faithasawayoflife

Advent 1: Keep Alert

Welcome to the new year according to the Christian church in the West.  Advent, the four week season of preparation leading to Christmas, hits on something very deep in me.  It is partly the minor cords of longing and hope, and partly the slightly crazy texts speaking of red moons and stars falling.  And challenging sayings like this.  Mark 13:32 "But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.  Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come."  It is as if the ancients knew we'd make Christ's coming into something easy and fattening and they wanted to challenge us to find, as Charles Taylor calls it, a "higher time" in this season when ordinary daily time is bracketed and we face the deeper mysteries of our lives and the life of the world.  O Come, O Come Emmanuel.

Claude Levi-Strauss: The Grand Old Man of Anthropology Turns 100

Claude Levi-Strauss, a pioneering figure in social antropology, has turned 100.  Like a number of prominent social scientists in Europe, he trained in philosophy and then did field work, making his writing of a different intellectual character than so much of social science in America (something he shared both with older french generations in social science like Durkheim and Mauss, as well as later generations such as Bourdieu and Wanquant).

 He founded the Laboratory of Social Anthropology in France which provided a prototype of sorts for the Colaboratory in Contemporary Anthropology (although more as a negative example than a model) founded by my teacher Paul Rabinow in Berkeley.  Levi-Strauss did a series of interviews with Didier Eribon now published by the University of Chicago.  They famously include his comments about the intellecual greats of his time including Sartre and Camus as well as Foucault, Lacan, and an important figure for my own work, Merleu-Ponty.  Happy Birthday, Professor.

                                                                                    

photo:  Pascal Pavani/Agence France-Presse

Buy Nothing on Black Friday

Take the plunge. Help solve the global crisis (not just the economic crisis but also the climate crisis, the debt crisis, and more profoundly the crisis of the soul).  Join in today's symbolic celebration of simple living, Buy Nothing Day, turning to family and friends rather than shopping for your satisfaction. 

"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." --Jesus

Anon,

Chris

O Lord, who has thanks enough?

Poets express the reason for thanksgiving best.  This one is from George Herbert's poem, "Contemplation on God's Providence"

Lord!  Who hath praise enough?  Nay, who hath any?  None can express thy works but the one that knows them.  And none can know them, they are so many.

The image of the pomegranate helps express the thought visually. Such a lovely image of the abundance of God's good giving.   Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

 

why kanye's 808s and Heartbreak is worth listening to . . .

Kanye West, the Chicago-based hip-hop superstar, has just released his fourth album.  Titled 808s and Heartbreak, it is widely viewed as a shocking departure from his typical style and content. Here are a couple good reviews, from the Chicago Trib's music critic Greg Kot, and from Vibe editor Jozen Cummings.  West's  trajectory of albums has followed a loosely based theme of school, starting with College Dropout, Late Registration, and Graduation.  His fourth album was to be titled Good Ass Job.  With 10 Grammy awards and millions of albums sold, one might expect him to continue the winning formula established on his previous three albums.

However, after the much-hyped release of Graduation in September 2007, the 30-year-old faced tragedy just two months later when his mother, Donda, who left her career as an English professor to manager her son's career, died due to complications after surgery.  He clearly struggled to deal with this tragic loss, even breaking down onstage as he struggled to give a tribute to her with his song, "Hey Mama," a tribute repeated throughout his Glow in the Dark tour supporting Graduation.   On top of this difficult circumstance, he also suffered the end of his engagement to designer Alexis Phifer who he has been with since 2002.   Such person struggles are real, a part of life for all of us in one way or another.  However, the glossy world of pop stars does not lend itself to honest grappling with the complexity of these tragic dimensions of daily life.  In response to her personal tragedies, Britney Spears has offered us such reflective hits as "Gimme More" and her new hit, "Womanizer."

However, a hallmark of Kanye West has been his effort to speak the truth.  Examples stretch from his wrestling with rap and religion in Jesus Walks to his complaint about hip-hop's glorification of violence in Everything I Am.  Furthermore, his commitment to hard work and creative work can be seen in his love-fest with design on his blog or even simply his challenge at the American Music Awards this past weekend as he won for male rap artist and album.  In his acceptance speech he said, " "I would like to thank everybody who accepted me trying to break new boundaries in music.  I wake up in the morning just thinking about which stereotypes I want to break. And, you know, we pushed the envelope with the last album, with 'Stronger,' with records they thought wouldn't play on urban radio, and it's our responsibility as musicians to keep pushing each other and keep competing with each other." This perspective is central to what has made him one of the most important artists period. 

So, to put a point on it, 808s and Heartbreak is worth listening to because he tries to speak the truth of his heart, and to find a music groove that allows that truth to sing.  Does it break stereotypes?  Yes.  Is it different?  Yes.  And it may be his most important album yet.

Peace,
Chris

Remembering St. Martin on Veterans Day

St. Martin of Tours (316-397), commemorated today, has long been an important figure in my memory of faith.  Of course, that Martin Luther was born on the eve of St. Martin's day accounts for the name he received from his parents. As  Lutheran myself, this was an interesting fact to know about the "first Lutheran".   More important, however, has been my own experience of the America propensity for patriotic commemorations, including Veterans Day, that in my lifetime has been tied very closely to wars and covert wars I could not support on the basis of faith and conscience.  So Martin, who lived though the transition from a persecuted church to the church of Constantine and Empire, who was the son of a soldier and a soldier himself, and who left the military for the sake of Christ, offers a powerful model of resistance to military might.  Yet Veterans Day need not mean a celebration of war heroes and national military might.  In fact, according to a moving op-ed in the NYT today, the day was marked in Europe and even early on in the USA by commemoration of the dead and prayer for world peace.  World War I, which ended on this day and is the reason for it, was to be the 'war to end all wars.'  So perhaps, then, my lifting up the Roman soldier who found Christ and renounced the sword is not so far from the spirit of this day when we lament how we have crucified our fellow humanity across national borders, and we yearn anew for peace.
Anon, and peace
Chris

It's Friday, but Sunday's Coming . . .

looking for a research partner

I'm excited to reach the next stage in the work I began at Yale (and even before, actually) on pastoral leadership and faith as a way of life.  Many readers of this blog know that the faith as a way of life project led to the book on pastoral leadership of the same title published by Eerdmans this past June.  Lilly Endowment has funded a new project here at Luther Seminary which will build on what I've already done.  Lots more can be said and will be over time here but for now I want just to highlight the basic plan and post a job description for the Associate Director position.

From the proposal:

"This project explicitly builds on an understanding of pastoral excellence as pastoral imagination for the task of shaping communities for living faith as a way of life.  Given this definition of the fundamental purpose of pastoral leadership, our goal is to answer the key question “How is pastoral excellence—and the pastoral imagination it requires—formed through pastoral practice over time?”   As a part of pursuing this goal, we have three main objectives:

1.    Capture the complexity and coherence of developmental processes of learning pastoral imagination through interviews with and observations of samples of seminarians, pastors and the congregations they serve in five distinct sites throughout the nation;
2.    Create and foster relational networks of seminarians, pastors, theological educators, and congregational leaders, encouraging conversation about their work in relation to a practice model of learning pastoral imagination over time;
3.    Publish and Disseminate materials that portray how one learns pastoral imagination with recommendations of developmentally appropriate tasks at each stage of learning over time, including the specific tasks appropriate to the years of formal graduate theological education."

And here's the job description. 

Download research_grant_position_110508.docx

  If you know someone, get in touch with me!

Proud to be an American

Three moments from last night's historic election that made me extraordinarily proud of our nation.

1) John McCain's extraordinary concession speech.

"A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt's invitation of Booker T. Washington to visit -- to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African American to the presidency of the United States. Let there be no reason now -- (cheers, applause) -- let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth. (Cheers, applause.)

Senator Obama has achieved a great thing for himself and for his country. I applaud him for it, and offer in my sincere sympathy that his beloved grandmother did not live to see this day, though our faith assures us she is at rest in the presence of her creator and so very proud of the good man she helped raise.

Senator Obama and I have had and argued our differences, and he has prevailed. No doubt many of those differences remain. These are difficult times for our country, and I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face.

I urge all Americans -- (applause) -- I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together, to find the necessary compromises, to bridge our differences, and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited."

2) Obama's victory speech that focused on the people and the common work, not himself, which gives me hope he can inspire the sacrifice and commitment required by the challenges of our day.

"But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to. It belongs to you. It belongs to you.

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn't start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston. It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to the cause.

It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation's apathy who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.

It drew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of perfect strangers, and from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organized and proved that more than two centuries later a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the Earth.

This is your victory."

3) The African American joy. To what this means for them and for our nation I can only say "amen."

This NYT article on the Civil Rights leaders says it powerfully.  But pictures speak more powerfully still.