Metacentricities

I was chatting with a friend at one point, and he said something like "so you’re paying more attention to the Divine than the digital." I kinda like that. Anyway, this post, in a rare moment these days, is about the digital.

What’s starting this off is the brou-ha-ha about Windows Vista, which is the newest version of Windows, that was supposed to be out by now, but is not going to see the light of day until 2007.  Microsoft employees are even up in arms about it. One of the big complaints about Windows Vista has been that there really isn’t much there there. Vista has an updated user interface, called "Aero", which, actually looks alot like that other OS. And, in one person’s view, "Windows Vista Beta 1 is a much-needed demonstration that Microsoft can still churn out valuable Windows releases, after years of doubt." Wow, that’s really profound.

My guess is that for most consumer Windows users, this is really not a big deal. More and more Windows users are switching to Macs (especially given the switch to Intel chips), but the delay of Vista probably won’t make much of a difference. Where this becomes interesting, I think, is in big enterprises, which have been using Linux more and more over time. Will this delay mean perhaps they might begin to move to Linux? I don’t know, but it might be interesting to watch. And, since Microsoft can’t seem to move quickly in response to security vulnerabilities, I’m wondering how long people will be patient with that.

The second story is about Apple. Apple uses a codec (called AAC) which in connection with FairPlay, protects the content that they sell on the iTunes Music Store. Because that creates a monopoly (content sold on the ITMS is only playable on iPods) France wants Apple to open it up, so that other devices can play content from ITMS. If they don’t do this, they can’t sell content in France. France also wants Sony and Microsoft to open up their proprietary formats as well, so that all devices and content can play nice. Many are hailing this legislation, for a variety of reasons. But some people think it’s not likely to spread far. The reason why anybody should care, is that this is one more voice in the argument about Digital Rights Management - that family of technologies that is increasingly infringing on our rights to listen to and watch creative content in any way we’d like, on any number of devices we own, etc.

OK, back to the Divine.  

technorati tags: apple, microsoft, windows, itunes, itms, macintosh, osx, france

I am a fan of metaphors. I think I got to really appreciate them as I learned to use them in teaching. They also became pretty valuable to me in understanding my own internal processes.

I have a new one, one I really enjoy.

You have two people, and a plan for a building, and all of the neccesary raw materials (but really raw - sand, metal ore, trees). You explain to each person that the plan doesn’t need to be exact, given the difficult nature of the assigment, but that the assignment is to build something along the lines of the building plan. One person dilligently refines the ore, and shapes it to make metal, heats up the sand to make glass for the windows, cuts down the trees, and shaves the bark, and planes the wood, you get the picture, and builds the building pretty much according to plan. You’d think that person was pretty smart and able, wouldn’t you?

The second person, though, doesn’t do any of that. They put a very, very few things together (somewhat mysteriously), and stand back, and the little process they created causes the building to build itself. And along the way, it turns out, that not only do buildings along the lines of the plan get built, but several other kinds of buildings too - smaller houses, garages, big mansions, warehouses, etc., all seem to spring up all over the place. Indeed, the buildings are also full of furniture, and fixtures, and clothing, and everything anyone needs to move in.

Which person is the better builder?

You might have figured out by now that this metaphor is the metaphor of the creationist’s God (person #1) compared to the evolutionist’s God (person #2). Since we can’t possibly imagine what process might have been put in place to start the long chain of events from big bang to big brains, some folks seem to need to suggest that it must have been done the way the first builder built it. Talk about underestimating the talent of builders.

technorati tags: God, creationism, evolution, metaphor

I’ve been recouperating from a nasty cold (I’m still kinda sick) so you haven’t seen many posts from me lately. I have come across a few things that are somehow tied together in my mind, and point to the ways in which religion can bring out the worst in us, even as all religious traditions seems to be about bringing out the best in us.

The first is from Tricycle Blog, which is the blog written by the editors of Tricycle magazine - a buddhist magazine that has great articles. This is a story that surprised me, but, apparently from the authors, it’s not a surprising thing. In Thailand, a young man tried to destroy a statue of a Hindu god, and was killed by a mob. It’s an article worth reading, especially if you have Buddhist leanings.

The second story I found in Radical Torah, which is a blog that, in their words, "features multiple takes on parshat hashavua (the weekly Torah portion), as well as commentaries on holidays, rituals and various concepts in Judaism, as seen through the lens of progressive religious and political viewpoints." It’s a really cool blog, worth a read.  Anyway, the story is about one of Israel’s leading rabbis, who said:

You cannot mix pure with impure. Of course we have to keep apart from all the other nations. You must stand in the breach and prevent this. One cannot mix light with darkness. The people of Israel are pure. The Arabs are a nation of donkeys. They are an evil plague, an evil Satan, an evil pestilence.

There is more detail in the article, and it’s definitely worth a read.

The next story is about the man in Afghanistan who was possibly going to be sentenced to death for apostacy. He converted to Christianity 16 years ago.  It appears that they are going to manage to sidestep the whole issue (he has been considered unfit to stand trial, and taken to a hospital, which doesn’t do him any good, but avoids an international incident.) One of the unfortunate side effects is that this makes Islam continue to appear extreme, when there are a diversity of voices in Islam about this. It’s kinda like the Christian fundamentalists getting to speak for all Christians (gee, isn’t that familiar?)

And finally the last story is about Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, who has been making a name for himself calling Islam an evil religion, which continues to fan the flames of anti-islamic, and anti-arab sentiment in the US. (BTW, that link is to a mediamatters.org story that is pretty interesting in terms of media bias.)   

There was a opinion piece in the LA Times, by the writer Nora Gallagher, who is a pretty well known writer.  The piece, called "Cutting at Christianity" starts out with her bristling at things that really aren’t a big deal (like a woman who complains about crucifixes in an episcopal school, or the cartoon that went around after the 2004 election, with the red states as "Jesusland".) She feels like it’s politically correct now to criticize Christians. Yeah, sure, so what? She actually goes into depth in the second part of the piece about all of the reasons why people don’t like Christians, and, in her words, "The connection between Christianity and political power is enough to make this believer hang her head." From my perspective, this country is so dominantly Christian in culture and belief, that we don’t get to complain when people criticize us. Complaining is divisive, not helpful, and feeds into the persecution complex of fundamentalists. What we do get to do, and what we do need to do, is, as she also says in her piece, is practice "costly grace" instead of "cheap grace" - doing instead of saying. She did send a nice reply to my email to her about this op-ed, and I hope we can be engaged in dialogue about it at some point.

Why do these all connect for me? It seems that moments when people feel that their religious beliefs or practices, or the religion itself, is being attacked or threatened, or, really, is just better/more right than everyone elses, instead of a loving, inclusive approach, people reach for their weapons, whether it be actual weapons, or their words. It’s no wonder that people who are secular look at religions and forget all of the positive stuff, and just shake their heads. And, ultimately, the bottom line is that none of this really is about religions themselves, or about God, after all, is it? It’s about human beings, our attachments, and the ways that we react to things, even when all of our traditions tell us otherwise. I think if you want a really good example of sin, this is it. And, ultimately, this is the sin that threatens the life, safety and freedom of huge numbers of people in the world.

technorati tags: buddhism, christianity, israel, afghanistan, islam, interfaith

I was reading the transcript of an interview given by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, of Harry Belefonte, who was, at the last moment, disinvited from speaking at the funeral of Coretta Scott King. I think for a lot of people, where the funeral was, and the way in which it happened, wasn’t something that sat well with them, particularly that Bush was at the funeral, and spoke. There are some pretty interesting comments he makes in the interview:

Some ministers who were quite angry at all of this said, “Come on down here. Let’s — let’s — We have to talk to the press,” and I said, “Talk to the press about what?” “About this. We cannot let it stand.” I said, “I don’t think that’s appropriate. These are the children of my friend. These are the children of the movement. Where did we let them get caught? Why was Bernice giving this kind of sermon? How did you let Reverend Long become the minister of choice? Why wasn’t it at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. King preached? And before we go public and begin to vent our anger, let us understand what role we played in this capitulation that has led to this moment, and let us try first to repair it rather than to go into public discourse.

When do we sit in a circle of healing? When we begin to talk about getting back to where we lost stride. How do we fix this? Not how do we play the vanity game, and get off on going public and talking about how I was crucified. You know, it’s what it is, and there is a way in which we have to do this that not only prevents – I don’t know that there’ll be another moment quite like that, because Dr. King and Malcolm X and Fannie Lou Hamer, folks like that were so rare that to be a part of the final ceremony of their departure is a rare moment in history, but I think that it goes along with what I have been saying here. What role have we played in letting all this happen? Where were we? What were we doing that had us so distracted? How can it be this way? How did you priests and ministers let the evangelical rightwing Christian forces co-opt the greater truth about Christianity and the philosophy of liberation? And how did you all let that happen, and where are your voices in opposition publicly?

I also picked up a book recently by Michael Eric Dyson, who is a pretty amazing writer, called "Is Bill Cosby Right?: or has the Black Middle Class lost its mind?" I haven’t read it yet (spring break reading,) but I’m really interested in his point of view, which is always insightful. And then I read a recent article in the New York Times (it was covered all over) about the situation of young and undereducated Black men, most of whom are either incarcerated, or unemployed.

I am, of course, a child of the movement, a person who benefitted from the work of people who went before me. Every time I see a clip of the big march on Washington, I remember that my parents went. And I remember, mostly from reading, and seeing old clips of things (since I was young when it was happening), when the civil rights movemment, which was intertwined deeply with the peace movement and the labor movement, was active, vibrant and working.

And now, where are we, and how did we get here? We are as in need, as ever, of the movements of the 1960s, but we have splintered, separate movements, with people who don’t talk much to each other, more poor people and poorly paid people than ever, at the same time as there is incredible, sometimes extreme, comfort, a growing cancer that is the marriage between the religious right and the Republican party, which has, in Harry’s words "co-opt[ed] the greater truth about Christianity and the philosophy of liberation."

Finally, Harry said:

Everybody has a part in this. Everybody has something to look at, and I think it is a collective experience, and that’s why I think rather than sitting here drifting, we’ve got to talk about this, not just where we failed and where you failed, and we’ve got to come out of this discourse and this discussion, not just talking about it but saying, “Here’s where we go,” and take courage in the fact that we can turn this around, because the truth of the matter is we are the only ones that can turn this around. Nothing and no one else can do it. Nothing. 

Right on.

technorati tags: civilrights, corettascottking, harrybelefonte, movements, poverty

… this link. I promise you’ll appreciate it!

Thanks Caitlyn!

technorati tags: politics, connecticut, georgewbush

One of the really cool things, in my mind, about being both religiously pluralistic in perspective, as well as intensely interested in contemplative practice and mystical thought, is that you get to think about how practices and concepts from outside one’s own religious tradition can positively impact one’s own spiritual practice and journey. I’ve talked a bit about what I’ve been learning from Jewish religious and mystical tradition (check out my first midrash,) and I had an interesting thought this morning about koans. In our morning Lectio Divina practice, we read Matthew 5, which has this verse (13): "You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot."

This is really nothing but a koan. Salt’s essense is it’s saltiness - if it loses it’s saltiness, it is no longer salt.

I think a Christian koan isn’t really much like a Zen koan, and shouldn’t be structured like one. But I think that the essence of a koan, just like this verse, is that it contains paradox and unexpected twists, that make you really have to think about your own concepts and ideas. I’ve been doing a fair bit of bible reading lately (gee, I wonder why? Oh, right, I’m in seminary!) It’s been a challenge at times to be faced with verses that go against the grain of my own ideas and perspectives about God, the world, and human beings. And it’s our ongoing work to not toss out the baby of the kernels of truths and opportunties for thought, contemplation and knowledge of God present in the Bible with the bathwater of text that is sometimes flawed and very much from its temporal context.

technorati tags: bible, zen, koan, christian

I had a great conversation with a friend over cooking dinner last night, about communities of practice, and how much of a difference that makes in terms of one’s life, and one’s own spiritual practice. She’s someone who practices in Thich Nhat Hanh’s tradition. We were sharing that the time we spend in communal practice (for her, most mornings at her Sangha, for me, mornings and evenings at PSR doing contemplative Christian practices like centering prayer, lectio divina, and taizé chanting,) makes a huge difference when we practice on our own, and also makes a huge difference in the effects of our practice in our daily life. And it didn’t seem to matter at all that we both practice in different traditions - the core concepts about communities of practice we discovered together were pretty much the same.

Even though I’d been on retreats, and gone sometimes to once-a-week sittings, I’d never been a part of a community of practice on a regular basis like the way I am now. Although I’d been able to maintain my practice earlier this year on my own, doing it in community since early February has made a big difference. It’s very sweet, and I am thankful that it exists. It’s something that I know I’ll have to figure out a way to be a part of for the rest of my life.

technorati tags: spiritual, practice

One of the things I like to do is collect the search terms that people use to find my blog. Sometimes they are not at all surprising (like people who are searching for me, or they might know that my blog name is ‘pearlbear’ and they are searching for that. Other things are much more surprising.

The most surprising one to me is that one of my blog entries comes up as number 10 on yahoo, when one searches using the term ‘nonprofit’. If one searches for ‘progressive christian’ on MSN, my blog is 8th.  Those amaze me. Interesting terms people have used to find my blog or blog postings include: "stop everything," "Buddhism by Karen Armstrong cliff notes" (that person must be a student!)  "’finding missing people’ organization, Larry King Live, CNN" and "William Shatner photos" (really!)

About 1 in 10 of the visits of people to my blog are people who find it via an unrelated search, which is interesting, and sort of surprising. Nothing will change in my blog because at least 10% of people are reading it with no idea of what it’s about. But it’s something that is good to know.

technorati tags: search, blog

I’m supposed to be writing 2 papers and studying. But at the moment, I’m procrastinating. I think I’ve said, my favorite form of procrastination is blogging. My second favorite form of procrastination is futzing with my iTunes library. Well, they’ve finally come together. I was perusing a rather interesting section of my iTunes library, and here’s a little snapshot of what this looks like:

So which is it? Is God a girl, a real estate developer, or love? For fun, I looked up the lyrics. These are kinda good. From Groove Coverage: "A part of the future, a girl like me, There is a sky, eluminating us, Someone is out there, that we truly trust, There is a rainbow, for you and me, A beautiful sunrise, eternally." It’s actually a really nice song.

Then, there is Michelle Shocked: "He may be an absentee landlord. This may be a low rent universe. The roof may need repairs but at last the floor is there. And the rent is not due ’til the first."

And then there is Marvin Gaye, for sure the most traditional of the three: "Don’t go and talk about my father. Cause God is my friend. Jesus is my friend. He loves us whether or not we know it. Just loves us, oh ya"

Quite the interesting combination. I think my favorite, though, is "God is a Girl." But I bet you could have figured that out yourselves.

OK, back to writing a paper about the Psalms as lamentation.

I got a heads up from Ethics Daily, a Baptist (not Southern) news source, about a group of denominations that have been meeting for a while, and have come up with a new Holiness Manifesto. Why this was interesting to me was because, in my previous life as a fundamentalist, I belonged to two holiness denominations, the Nazarenes, and the Christian and Missionary Alliance. The Salvation Army, by the way, is in this group. These are pretty serious fundamentalist types. The Nazarenes used to prohibit dancing (I don’t know if they still do.)

So, for reasons that escape me, I decided to go in search for the genuine article (that is, the actual Manifesto; here it is in PDF form.) And I read it. I was expecting the usual fundamentalist stuff, innerancy of scripture, lots of male God language, etc. But, I was pretty darned surprised. In fact, the document is written inclusively (that is, purposely without male pronouns for God!) Read it for yourself, if you are interested. You might be amazed. Here’s the punch line:

God wants us to be, think, speak and act in the world in a Christ-like manner. We invite all to embrace God’s call to:
• be filled with all the fullness of God in Jesus Christ—Holy Spirit-endowed co-workers for the reign of God;
• live lives that are devout, pure, and reconciled, thereby being Jesus Christ’s agents of transformation in the world;
• live as a faithful covenant people, building accountable community, growing up into Jesus Christ, embodying the spirit of God’s law in holy love;
• exercise for the common good an effective array of ministries and callings, according to the diversity of the gifts of the Holy Spirit;
• practice compassionate ministries, solidarity with the poor, advocacy for equality, justice, reconciliation, and peace; and
• care for the earth, God’s gift in trust to us, working in faith, hope, and confidence for the healing and care of all creation.

The "letter" of this manifesto is, basically, inclusive and progressive. I could almost imagine the UCC, in a moment of being focused on spirituality, perhaps, could almost write something like this. But what, actually, is the "spirit" of this manifesto? When a UCC person talks about the "reign of God" they are talking about a very, very different thing than if a fundamentalist says it (although it is true that many UCC people wouldn’t say that at all.) I find the line about "advocacy for equality, justice, reconciliation and peace" especially interesting given the current controversies around gay marriage issues in religous circles. So what do they mean, exactly? Are they being serious? Did they have something else in mind?

There are other very intriguing lines in the manifesto, like this one:

People in churches are tired of our petty lines of demarcation that artificially create compartments, denominations and divisions. They are tired of building institutions. They long for a clear, articulate message that transcends institutionalism and in-fighting among followers of Jesus Christ.

Which followers are they talking about? Are they really talking about all of them (from the Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, to the UCC or even UU Christians), or just the ones included in their little group? Who is this for? The language and tone overall of the document suggests that they are talking to everyone (that is, all Christians.) But given what I know about this tradition, it’s hard to believe that the spirit of this document extends in the directions the letter would suggest.The critiques stated early in the manifesto are clearly pointed toward things like prosperity gospel and mega-churches, not progressive voices in the church. Then there is this paragraph:

Holy people are not legalistic or judgmental. They do not pursue an exclusive, private state of being better than others. Holiness is not flawlessness but the fulfillment of God’s intention for us. The pursuit of holiness can never cease because love can never be exhausted.

I’m intrigued, and will try to keep an eye on this (apparently a book is coming out that was a result of the three-year process that produced the manifesto.) This can only be one of three things: 1) a document only addressed to people within their tradition, and none other, 2) a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing kind of thing - trying to look inclusive and progressive, while not really being so, or 3) a huge sea change. I’m betting on 1 and hoping on 3.

technorati tags: holiness, nazarene, church, christianity