faithasawayoflife

kyrie eleison

DONATIONS

Agencies Accepting Aid Dollars


Published: December 28, 2004
The New York Times


The following are some of the agencies accepting contributions for aid to people affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Asia.

ACTION AGAINST HUNGER
247 West 37th Street, Suite 1201
New York, N.Y. 10018
212-967-7800 x108
www.actionagainsthunger.org

AMERICAN JEWISH WORLD SERVICE
45 West 36th Street, 10th Floor
New York, N.Y. 10018
800-889-7146
www.ajws.org

AMERICAN JEWISH JOINT DISTRIBUTION COMMITTEE
South Asia Tsunami Relief
Box 321
847A Second Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10017
212-687-6200 ext. 851
www.jdc.org

AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE
AFSC Crisis Fund
1501 Cherry Street
Philadelphia, Pa. 19102
215-241-7000
www.afsc.org

AMERICAN RED CROSS
International Response Fund
P.O. Box 37243
Washington, D.C. 20013
800-HELP NOW
www.redcross.org

CARE
151 Ellis Street
Atlanta, GA 30303
800-521-CARE
www.care.org

CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES
Tsunami Emergency
P.O. Box 17090
Baltimore, Md. 21203-7090
800-736-3467
www.catholicrelief.org

DIRECT RELIEF INTERNATIONAL
27 South La Patera Lane
Santa Barbara, Calif. 93117
805-964-4767
www.directrelief.org

DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS
P.O. Box 1856
Merrifield, Va. 22116-8056
888-392-0392
www.doctorswithoutborders.org

EPISCOPAL RELIEF AND DEVELOPMENT
Emergency Fund
P. O. Box 12043
Newark, NJ 07101
800-334-7626
www.er-d.org

INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF RED CROSS/RED CRESCENT
www.ifrc.org

INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS
Earthquake/Tsunami Relief
1919 Santa Monica Boulevard, Suite 300
Santa Monica, Calif. 90404
800-481-4462
www.imcworldwide.org

INTERNATIONAL ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN CHARITIES
Asia Disaster Response
P.O. Box 630225
Baltimore, MD 21263-0225
877-803-4622
www.iocc.org

ISLAMIC RELIEF USA
Southeast Asia Earthquake Emergency
P.O. Box 6098
Burbank, Calif. 91510
888-479-4968
www.irw.org/asiaquake

MERCY CORPS
Southeast Asia Earthquake Response
Dept. W
P.O. Box 2669
Portland, Ore. 97208
800-852-2100
www.mercycorps.org

OPERATION USA
8320 Melrose Avenue, Suite 200
Los Angles, Calif. 90069
800-678-7255
www.opusa.org

OXFAM AMERICA
Donor Services Department
26 West Street
Boston, MA 12111-1206
800-77-OXFAM
www.oxfamamerica.org

SAVE THE CHILDREN
Asia Earthquake/Tidal Wave Relief Fund
54 Wilton Road
Westport, Conn. 06880
800-728-3843
www.savethechildren.org

UNICEF
General Emergency Fund
333 E. 38th Street
New York, NY 10016
800-4-UNICEF
www.unicef.org

i half believe in god

a christmas story

last night, i was doing evening prayers at bedtime with my son, isaiah. he started his prayers, and then stopped. he turned to me and said, dad, i think i only half believe in god and half don't believe in god. if everyone is part of god's family, why doesn't god stop people from hurting other people? god can't stop people from being mean. god can't stop all the wars.' he said, "i used to think god was magic, and god could just boom make something happen, and now i don't."

i said, tenderly, that's okay isaiah. that's a good thought. and i tried to simply explain the idea of god as the power of life, of creation, who gives us the gift of life but also the choice how to live. we can live as god wants us to live, or we can make up our own ways of living that for some people mean hurting others to get what they want. and I said that god sent jesus to be born and live as a person so we would know that god loves us and god wants us to love one another.

the theology of the cross at age six: we live by faith, and not by sight. god's power is known in weakness. the weakness of a helpless child amidst a suffering people, yet in the midst of incredible promise. the star, the hope of mary, the song of angels, the wonder of shepherds, the gifts of the magi.

isaiah and grace have been at loggerheads over playing the role of mary in our annual family christmas pageant. i thought that this conflict would come to blows on numerous occasions over the last week. but as i stood up to leave isaiah's room last night, he said, 'dad, i think i'll let grace be mary. i want to be one of the three kings and bring a gift to the baby (to be played by isaiah's now three-week-old cousin, amos).

anon, and + christmas peace to all

no church, no god II

my last post on this ends with the question, don't we here find a profound way to think about the power and meaning of the gathered community of the faithful in congregations?

well, sure, but too often what we find is a lot less than that, and too many people would say they don't go to church because of their experience of churches not seeming very much like the gospels or jesus. on that note, take this lovely idea from rowan williams straight to the bank.

"doctrine is a set of instructions for performance:

tell me about god/ watch

what does the doctrine of the trinity mean??/ watch

why should i confess that jesus is lord?/ watch"

can we become this church? a church that is less concerned to force our agenda on the nation through political means and more concerned to make good on the baptismal promise that 'it is no longer me but christ who lives in me'?

anon, and +peace

no church, no god

one of my teachers and intellectual heros, robert bellah, wrote that students on occasion come to him and ask him what church to attend, adding they were not sure they believed in god. he didn't tell them what church to go to, but he did tell them not to worry about believing beforehand. 'i tell them that if they become part of the life of the church then they will begin to see how the word is used and what it means. believing in god, i say, is not something one decides in the privacy of one's room, but something one comes to in a living community, for christians, the church.' lovely. not exactly 'no salvation outside the church' but rather no spiritual coherence outside the church. that was, i think, bellah's worry with the woman he famously discusses in habits of the heart. therein, bellah writes (p. 221) "sheila larson is a young nurse who has received a good deal of therapy and who describes her faith as 'sheilaism'. 'I believe in god. i'm not a religious fanatic. i can't remember the last time i went to church. my faith has carried me a long way. it's sheilaism. just my own little voice'."

this helps to make sense of why so many americans believe in god and so few go to church. we're a nation of religions of one. just my own little faith. but set next to bellah's vision which has in its background not only emile durkheim but also alasdair macintyre, we find a profound way to think about the power and meaning of the gathered community of the faithful in congregations?

anon, and +peace

through the crusades to peace

since my friend and former pastor dan erlander came to connecticut to lecture on st. francis earlier this fall, i've been really excited to explore a piece of st. francis' story i'd never heard before. and what might that be? his visit to the sultan, melek-al-kamil.

a remarkable story. this was during the crusades and francis thought he would be killed. instead, he was allowed to preach to the sultan, who did not convert, but was moved by francis' piety and francis was deeply impacted as well.

so i'm reading about this over christmas. and along side this, i'm reading a new book on that era, a book on the history of the first crusade. i think understanding this era and this particular incident have much to offer us today.

how else to respond to the prince of peace who comes to dwell in me and in our world, seeking by his own body to turn it towards the reign of love.

anon, and +peace

thinking theologically with miroslav about freezing on my bike

teri weber, a blog reader who graciously sends me notes on a regular basis, suggested that i might be a bit too dour. and of course she is right. i'm a bit too drawn to dour almost saints like tertullian that i ought to. but i do have teachers in my life trying to show me that abundant life is not only reserved for heaven.

teri encouraged me to read something inspirational about gratitude. okay, teri. i'm not going to read something, but i was thinking about gratitude this morning as i rode my bike through the cold bright december air on the way to work.

ever since the faith as a way of life project's national working group met in october, i've been wanting to try out miroslav volf's outline for theological reflection. i realized this morning, riding my bike to work, that i do it out of joy, gratitude, and just a bit of sinful desire for moral superiority. but mainly joy and gratitude. so let me do a quick run through to see if i can say theologically why i ride my bike, even in december.

god.
who is god. creator of heaven and earth. creator of me.
what is god doing in the world. reconciling, healing, making whole.
how is god achieving this. through christ, turning lives from destruction toward life

us.
who are we. free creatures, tempted to seek our own pleasure, turned by grace towards god's pleasure
where are we going. from the empty pursuit of fulfillment to fulness of life given freely
how are we supposed to get there. it comes to us.

connecting the two.
what should we ultimately trust. that our good is given to us for the welfare of others, and we give it away.
how should we order our trusts, provisional and ultimate. here the wide reflection becomes narrow. my riding my bike allows me to respond to the gift of creation with a gratitude that serves my neighbor in creating less pollution, that serves my neighbor by making a healthier and fit man to work on my neighbor's behalf.

so i ride my bike even when it is really freezing out of gratitude for a world of spectacular beauty and fragility, as one called by god to tend its well-being.

am i getting at it? that is, thinking theologically about gratitude and biking?

what about drinking stout? maybe that is next for the theological reflection mill.

anon, and +peace

monster thickburger

is it too much to say that it is immoral to eat the new burger offered by hardee's called the 'monster thickburger' while one in six people in the world do not have enough food?

in days of old, yesterday was called gaudete sunday, the sunday of rejoicing and of the pink candle in the advent wreath. why? because advent was a season of serious self-denial, of fasting and pondering the incredible: that god would become human in order that we might become 'like god.' it began on the feast of st. martin and was often called st. martin's lent. now we jump from holiday party to holiday party and eat all manner of festive food, all so we can 'resolve' to lose some weight or take up some exercise routine after the new year.

sometimes i despair of being faithful surrounded by such excess.

was john the baptist bitter?

at the text study i attend a pastor raised the question in relation to this sunday's gospel reading (advent three: matthew 11:2-11): 'was john the baptist bitter as he sat in prison? did he feel like he's misinterpreted the messiah and so the revolution hadn't come as he'd expected? or did he not merit special attention from the messiah, who seemed to do wonders for others?

I love the angle of vision on this from the three volume version of the gospels i'm reading called just jesus. the tell this story in volume one, chapter 45. here they portray john as sick from the years in the damp prison, and worried about dying without knowing if the messiah has come, if his preaching will be taken up into god's great work of liberation of the suffering. he wants to know if his cousin jesus, whom he baptized in the jordan, is the one. it is a longing, sorrowful hope, and this version of the story captures it so well. then jesus' reply is tentative: he says to tell john "that people are beginning to open their eyes. those who are deaf are beginning to hear. those who are oppressed are becoming hopeful, and they're beginning to rise and move on. even the poorest, those who are starving to death, share whatever little they have, and they help one another. the people are getting on their feet, yes, they are waking up."

a decidedly less miraculous presentation of the text, but also so beautifully patient, the kind of patient that one must be to be 'fully god'. some people think that side of the christological claim of jesus' full humanity and full divinity makes for a miracle man, but i rather think it makes of jesus a profoundly patient sort of human, not the sort we are usually able to be, but need god to be to be god for us.

anon, and +peace

preaching as framing thinking about faith and politics

i preached last sunday at st. paul's evangelical lutheran church in old saybrook, ct. i'm reading george lakoff's new book called something strange like don't think of an elephant. in it, lakoff--who is a professor of linguistics--talks about the power of framing. a great example is how the republicans framed tax cuts as tax relief, and how that language became common parlance, and implied a whole set of associations, including the obvious one that taxes are an affliction from which we need relief.

so i tried to do this, at least in an initial way, and it was received pretty well as a sermon that did two things. first, it raised the problem of the divide between blue states and red states and the political divisions that are implied but did not take sides. second, it tried to reframe the division for christians who are called by the gospel to a ministry of reconciliation and not division. read on if you're interested (no fear--i preach short):

December 5, 2004
St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Old Saybrook, CT
Isaiah 11:1-9
The Rev. Christian Scharen

Let me begin by setting the context for these reflections on God’s word. After the presidential elections in November, many pundits declared that we are now two Americas, one red, and one blue, and the knife that cut us apart is our differing values. The war in Iraq looms large in the midst of all this. Some say, “President Bush is right, so support the troops in pressing forward in Iraq,” while others say, “President Bush is wrong, so support the troops by bringing them home from Iraq.” Loosely, they could be described as the ‘war’ and ‘peace’ camps. I don’t think Christians ought to fall for this kind of division, in politics generally, or in relation to something as important as war. Let’s turn to the prophet Isaiah as we seek a Christian response to this problem of the two American politics.
1. On wanting Isaiah’s vision to be reality—My first impulse is to want Isaiah’s vision to be reality! I named my son, my first born, Isaiah, in part because of the deep hope embodied in this text. The passage is a vision of shalom, a great biblical term that means ‘everything is put right.’ It is an image we’ve seen depicted as ‘the peaceable kingdom’ in fine art, in Christmas cards, and in children’s bibles. It is a vision we remember as ‘lions laying down with the lambs.’
a. Replacing lambs: reminder text is not reality—The problem is that, as Martin Luther pointed out, when the lions lay down with lambs in this world, the lambs have to be replaced frequently. We do not live in the reality of Isaiah’s vision of a world where ‘everything is put right.’ But we’re all weary of that kind of news. We read every day in the paper about lions roaring, about lambs being eaten. The cliché of the news is all too true: if it bleeds, it leads. And the reporters need not look far for their blood because it seems that Iraq alone supplies the needed daily horror stories.

i. We read 6-9 blissfully, but forget 4b—Well, I don’t’ know about you, but given how awful the world can be, I’m tempted to want the church to help get me in the spirit of the Christmas with stories of angels and babes in the manger, of lions and lambs laying together, of a world where ‘everything is put right.’ I love this time of year—the family time, the traditions, the pageantry, the goodies, and if we’re lucky, a bit of snow to top it all off. Isaiah’s wonderful vision of the peaceable kingdom where ‘they will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain’ fits right in to my vision of the Christmas season as a silent night, a holy night, where all is calm, and all is bright. It is a vision of peace on earth that I want to say ‘yes’ to with all my heart.
ii. But when we remember 4b—Unfortunately, we have this season called Advent that is more about stirring up than smoothing over. Even this apparently blissful first lesson from Isaiah requires some significant stirring up before we get to the smooth part. Remember that before the nice ‘lion and lambs’ part, in verse 4, Isaiah says, “The One who is coming will judge the needy with righteousness, and decide for the meek of the earth with equity. He will strike the land with the rod of his mouth, and slays the wicked with the breath of his lips.” Not sugarcoated, is it? No wonder that in verse 9 Isaiah can say ‘they will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain’! All the wicked who might be expected to hurt or destroy are dead by the end of verse 4! The dire prediction of Isaiah about the fate of the wicked is echoed in our Gospel when John the Baptist says, in verse 10 “even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

b. On the Necessity of Protecting Lambs—The point, then, of remembering this unsettling section of Isaiah’s otherwise very beautiful picture of peace on earth is so that we remember we don’t yet have peace on earth. That we don’t fully have peace on earth means some very concrete things for our life together. First, it means that we live in a time, as did Isaiah and Jesus, when the world is wracked by corruption, hatred, and violence. Despite all the progress of modern society, we seem to have no more ability to live together in peace and justice than did ancient peoples. You didn’t need me to tell you that, but there it is. Second, because we live in a corrupt and violent world, we need means of protecting the lambs from the wolves. It is too simple to say, as some do, that we should just love one another. We Christians, especially, ought to know the measure of wickedness present in the world. We Christians ought to know how much we need government and its use of law and force for the protection of those who might become prey for lions and wolves. Third, and most importantly, Christians live as people who were created for peace and who are called to peace, and so our presumption is always to seek God’s peace. We Christians ought to know that we only with great sorrow employ the powers of law and force, and then only as exceptions, as temporary means to restore peace, and for no other purpose.
2. Isaiah’s Vision and God’s Promise—So now I can return to my initial desire for this powerful vision of Isaiah to be reality. In fact, God’s promise IS reality. Reality in the most profound sense, the sense that such a vision of shalom, of ‘all things being put right’ is what God created in the beginning. It is what God will bring into being at the end of all time. And Jesus, whose birth we celebrate at Christmas, offered a vision into God’s way of working to transform the world. Jesus faced the wolves of this world as a defenseless lamb, but God’s power made weak in his death was transformed through his rising to life, forever defeating the ultimate power of violence and evil. God’s promise of life is our past, our future, and our deepest reality now as we make our way through this world of ecstasy and sorrow.

So Isaiah’s vision, and the season of Advent generally, remind us that we as Christians we have two modes of politics. And let me assure you they are not the politics of the ‘red’ states versus the politics of the ‘blue’ states. Rather, it is a politics of the “now and not yet.” In the one mode of politics, the ‘now’ moment, we hear proclaimed in God’s Word, and we see offered in as bread and wine in a common meal around the table of the Lord. Here is a politics where we see a communal vision of shalom, of things ‘put right.’ When we leave here, we join that other mode of politics—a ‘not yet’ politics that often seems far from a communal vision of shalom, of things ‘put right.’ So rather that the response to easy to adopt in our society just now, that snap judgment of a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ in relation to our government and its policies, we are called to work with them as far as possible, seeking ways to live ‘as if’ the lion could lie with the lamb. Amen.

old st. nick

i'm busy baking saint nicholas cookies to take for a special 'holiday lesson' at isaiah's first grade class. the schools try to avoid trouble by celebrating everything, and so i get the happy job of representing for one of my favorites. i'm reading the lovely tale titled 'the baker's dozen: a saint nicholas tale' retold by aaron shepard, and of course, i'm bringing some cookies in the image of good old st. nick. here is picture from this wonderful book.

here is a stained glass window depicting one of my favorite stories about the origin of gift-giving in the life of the saint--his throwing of bags of gold through a poor man's window so his three daughters would have dowry's for marriage and not be sold as servants.


(the pic is from st. nicholas church, thames ditton, surrey, england--click for an enlarged version)

for more on st. nicholas, see this great website and enjoy!

+peace