a nutshell.

-gb

Bad blogger...

Yep, I'm officially a bad blogger. Life got busy and I dropped out of blogging for a while. I'll do my best to get back on the wagon.

I'm reading Lesslie Newbingin's "The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society" and it is really compelling. The difference between "truth" and "belief" and the process by which "belief" becomes "truth" under certain circumstances. Deep...

For progressive Christians this concept is especially interesting - how do we avoid contextualizing "belief" without dogmatically insisting it is the one and only exclusive "truth?" I'm going to keep reading and thinking on that one.

On an artistic note I'm becoming more and more dissatisfied with film imaging. I've been a ardent Leica M6 user for a long time - love the camera (its a lovely tank), love the lenses (smooth and contrasty at the same time) but film is driving me nuts! No matter where I go I'm having trouble with development/scanning. I have a dedicated film scanner but re-scanning film from the lab is a huge hassle, especially if there are a lot of "snaps" that you want to use. Even when I develop my own B&W it can lead to an entire day of scanning. Fortunately the setup only takes a few minutes for each frame and I can continue to work on other things while the scanner does its 5 minute hi-res scan of each frame.

Not sure what I'm going to do here but I do have digital cameras - a Nikon D70s SLR and a compact P&S digital. Not having to scan and retouch every image would be a beautiful thing. But I really love my Leica, it is a piece of art unto itself:



Gregg

MySpace Rant!

God bless MySpace - I just don't get it... Is it narcissism, self-promotion, loneliness?

I am a total technophile and a lover of e-communications and everything nerdy - but "social networking" when it can be totally social-less and disassociated from real relationships just seems hollow. If you want to know how I REALLY feel, ask me in person.

Have we really advanced as people (especially as a spiritual people) when we remove ourselves from intimate personal contact? My training in pastoral counseling says that most (non-chemical) social disorders result from a lack of authentic and loving relationships. Is MySpace adding to the notion that genuine relationships involving vulnerability, risk and resultant trust are meaningless? If so, I fear it will only add to the number of people who must resort to a lifetime of medication to treat depression and social phobias.

MySpace as a cheap form of advertisement for bands and authors, yes. As a way to connect people in meaningful ways beyond "oh, my god you are sooooo cool and I am so cool for thinking you are cool. Isn't that cool?" Sorry, I don't see it.

Having a rare strongly opinionated moment,
-gb

Measures of Grace

One of the most perplexing things about living in our age is the concept of grace. I'll define grace as "a free gift where one is not deserved." Most often in the Christian context we speak of grace as God's love in the form of Jesus Christ who gave himself freely so that we would not suffer the consequences of sin. Yet, we have been trained to think of ourselves as wholly autonomous - even within Christianity - and therefore grace becomes an ambiguous concept surrounding an event or a personal need when one fails. But grace is not an event (like the crucifixion), rather grace is a present and active state of being. Grace is more about Easter morning than it is about Good Friday. Grace has more to do with the hope of building and restoring right relationships than it does with correcting an imbalance in the yin/yang of cosmic justice.

So what does this have to do with the original definition: a free gift where one is not deserved? Grace is to us the ability to move beyond ourselves and see the world as God loves it. It is a friendly smile where someone has only known rejection. It is an invitation to explore where someone has been shunned for seeking. It is the willingness to build bridges instead of boundaries and to walk where others fear to go for the sake of being a blessing.

To be grace - to be a free gift where one is not deserved - also means loving those who hate us and praying for our enemies. Autonomy (and its kissing cousins xenophobia, narcissism, racism, sexism and sectarianism) teaches us that we are to care primarily for ourselves and then, if there should be time or resources available, to care for others. However, grace says that in caring for others we will make the world a place where we can live. In being grace we help to bring about the kingdom of which Jesus spoke. In being grace we make known God's love even when we don't use "God talk" to do so.

As we remember September 11, 2001 - my heart is stirred to think of the ways in which I am being grace. More accurately, I am being called to consider the ways in which I have not been grace. To be sure, fanaticism is never rational and the motivation of religious fundamentalists will never make sense. But in a connected world - where how we treat one another and how we live, or don't live, by what we say is judged on the world stage - we must always be aware of the ways in which we are being grace rather than a violation.

May we be grace and love without measure,
Gregg

PoPoMo Explained

I'm not sure if it is the right moniker or not but post-post-modern seems to fit. The post-modern effort to seek relativity has been great - we are able to de-construct reality in a way that the modern era did not allow. We generally now have the ability to question and reason without fear of being called a heretic (I did say generally...) We can make relative truth claims that don't deny another truth. We can seek to understand another viewpoint without having to wholeheartedly adopt/reject that viewpoint. Post-modern thinking has brought many intellectual and spiritual freedoms.

Yet, what happens beyond the post-modern experience? Hence - how do we express a post-post-modern viewpoint in the Christian faith? I feel we are working towards convergence and connectiveness in a way that would have not been possible in modern or post-modern thinking. Not sure what we will call this new age but it is certain that endless de-construction leads to nominalism on a physical level and nihilism on a psychological level. The effort of thinkers in philosophical and faith communities is now that of building bridges between deconstructed "truth" statements and the quest for spiritual significance.

Some would argue that there is no basis for faith without absolute, foundational, doctrine or dogma or truth claims. The purpose of post-post-modern thinking is not to re-construct these sort of statements. Rather, the effort is aimed at using faith and reason in a mutually supportive manner - allowing each to influence the other as faith communities build a collective truth. Anyone who has read all four Gospels must realize that each of these communities had their own understanding of Jesus and how they were called to act in the world. The post-post-modern effort is no different - each faith community must seek to construct an authentic reason for being, believing and serving based on their experience of Christ. And these faith communities must be willing to recognize that their experience of Christ will change over time - so too must each community change in response. The inability of faith communities to change/adapt is but one in a long line of explanations for the "rapid decline of the mainline church."

So an explanation of PoPoMo is a little drawn out and may best be summarized with the business slogan: change or die. More appropriately for a faith community it can be expressed: respond to God's voice as heard in your community and you will remain relevant, continually able to express Good News to all you meet.