sagely's Xanga

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 14:39:43 GMT

so i'm jumping ship (like rats from a boat). i'm following the exodus away from xanga to here. what can i say?

i'll blame it on the new user interface (ach!) and only partly on my desire to be cool like everyone else.

please do stop in, keep up, update me about where all of you, good friends, have transplanted yourselves. and we always have an air mattress and a cup of coffee or tea for you.

Monday, January 28, 2008

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 17:33:35 GMT

so i'm going to geek out about something right now. fair warning.

recently i've been mourning the way our bibles constrain us to read them. they been so battered, first by liturgical setting and then by private devotional reading, that the stories they present are completely lost in the apparatus. i've been secretly plotting to make my own edition, sans chapter verse markings, where single works (like luke-acts) are put together, and without any annoying section headings. and then i found this. this is cool.

the books of the bible

it's the edition of the bible that i just described. finally some people are freeing scripture from unthought out traditions; finally people are free to hear what the Spirit says in the text. i am excited.

also check out this review.

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 17:27:00 GMT

on reflection, i think the basic is christian stance is one of confusion. if we identify with the disciples more than anyone else (perhaps after Jesus), then confusion is our fundamental response to God's revelation of himself.

when i read the Gospels, i can't help but be caught by how strange Jesus seems to act. picture the night of the last supper as narrated by john. the guys are at a party, eating some good food, telling stories, nudging each other in the ribs at private jokes. suddenly Jesus starts speaking about leaving them. what a mood killer. just a day or two ago he rode into jerusalem with the crowds fronting him as a political revolutionary. now he's talking about leaving. but it fits, a little, cuz Jesus has been talking about death. he's been a sort of funk this entire trip to jerusalem. like he's paranoid of the other establishment religious leaders. but he's the miracleworker. he's the one with the big ideas. so they go with it.

the disciples must be so confused. they must cringe at the moment to moment fear of having their feet knocked out from under them. you never know what to expect with Jesus.

i sometimes think that when i'm most disoriented feeling, when i don't know quite what God is doing in my life, only that he is actively surgically altering something or other within me, then i am closest to true religion. similarly, when i'm "caring for the orphan, the alien, and the widow"--however poorly my attempts at it go--i am often quite certain that i have no clue what i'm doing. all my actions seem inconsequential; if God is present here--if Christ is present here--i can't see how. and that confusion is, perhaps, the holy presence of God.

Friday, January 04, 2008

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 16:06:56 GMT

i am reading eugene peterson. i never thought i would. i never thought i would enjoy it. i never thought i would be challenged. but i am.

there are parts of my evangelical identity that i hate, that i hate very much. my tendency to draw lines boldly in permanent marker and fixate on them. another is the thomas kincaide-max lucado syndrome that i find myself feeling warm and comfy in in spite of myself. yet i need to be careful not to jettison everything with one unreflective push of a button.

even in my academic pursuits, i believe the point of theology--the point of any interaction with christianity as a thing in itself (which is always a second order move)--is lived spirituality. the living following after Jesus in this very moment. and that's something that (some) evangelicals get right. like this series by eugene peterson.

so i'm trying to read the bible and live like Jesus. and trying to keep my vocabulary on the everyday level that i actually live.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 00:26:57 GMT

i am bringing together the irish and phenomenology (but only at the level of my reading material and the tea i'm drinking).
and they said it couldn't be done...

merry christmas!

Sun, 09 Dec 2007 19:57:31 GMT

for the time being...

making hard decisions

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 14:56:51 GMT

some days you just need to come down somewhere on the issues. today is one such day.

i am in the process of finding a position with a church, a youth or associate pastoral position, to gain some experience, fill up the time while cindy finishes her phd, and, most importantly, serve the people of God here and now. i've blitzed churches in the chicagoland area with my resume, hunted through job boards, etc. etc. and i've received some positive responses and have even been invited to a couple interviews.

both interviews have been encouraging. the committees are full of nice people, concerned about their teenage kids, committed to seeing them grow in the discipleship after Christ. both churches are situated in the suburbs, about an hour from loyola, and offer plenty of challenge in trying to draw the students into a holistic love for God expressed in love for neighbour. one church i've heard back from; one church i'm still waiting for.

today i did some further research on the church i heard back from. it's a united methodist church--not a tradition i'm familiar with or one in which i feel quite at home. but you gotta go where God says, you gotta listen for voice wherever it speaks, even in the unlikely, unsettling corners of mainline protestantism. but i think i'm finding some boundaries i can't cross.

the issues are not so theological as praxical. the umc broadly defends the right to abortion and is ambiguous about euthanasia and church-recognition of homosexual marriages. now i know that there can be a lot of variation from congregation to congregation even within a single denomination, but the pastor at this church has come out vocally on the far liberal edges of the debate.

while i maintain what i hope is a more nuanced view than my fundamentalist forebearers on these issues, i do draw some lines which i can't in good conscience cross: abortion is killing a child, so it's acceptable only in circumstances where you would kill a child (and there are some...); while we are all much too afraid of death, we should not support the voluntary ending of one's own life; being homosexual is a complex place to be, and the church should love you but cannot condone your lifestyle (just as the state probably should recognize homosexual unions for the sake of the legal ramifications, but the church should never do so). so i'm calling the pastor and letting her know to keep looking for another youth pastor. it's a hard thing to do for a number of reasons--giving up my first solid lead on a job, feeling all too aware of my all to conservative convictions, and, mostly, knowing those kids need a youth pastor, that there is a need that i can't fill. but i think it's the right thing to do.

Monday, November 12, 2007

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 22:20:38 GMT

this post will be unfortunately all too abstract.

lately i have reflected on the way i think about my faith. i think about it in articular concepts that often end in -tion or a host of genitive modifiers. simply put: i go about faith abstractly. the big picture jumps out at me--the grand narrative arc of sin and salvation and kingdom, of Jesus as God's breaking into our histories (collective and personal), of the love of God being expressed in love of neighbour, etcetera etcetera.

i don't pick up on the instances. the moments. the flesh and blood reality as experienced sans an explicit interpretive paradigm. what i'm missing is the little stories, the personal stories, the really good stories about when and where God shows up. these are the basic elements of faith, the things that the other, more abstract statements can only try to imitate.

mike schuck, a professor here at loyola, calls this primary faith competency versus secondary faith competency. we move from the first to the second, from the true stories to the abstractions, through education (read: leisure and reflection). the difficult part is getting back. paul ricoeur describes this as the move to a second naivete.

i'm jealous of those who never left the first way of doing faith. further, it's difficult to ask those in first faith competency to describe their experience of faith. it risks propelling them into the dark night of doubt between first and second naivete.

but if you can, tell me where you're at. how do you understand your relationship to God, your experience of faith? what events are really important to this understanding? i'd really like to know.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 15:02:16 GMT

ahhh.... sweet internet at last.

good morning, world. where's my coffee?

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 14:21:11 GMT

listen to this:

cf. this. just some food for thought.