This week’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge theme is “Delicate“.
Enough said.
See my past Weekly Photo Challenges here.
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Personal
I’m going on a Bloggers Trip to Guatemala with Lemonade Int’l. (happy 8th blog-versary)
Eight years ago, today, I began this blog as a cathartic response to my frustration at a girl in my dorm. It was a very strange post full of rambling, weird logic, bad grammar, and typos. Not much has changed since then in those respects, but I do want to let you all know about an amazing opportunity that this 8-year endeavor has offered me.
Recently, some old friends of mine (that I happen to have hooked up) got me connected to this amazing non-profit, Lemonade International. LI does great development work in the La Limonada neighborhood of Guatemala, the largest urban slum community in Central America.
LI shares my own convictions that international development work should utilize local resources (instead of bringing in outside talent for everything), empower communities (instead of simply giving them aid), and build long-term relationships (instead of “short-term” “missions” programs) in order to reverse injustice. Here’s a trailer for a documentary about their community and their work:
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Free Advent Mixtape Available Now!
Update: I got some inspiration and updated the Mixtape, changing the song selection/order a little bit from when this was originally posted. Sorry for the inconvenience.
A new church season, a new mixtape. You can find this year’s Advent Mixtape above, in the appropriately-named tab, or just click here. It’s free, and you can stream, download, or share it.
It’s very similar to last year’s except with some songs removed, added, and re-ordered. I definitely think this one is better. (Let me know what you think!) Be sure to read my post introducing Advent this year, including ways than you can more intentionally participate in this season. I hope this Mixtape can play some role in your time as well.
Here’s some more info, from the “Advent Mixtape” page:
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Welcome to Advent, 2012.
This Sunday marks the first Sunday of Advent. This is the New Year’s Day of the Christian Church Calendar. It’s the season in which we celebrate and meditate upon the “Advent” (latin for “Coming”) of Jesus into the world in the Incarnation. This season begins this Sunday and lasts until Christmas.
In this time, we stare deeply into the reality that the Creator God of the universe came into human form by way of human birth.
The season is marked (as with every Church season) with a profound tension. We meditate on the darkness into which Christ entered the world, as well as the light he brought in his Coming. Advent is a time that we sit in the tension of past, present, and future, and see how this most-differentiating belief of Christianity has profound implications on these places in time, and indeed, the whole of human life and experience.
This is why, for this year’s Advent, I’ll be doing a series meditating on how Advent affects seemingly unrelated parts of human life: art, politics, sexuality, singleness, women’s ordination, social justice, Evolution, suffering, humor, the city, and more.
There are several other ways you can engage in this season:
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Thankful (humor edition) [casual fri]
Earlier this week I posted a response to this week’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge, which is on the theme of “Thankful“. I wrote what I hope was a beautiful expression of thankfulness that I ran across in my job; I wrote about a client of mine and the slow process of healing that brings us healing in the smallest things.
With that encouragement in mind, I’d like to offer you one of the things I’m most thankful for. What is it? I’m very, very thankful I no longer have the hair pictured below, circa 2006 (for comparison, here’s a current one):
See my past Weekly Photo Challenges here.
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Could you maybe help me win some Bible stuff? One click is all that’s needed.
Hello, blog readers. I just ran across this sweepstakes on the site of my favorite Bible Study software, Logos. To celebrate the release of Logos 5, they are giving away a Microsoft Surface Pro tablet with Logos 5 on it. With my seminary and graduate school studies starting anew, both of these items would be of great, great value to me, my thinking, my studies, and my writing. Which means, if you all help me win this, I promise you’ll reap the benefits here on the blog as well.
With that being said, could I humbly ask you to click the this link? For each person that clicks, I get 5 more entries into the drawing: http://ptab.it/iGGA
Thanks again.
Weekend Photo Challenge: Healing Thankfulness
This week’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge theme is “Thankful“. As soon I read the prompt, I thought of this picture.
It’s a client of mine. As a social worker, I have to deal in lots of tough stories (as I’ve written about before). This particular client is an interesting one, though. She doesn’t have too much “traditional” major trauma in her life, but that which she has, mostly, is of her own doing–or the doing of her illness, rather.
You see, she has what we call a “Personality Disorder“, meaning that she’s not really psychotic, doesn’t suffer the highs of mania, nor the lows of depression, nor is she suicidal. Rather, what she struggles with the most is a psychological disease that affects her very personality. She has a child-like demeanor that can be annoying, off-putting, attention-seeking, soul-sucking, and always full of emotional drama.
The Pain & Substance of Gratitude. Happy Thanksgiving. [REPOST]
Yesterday, the annual meal referenced in this post occurred at my work, so I thought I’d re-post this today on this Thanksgiving Eve.
Sorry that this isn’t your typical feel-good Thanksgiving post.
On Tuesday, my job had a large Thanksgiving lunch for all the staff and clients we serve. I got my food and sat down next to some of my coworkers and across from a client I had never seen before. She was very friendly. She didn’t ask me my name or anything; she just began asking me questions about what I was doing for the holiday, where I was going, if my parents were still alive/together, if I had any siblings, so on and so forth.
As she kept firing one question about my Thanksgiving week after another, I started to feel the awkward tension developing because I wasn’t returning any of these questions back at her. I wondered if my coworkers thought this was odd of me to do, but it was very intentional.
[art credit: “Freedom From Want” by Norman Rockwell]
As many truths as men. [QUOTE]
As many truths as men. Occasionally, I glimpse a truer Truth, hiding in imperfect simulacrums of itself, but as I approach, it bestirs itself & moves deeper into the thorny swamp of dissent.
–fromCloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
Happy Fall, Philly
My Rothko, My Rothko (I’m in an art rage)
I’ve mentioned before on this blog (though admittedly in passing) that my favorite artist is Mark Rothko, the 20th century abstract expressionist. He’s often made fun of because his pieces are, usually, blocks of color on canvas. So many people (and I was one of them) look at his pieces and say “Where’s the skill in that? Anyone could do that! How is this art?”
The big turn for me happened several years ago when studying for the lecture/series I did on Beauty. As I spent nearly a year immersing myself in the philosophy, theory, and theology of aesthetics, I came to finally “get” abstract art. And with it, I realized how to connect with Rothko; and my art sensibilities have been the same since. For more, read my post on the beauty of art.
Still don’t get it? Here’s a quick exercise. Look at the two pieces below. The one on the right is the genuine Rothko. The one on the left is one of those reproductions where someone paints it inch for inch as close to the original as possible.
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Christian egalitarians: authority-fearing, culture-worshipping, Bible-hating, puppy-kicking liberals (and other truths)
I hate pontificating.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Often, we can only hate most deeply that which we know most truly. Going through the annals of this very blog and my own conversations (especially during college), pontification makes frequent guest appearances.
By “pontification” I mean saying something authoritatively more for the sake of emphasizing the authority with which you say it than the point for which you did. It’s speaking to your base and those who agree with you, and it often says more about you than it does for the topic at hand. And generally, especially for issues where there is deep disagreement, it accomplishes absolutely nothing more than entrenching each side.
Continuing this series on gender relationships in the church, I don’t want to do that. I really don’t. But too often, this is the case.
On women leading & teaching stuff in churches: a story
Women, and their role in shaping society’s power structures, are at the fore-front of our nation’s consciousness and cultural discussion right now–Evangelical and otherwise.
Socio-politically: Maureen Dowd wrote about it this past week. Hanna Rosin wrote a book about this happening. Sandra Fluke got Rush Limbaugh into a tizzy and then spoke at the Democratic National Convention. Republican leaders, for some reason, could simply not stop talking about rape. Mitt Romney bragged about his binders full of them. Last week, Americans elected the largest number of females to Congress than it ever has.
In Evangelicalism: Rachel Held Evans brought attention to misogyny and patriarchalism at one of the bastions of the Neo-Reformed. Her new book, which already carried some controversy, has been criticized and patronized by conservative evangelicals, including one of the top female thinkers of that flock (Evans’ response, a scholar’s rebuttal). Concerning said bastion, after a rough search and count for the phrase “Complementarianism”, it seems that over half of the results appeared this year alone. At the time of this writing, a different bastion of the Neo-Reformed, upon visit to their site has as the featured video: “Complementarianism: Essential or Expendable?”. The Church of England just announced their new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, and one of the main issues being talked about is his views on women’s ordination.
And so, I’m starting a series of posts (as I usually do) to offer up some of my thoughts on the Christianity side of this discussion–thoughts which I hope are helpful to us all. But first, I find it only fair to tell you all my journey into this and where I stand. I’ve hinted at it before, but a fuller treatment might be in order.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Renewal
This week’s WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge theme is “Renewal“. This here is a picture of one of my favorite rooms in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It’s in the medieval art section (a section which, as I’ve written before, carries much significance to my soul).
I still remember the first time I turned the corner and saw this crucifix on the wall. It’s crude, yet so beautiful. It faces another, dimly-lit room in which there is a medieval-era altar on which there was taken countless pieces of Eucharist.
The last time I was at the museum, though, I noticed a bit of symbolism I’d never noticed (and I have no idea why). This crucifix is positioned above a 13th-century knight’s tomb effigy. After spending some time in reflection near the aforementioned altar, I looked back through the arch and for the first time noticed that the gaze of the dying Christ seemed to be settling not on the museum passer-bys, but on the effigy of the dead knight before him.
The Christ’s gaze of sadness and pity no longer seemed to be for his own sufferings, but for the death and suffering of this one that lay before him. This gaze seemed to carry with it not only sadness, but also a stoic confidence that through this act, he would bring an end to this knight’s sleep.
Through this act of loss and sadness, here is a picture now of rebirth and renewal, made all the more meaningful as I took this picture from the steps of that altar, bathed in darkness, on which was consecrated and served Christ’s body, broken for our renewal and light–then, and today.
See my past Weekly Photo Challenges here.
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Okay, election: done. Time to get this blog back on track. [casual fri]
Well, on this blog we’ve contemplated electing Romney, electing Obama, each of the election debates, laughing at the election, the election foreign policy, the election domestic policy, reminded ourselves it’s all going to be okay, voted, laughed on voting day, partied on election night, prayed for the election, and we prayed for the elected officials.
Now we’re all election’d out.
It has now become almost as cliche as election-season Facebook politics posts, to complain about those election season Facebook politics posts. In fact, I think my Facebook feed was filled with more complaining about political posting than actual political posts. (This is not to discount the very real experience that many of us had, to be sure, with those one or two people ib our feeds that would put 12 to 15 posts up a day and carry on endless vitriolic arguments in the comment section.)
I wonder if our malaise wasn’t even as much about other people posting as much as it was the campaign itself. With all the politicking having already wearied us, seeing anything more on Facebook surely just put many of us over-the-top. For any ways that I may have been “that guy”, please forgive me. I had hoped I would be a more clear-headed voice in the political wilderness.
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the long way home 