faithasawayoflife

Spinning Hello Hurricane, Switchfoot's latest

One of my all-time favorite bands, Switchfoot, has gone back to the drawing boards to find themselves with this new album, Hello Hurricane.  I've not really digested it yet, but I'll report back. For now, however, I encourage you to download it.  I've tried to upload a song called "Your Love is a Song" with the new option on Typepad. We'll see what it does. The song seems to me a spectacular mediation on the way God is present in creation.  It reminds me of Rowan Williams' effort in Tokens of Trust to counter the 18th century idea of the watchmaker God developed first by the cleric William Paley. The idea is that God made the world as a watchmaker makes a watch and set it off ticking, keeping time, but with no need for interaction with the maker after the initial work of creation.  It runs, so to speak, by its mechanical precision.  Williams counters with his own folksy analogy, one he worries is also faulty but at least not in the problematic way Paley's is.  Williams suggests that God's work in creation is more like when you turn on a light.  You flip the switch and the light turns on, but the light only stays on because of it being constantly fed with electricity, and the continuous presence, energy, holding creation in its being, its life, is more appropriate as a way to describe what we mean when we confess 'creator of heaven and earth.'  The song, 'Your Love is a Song,' includes these lyrics: "your love is a symphony, running to me, all around me / your love is a melody, underneath me, running to me".  Well, enough for now. Check it out.  anon and +peace, Chris

  Download 03 Your Love Is a Song

Woohoo! U2 in TCF Bank Stadium June 27, 2010! (We hope!)

The Pioneer Press have reported that a deal is nearly signed to bring my favorite band, currently touring the world with the most amazing road show ever created, to my home town of MSP next summer. I'll be there with all my friends. Grace abounds!

Anon, and +peace,

Chris

Where capitalism is going: it might be good, says Noreena Hertz

Fast Company has an excellent feature article on one of my favorite economists, Noreena Hertz, whose book The Debt Threat came to my attention when planning the conference, "Crumbs from the Table" on global poverty and microfinance at Yale.
Here's the beginning.  Check out the whole article.

"Not long ago, economist Noreena Hertz lived at the lefty margins of her field. But her (widely ignored) prediction of the credit crisis and her call for a more evolved form of capitalism have suddenly put her at the center of the universe.

Noreena Hertz had to seduce Bono. The Cambridge University economist was writing a book on the developing world, and Bono's personal saga of getting the U.S. government to cancel more than $400 million of debt was just the pop-culture bridge she needed to move her ideas beyond the wonkish corridors of academia. After all, Hertz's motive for The Debt Threat -- a deep dive into the debt trap that, she argued, would have global consequences for all -- was to juice the campaign that had been building slowly in activist ranks. The book itself would be a battle cry (a postcard inside made it easy for U.K. readers to urge the prime minister to cancel billions owed by the world's poorest countries), and its release was pegged to hit before the 2005 G8 meeting. Hertz sent Bono an email, unsure if it would find him. To her astonishment, it did: "I'm so glad you got in touch," read the rock star's reply. "I'm a real fan of your work. Bono."

Anon and +peace,

Chris

For all the saints who disturb our comfortable lives: Peter Storey

I had the distinct privilege of hearing South African Methodist minister and bishop emeritus Peter Storey speak about his journey from the 1960s to today. He spoke Thursday night at Seattle University.   He was extraordinarily powerful, describing in an unusually detailed way the process of truth and reconciliation as it was practiced in the years after the collapse of the Apartheid regime.  That process, he said, was driven by the question, "How are we going to live with such an evil past?"

A couple of provocative phrases he shared: we have, he said, 'let our institutions do our sinning for us'.  In the face of such masking of our common responsiblity for sin and evil, he spoke of the 'church's role in the stewardship of truth.'  As an example, he said as a way to describe the importance of the truth and reconciliation process, that 'some evils are too big for the law, that only grace can intervene.' Such truth needs to be said, can only be said, by the church.

Here's a link to his book of sermons across his very distinguished career.

anon, and +peace,

Chris

R. S. Thomas, priest and poet, found through the portal of a broad mind

One of the joys of life is following trails, and here I mean this: when someone I admire mentions something they love, and I follow that lead, opening the door pointed to into a whole new room full of delights, I simply marvel and rejoice. After reading the new Rupert Shortt biography of Rowan Williams, I'm now turning simultaneously to The Wound of Knowledge, Williams' first book, and Tokens of Trust, one of his most recent. The Wound of Knowledge, he says at the end of the short preface to that book, comes from "a recent poem by R. S. Thomas (who has long since said most of what I want to say, 'Roger Bacon,' in Frequencies (London: Macmillan: 1978), 40."  R. S. Thomas was, it turns out, a priest and one of the 20th century's most important poets, someone who was, as is RW, proudly Welsh. Here's the poem, and one other, beautifully evoking the offering of a a life in a country church.

Roger Bacon

        Yet
he dreamed on in curves
        and equations
with the smell of salt petre
in his nostrils, and saw the hole
    in God’s side that is the wound
        of knowledge and
thrust his hand in it and believed.

The Country Clergy

I see them working in old rectories
By the sun's light, by candle-light,
Venerable men, their black cloth
A little dusty, a little green
With holy mildew. And yet their skulls,
Ripening over so many prayers,
Toppled into the same grave
With oafs and yokels. They left no books,
Memorial to their lonely thought
In grey parishes: rather they wrote
On men's hearts and in the minds
Of young children sublime words
Too soon forgotten. God in his time
Or out of time will correct this.

Traditional understandings of God and the world DO change . . .

Here's an eloquent testimony (from MPR's website) of how one faithful pastor and churchman thinks through his own changing view of homosexuality.  The logic of it is one way people both pay attention to experience as a means of learning about God and creation while having clear and deep commitment to the importance of Holy Scripture.  The issue, in part, is that we Lutheran's don't give the Bible per se authority; rather it is the Word revealed in and through Scripture that is the authority in our lives, and Word is Jesus Christ himself.   At the least, Erdahl raises the thorny issue of how we deal with change in our understanding of God and the world, and how that fits in relation to the things we hold fast to.  Tough issues, but one option that doesn't hold water is to deny the very nature of changing belief on issues of science that Erdahl raises.   anon and +peace, Chris

Unlearning the things that used to be obvious
by Lowell O. Erdahl

November 4, 2009

Five hundred years ago the great reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin were blinded by the obvious. They watched the sun and stars rise and set over what seemed a stationary earth. Furthermore, there were texts in the Bible that declared "The sun rises and the sun goes down and hurries to the place were it rises" (Ecclesiastes 1:4-5) and "The LORD ... has established the world; it shall not be moved" (Psalms 93:1). Convinced by what was obvious in nature and clearly proclaimed in the Bible, Luther called Copernicus a fool. Calvin asked, "Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?" But they were wrong in their understanding of both the solar system and the Bible. I, too, was blinded by the obvious. I observed that only men and women fell in love and got married. In high school I heard of some people who did same-sex stuff but I assumed that they were oversexed or goofing around. Furthermore, I learned that the Bible says that all such behavior is "an abomination" (Leviticus 18:22). But I was wrong in my understanding of both homosexual humanity and the Bible. I now thank God for gay and lesbian Christians who have been my teachers. They have introduced me to a significant segment of humanity who, through no choice of their own, are attracted to, fall in love with and desire to live in lifelong partnership with persons of the same sex. I'm also grateful for scholars such as Martti Nissinen, author of "Homoeroticism in the Biblical World," who have taught me that those condemning texts relate to lustful, exploitive same-sex activity, such as temple prostitution, abuse of prisoners and pederasty, but say nothing about homosexuality as we understand it today. Nor do they say anything concerning people in lifelong, life-giving, committed relationships. For them we turn to other texts, such as Romans 13:8-10, which says: "Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,' and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law." I regret my previous blindness and the harm I have caused. I'm grateful that the ELCA has opened the door to the blessing of committed same-sex relationships and to the ministry of people in such relationships. I continue to pray and work for their full inclusion in church and society, including their right to civil marriage. It will be a great day when homosexual humanity is as clearly understood and as fully affirmed as Copernican astronomy is today. Lowell O. Erdahl, Roseville, is bishop emeritus of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's St. Paul synod.

Travelin' blues: six trips in six weeks

I'm in Seattle, sitting at a coffee shop on the back side of Queen Anne's Hill, listening to The Decemberists' The Hazards of Love playing in the background, awaiting a meeting with Fuller Seminary's Northwest campus.  They are potential partners in the Learning Pastoral Imagination Project and I'm meeting their director to pitch our project and hope they'll join in.  The coffee shop (and Fuller Northwest) are just off the campus of Seattle Pacific, the place where I first heard U2 in 1985 (it was October, to be exact: month, and album).   I loved them then, and the rest many readers will already know given my seeming inability to get my fill of their art and witness.  I'll be overnight near the Space Needle and then tomorrow morning meeting with Seattle University School of Theology to pitch the same case to them. Then a meeting at Immanuel Lutheran to consider candidates for Executive Director of Holden Village (I'm on the board), and fly back to MSP Friday night where I get the distinct privilege of meeting my friend and former boss Miroslav Volf at the airport. He's flying in to speak at Luther over the weekend and we'll get a chance to catch up a bit.

All great stuff, I know.  So whose to complain, except that I simply over-committed this fall and I hated to kiss Sonja and the kiddos goodbye this morning.  Missing them . . . and that's the source of the 'travelin' blues'.

Anon, and +peace,

Chris

Me, seriously deranged (photo share)

U2: Luckily, but we don't believe in luck

There were many amazing moments in U2's much ballyhooed YouTube streaming live concert last Sunday from the Rose Bowl.  And the whole event was amazing: a live concert attendance record in Pasadena (97014) and over 10 million fans worldwide from more than 188 countries watched the live stream.   But the real wow came in moments like this, at the end of City of Blinding Lights, which ends, "blessings, not just for the ones who kneel, luckily"  after which he sings, "Blessings, not just for the one's who kneel, luckily, luckily, we don't believe in luck, grace abounds, grace abounds."  Here it is. Also, check out the stunning 360 video screen that lowers and breaks into hundreds of mini-screens.

 Anon, and +peace,

Chris

What saints are for

Rowan Williams, now Archbishop of Canterbury,  continues to be one of the most articulate voices offering a public sense of Christian faith.  This matters in part because as aspects of the West become post-Christian while interest in spirituality grows, offering fresh angles of vision on the faith many have rejected matters.  So one take, drawn from BBC radio interviews Rowan gave while still in an academic position at Oxford, notes the role of saints in our tradition, and subtly draws on Wittgenstein's epistemological critique. 

I could only say, hang around with the representatives of one or another religious tradition--share the experiences of worship, entertain the images, the stories they tell.  Look at the lives they point to as important, important saints, figures in their tradition: I think it is profoundly true that the religious apprehension is caught, not taught.  (Shortt, Rowan's Rule, 125).

That's why I'm reading Shortt's biography, I'd say, as a means to 'hang around' with one of the most sophisticated theologians and prayerful churchmen we've got, and one whose own crucible of leadership has much to teach us in the ELCA about the relationship between conflict and unity.  I'm also reading various pieces of Rowan's own writings, including (currently) his first book, a history of spirituality, titled The Wound of Knowledge.  On this All Saints day, I give thanks and pray for those who lead us in our communions and our communities of faith. Their leadership is difficult today, and many eyes fall upon them, seeking a sense that this way can yet make sense of their own pain and hope.

Anon and +peace,

Chris