Progressive Lutheran Feed by IPC

The book sleeve gives a succinct introduction to Binka Le Breton’s book The Greatest Gift:

“In 1966, Sister Dorothy Stang went to Brazil as a missionary, and in 1982 she moved to a small town on the Amazon to work with an organization to protect poor farmers and their land from loggers and land developers who stop at nothing- including murder- in pursuit of profits. After testifying at a government panel investigating illegal incursions into protected areas, Sister Dorothy was denounced as a ‘terrorist’ by powerful companies and began receiving death threats. Refusing to be intimidated, she continued her work- until two gunmen shot her six times on a rural Amazon road.”

I had never heard of Sister Dorothy Stang before I read this book. After I finished reading this book I grew to admire Sister Dorothy Stang and I grew to better understand the plight of the poor farmers in the Amazon and their exploitation by the land developers and rich farmers. Dorothy’s mission in life was to help the poor and to create a more favorable relationship between people and their natural environment.

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I'm not sure I entirely "get" Twitter - the microblogging service that allows users to tell the world what they're doing, and see what others are doing - but I'm twittering now.  You can follow me at http://twitter.com/chrisduckworth.  If you're on Twitter, let me know . . .

Apparently I don't actually need a bread hook. Or a mixer, says Breadcetera.com. Or, really, anything except a scraper, says this great video at Gourmet magazine.

All I have to do is "spend 10 seconds doing this": the French fold:



Well, not really; more like 10 minutes, I think. But it looks like fun, doesn't it?

From our friends over at JibJab - a wonderful caricature of Obama, McCain, and the 2008 Presidential race . . . I particularly love the scene where Obama is singing and dancing with animals, and rides a unicorn over a banner of "Change." 

(Email subscribers have to visit the actual blogpost to see the video)

Enjoy!

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Can somebody please tell me why the Episcopal Church is at present overrun with consultants?

Here's the page linked in that blog post; here's the description of "Easum Bandy & Associates" at their website:
We are excited about what God is doing in the world today and are committed to being a part of Christ's mission to transform individuals, churches, and societies for abundant life.

We have wrapped our lifestyles around this one desire, and dedicated our talents to motivate and equip others for this purpose and we want to help you give birth to the divine potential that is already within you.

During our twenty years our client list has become deep and wide.

To learn more about our church consulting clicking here.

To learn more about all of our services click here.

For more information about how Easum, Bandy and Associates can have a positive impact on your life or the life of your congregation, click here.

This is, of course, not the only "consultant" group out there. There's "All Saints Company," too, and quite a few others.

I can understand the idea of asking for the help of experts when you don't know what you're doing, and I definitely approve of that. But since when did the church become a business venture and speak in vacuous consultant-speak? We already get enough of that in our regular lives, you know.

And: how, then, is the church any different from anything else in the world, at this point?

And: how can the church - which is supposed to be poor - afford these no doubt pricey consultants?

And: isn't this just another version of the "people not working in the parishes telling the parishes how to operate" problem, as with Seminary professors?

And: since when did we have to listen to "consultants" teach us how to have faith? Whatever happened to St. Francis and St. Benedict and St. Julian? Why, instead, are we expected to follow Tony Robbins?

Are we supposed to take this seriously, really? It's the Upper-Middle-Class version of Joel Osteen, as far as I can see, and that's pretty much it.

I'm shocked - SHOCKED - that conservative commentators have changed their views on political experience, teenage pregnancy, and "the gender card" in recent weeks.  Jon Stewart is brilliant . . .

Believe it or not, it is hard impossible to buy Obama-Biden merchandise at the Barack Obama campaign's online store.  It is not surprising that there would be more Obama items than Obama-Biden materials - he was running alone for over a year and tops the ticket, after all - but it is quite surprising that I can't go online and get a t-shirt, a few signs, or a bumper sticker in support of the Obama-Biden ticket - especially a week after the Democratic Convention!  There's Obama gear aplenty, but narry a sticker for sale promoting the Democratic ticket of Barack Obama and Joe Biden. (There was an offer for an Obama-Biden car magnet in the days following Biden's selection, but that seems to have gone away . . .)

Head over to John McCain's campaign store, however, and the first category you find is "McCain Palin 08."  It is easy to get your McCain-Palin ticket t-shirts, caps, keychains, caps, and more.  And yes, there is plenty of McCain-only items, but it is not impossible to get your hands on merchandise sporting the GOP ticket.

(I also note the lack of any McCain materials displaying his face or likeness.  Obama's face is found on all kinds of items at the Obama store.)

The GOP is clearly trying to market a ticket.  The Democrats are marketing a man.  I think this is a mistake.  For Obama-weary voters who nonetheless are voting Democratic, more needs to be made of the Obama-Biden Democratic ticket, and the Democratic brand overall. 

With the border-line personality cult that surrounds Barack Obama (one which often crosses the line, in my humble opinion), I would like to get a sticker or a sign that promotes the ticket.  As much as I like the guy and think he'll make a pretty good president, I've had enough of Obamamania.  Adding Biden's name to a bumpersticker would make it easier for me to drive around town and support his candidacy . . . without feeling like I'm participating in a personality cult.

I have been thinking a lot about career alternatives lately. (Have I shared that I hate my day job?)

I've gotten over the need to validate my personhood or intelligence by seeking work commensurate with my education. I no longer have a desire to climb any career ladders. I pretty much want to clock in, do a good day's work that produces a tangible work product and pays for my health insurance, clock out and go home. I do not want to have to be creative on the job; I have plenty of outlets for that elsewhere.

Perhaps I'll check into the local community college's offerings of fast, concentrated trainings for currently in-demand jobs.

Remember our CSA flower growers? Well, they sell produce to our coop, too. Here's a little sampler of their wares. The potatoes are destined for FT's requested birthday dinner tomorrow, as accompaniments to lamb chops.

Here's the post - "General Convention Logo" - at Episcopal Cafe:
The theme of the 2009 General Convention is "Ubuntu", an African concept that's not only difficult to translate into American idiom but harder still to picture visually. But in spite of the difficulty, The Rev. Paul Fromberg, has risen to the challenge.

His submission to a logo design contest sponsored by the General Convention Office was chosen out of field of 82.

The full story is published here by Episcopal Life.

Here's Huw Richardson's comment, the first on the post:
Mmm. General Convention is named for a build of Linux?

http://www.ubuntu.com/

It's kinda like calling the event "Windows 98".

Click both of those links above, BTW, and take a look. Sheesh....

A less lighthearted RevGalBlogPals Friday Five:

1. Is vulnerability something that comes easily to you, or are you a private person?
I tend to keep my guard up much of the time.

2.How important is it to keep up a professional persona in work/ ministry?
I'm much more reserved at work than in the context of my faith community -- frankly, it's a matter of trust. But even at church, I find I have different levels of accessibility, if you will, with different people. And sometimes that's as much for their benefit as mine.

3. Masks, a form of self protection -- discuss...
I know the politically correct response is to say that we really shouldn't wear masks, that integrity of person should lead us to simply be who we are anywhere and everywhere -- but I'm not sure that's possible in anything other than perhaps an intentional community.

4. Who knows you warts and all?
FT, for sure. I think my pastor does. I suspect some of the readership here has noticed a wart or two on occasion.

5. Share a book, a prayer, a piece of music, a poem or a person that touches the deep place in your soul, and calls you to be who you are most authentically.
I think that school of character known as partnership helps me be who I am. My mask comes off promptly at 4:30 every weekday evening when I step outside the office and head home.

I would like to invite all those interested to the next Theology Panel conference call on Tuesday, September 16th, 8:30 EDT. To particpate call 1-218-339-2500, use 727705* as your access code.

The panel seeks to provide a progressive Christian theology to our our activist work in achieving social justice.

We have had several lively discussions thus far, and the value of those discussions can be enhanced with continued participation.

The agenda for the discussion is always open to amendment; but I would propose that we take a slight side-step this month and discuss Spirituality; maintaining a spiritual focus even while hip-deep in the muck and mire of the injustices that we seek to redress.

Any other ideas, please make your suggestions known; and please join us.

Roger

This is the first post in a series examining N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church.  Today we're looking at the Preface and Chapter 1: All Dressed Up and No Place to Go?

On both the dust jacket and in the preface, Wright claims that most Christians - let alone non-Christians - are mistaken about the Christian understanding of hope, life after death, and resurrection. In the preface, then, Wright briefly sketches the two principal thrusts of Surprised by Hope:

At the first level, the book is obviously about death and about what can be said from a Christian perspective about what lies beyond it . . . At the second level, then, the book is about the groundwork of practical and even political theology - of, that is, Christian reflection on the nature of the task we face as we seek to bring God's kingdom to bear on the real and painful world in which we live.
- pages xi, xiii

The first chapter - All Dressed Up and No Place to Go? - looks at the variety of contemporary beliefs about the afterlife, none of which matches up with classical Christian teaching.  Wright touches on the beliefs of other religions (putting to rest the idea that "all religions are the same"), and also looks at popular beliefs in reincarnation, the immortality of the soul, and the Buddhist/nature religion hybrid in which the soul "is absorbed into the wider world, into the wind and the trees" (pg 11).  Wright reveals a diverse landscape of belief which lacks consensus nor bears any likeness to Biblical and early Christian understandings of the afterlife.  This discussion sets the stage for Chapter Two: Puzzled About Paradise? in which he will examine the confusion among Christians about these matters (and we'll examine Chapter Two right here on Monday, September 8).

The Lutheran Zephyr reflects:
I admit to some distracted writing, as I'm also listening to the GOP convention right now (and I'll refrain from commenting on our GOP brethren's convention for the time being).  But to be honest, there's not too much meat to chew on in these first few pages, pages which also preview Wright's ability to eloquently and repeatedly reiterate his theses. 

Nonetheless, Wright has laid out his goals - to examine the Christian belief about death and "what lies beyond it," and to address how this belief impacts the way we can live and minister now.  This conviction that our belief about the future affects our life now is central to his argument and, indeed, to Christian eschatology.

From Plato to Hegel and beyond, some of the greatest philosophers declared that what you think about death, and life beyond it, is the key to thinking seriously about everything else - and, indeed, that it provides one of the main reasons for thinking seriously about anything at all.  This is something a Christian theologian should heartily endorse.
- pg. 6

Wright's analysis of society's diverse beliefs about the afterlife should be familiar to us all.  At many a hospital deathbed I heard loved ones describe the deceased's presence in heaven, or witness to the presence of the deceased's soul - recently departed from the body - in the room or in the world.  These are commonly held beliefs, and should be treated with care and love . . . but they do not match up with the witness of Scripture or the Christian tradition.

It will be interesting to see not only how Wright articulates Christian belief about these things, but how he suggests the church should go about the task of re-articulating these beliefs in a compassionate, pastoral manner.  For the task of theology is not chiefly a pursuit of intellectual curiosity or academic discipline, but rather a servant of the pastoral and evangelical imperative to bear grace, truth, comfort - that is, the Good News of Jesus Christ - to the world, and particularly to those who suffer.

Please join us on Monday for a brief discussion of Chapter 2 of Wright's Surprised by Hope.  See you then.

Yesterday I watched the Republican convention. It was an enjoyable evening listening to Fred Thompson, Rudy Guliani, and Mike Huckabee, even though I didn’t agree to many of the things they said. The highlight of the evening, of course, was Sarah Palin, and I liked her combativeness and personality, even if I didn’t agree with much of what she said either. A common theme among the speakers yesterday was Barack Obama’s supposed lack of experience for the Presidential office as compared to Sarah Palin. It amused me to hear this, but it also got me to want to write this blog about Obama’s experience in government. I got this information from the book The Almanac of American Politics 2008.

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I agree with Sen. Obama, a candidates personal life should not be fair game in an election. So when it was disclosed that Gov. Palin's eldest daughter is 5 months pregnant and unmarried, Sen. Obama told his staff not to mention it. If anyone did, they'd be fired. Very classy.

However, last night the Gov's daughter and her 18 year old boyfriend stood in the reception line and greeted people, that because they intend to marry and keep the child, everythings OK. So much for not using the kids to promote their mothers candidacy, so much for family privacy. It's one way or the other, you can't have it both ways. Either it's a private matter or a public one.

Well so much for the Bush administrations highly touted Abstinence Only sex education program!

Moreover, suppose it had been Chelsea Clinton? The Limbaugh, Hannity, Dobson crowd would have been all over her, like ugly on an ape. "See, what have we been telling you? Democrats don't have any morals". Yeah, right!

Some more 'eye opening' info on Palin...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080903/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_palin_iraq_war

By GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
Wed Sep 3, 7:23 PM ET

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told ministry students at her former church that the United States sent troops to fight in the Iraq war on a "task that is from God."

In an address last June, the Republican vice presidential candidate also urged ministry students to pray for a plan to build a $30 billion natural gas pipeline in the state, calling it "God's will."

Palin asked the students to pray for the troops in Iraq, and noted that her eldest son, Track, was expected to be deployed there.

"Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God," she said. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan."

A video of the speech was posted at the Wasilla Assembly of God's Web site before finding its way on to other sites on the Internet.

Palin told graduating students of the church's School of Ministry, "What I need to do is strike a deal with you guys." As they preached the love of Jesus throughout Alaska, she said, she'd work to implement God's will from the governor's office, including creating jobs by building a pipeline to bring North Slope natural gas to North American markets.

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From The Once and Future King: The Sword in the Stone, by T.H. White:
"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn - pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a milliard lifetimes in biology and medicine and theocriticism and geography and history and economics - why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing. After that, you can start again on mathematics, until it is time to learn to plough."

From The Once and Future King: The Sword in the Stone:
The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn - pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a milliard lifetimes in biology and medicine and theocriticism and geography and history and economics - why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing. After that, you can start again on mathematics, until it is time to learn to plough."

It's here. It's nice. It's light. It's fast. It's got a Firefox rendering engine (even though the claim is that it's Safari; it's not). So it's not going to be a compatibility problem.

It's open-source. I'm using it to post this even as we speak.

Google rewrote Javascript which tests at 2x faster than IE7.

Heh.

P.S. If you search on a page, it highlights all the found instances - in different colors! And puts a little mark in scrollbar to show where they're found on the page!

Apparently you can save bookmarks to your desktop, and when you double-click them they open outside of the browser. I haven't figured out how to get this to work yet, though....

There's a little online comic book (yes!) about Google Chrome here.

(The default home page of the browser - or perhaps it's the "New Tab" default page - is a little desktop that gives you an image of each of the last 6 or 8 pages you've visited. I'm pretty sure the browser cloaks your location, too. Very nice, so far.)

Very interesting stuff here on Palin's pastor:

(Newser) – It turns out Sarah Palin has a controversial preacher of her own: Ed Kalnins, senior pastor at the Wasilla Assembly of God, which the Alaska governor has attended much of her adult life. Radar compiles some of his greatest hits:

On the Bush Administration and Katrina: "I hate criticisms towards the President because it's like criticisms towards the pastor—it's almost like, it's not going to get you anywhere, you know, except for hell."

On John Kerry: "I'm not going tell you who to vote for, but if you vote for this particular person, I question your salvation. I'm sorry."
On his home state vis-à-vis the apocalypse: "I believe Alaska is one of the refuge states in the last days, and hundreds of thousands of people are going to come to the state to seek refuge and the church has to be ready to minister to them."

Source Radar

http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2008/09/meet-sarah-palins-pastor-e...