This is something we’ve been doing the first of the month every month since January 1, 2005 . We always have fun and it’s great to make new friends in the community. For more information, call Ruth/Diane at 510-530-3099 or 510-504-2003 (cell).
Yesterday on the news and this morning in the Tribune there are reports about the most recent brouhaha around Farmer Joe's in the Dimond.
People are saying that the food is spoiled and well past the sell-date on the shelves of this local store in East Oakland. The article and some others point to a connection between these complaints and some Union related folks who have been pressuring employees of Farmer Joe's to do a card-check election in terms of unionizing the staff at this family-owned store.
1. I'm not an expert, or necessarily objective, so read my words with my disclaimer in your mind. I'll never be in a union - because there's no money to be made either in working as a pastor or in trying to unionize the pastor workforce! I find it suspect that this is coming up now when I have the impression that the Union forces are losing face in our neighborhood.
2. Famer Joe's is just the kind of business, along with others such as Paws & Claws, that will not only transform our Oakland neighborhoods but then also sustain the dynamic they help create.
3. I've shopped at Safeway - a union store - and noticed the difference. I'd disagree with the quotes in the article. Based on experience in the Dimond, the non-union store is definitely the way to go. Unless you like shopping for items and not finding them on emtpy shelves.
4. The Tams (owners of Farmer Joe's) work their butts off. Their staff is always courteous, helpful and kind. If they're being persecuted by the store owners it must be in some bizarre, Brave-New-World under-the-counter electric shock thing going on that zapps disgruntled employees without anyone - and I mean me - having ever noticed in my 80 or so trips to the store.
5. If you can't tell if a product is past its shelf-life, put on your glasses, learn to read, use your seeing-eye dog, or as a last resort actually ask the staff in the store - there to help you - for help in reading the very complicated labeling that our goverment ensures is used on food products for sale.
6. If you buy something that's rotten, take it back. Duh! That's what receipts are for. Don't call KTVU or KRON. Simply go to customer service. If it's not ripe....wait...nature works that way.
7. Fight the power. Shop Farmer Joe's. Let the union build their own grocery store!
8. If you don't believe me. Believe others. Check out their yelp review of Farmer Joe's.
9. This is a smear campaign, meant to bring down a quality business that is strengthening our (re)emerging neighborhood.
I'm relfecting on the Lectionary List Scriptures that we're using as our foundational word and invitation to relfection on the meaning of life, and our lives this coming Sunday, July 1st at Fruitvale Church in Oakland. We're lifting up the following 2 scriptures because of their commonalities. Psalm 77,:1-2, 11-20 & Luke 9:51-62. Jesus is talking about discipleship...what it costs to follow him, and what it looks like. I quickly thought of German Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his classic (and probably way-too-often quoted) comparison of cheap vs. costly grace (even if it is fantastically radical in terms of meaning-making in our 21st century lives and livelihoods).
Pslam 77 is the prayer-cry of someone facing deep fear, radical doubt, and extreme isolation. She cries out so that God will hear her. It's interesting that the prayer poem starts with verses focused on "I did this.." "I said this..." and then moves onto talking about God saying "you are.." "you will..." it then continues with comments in the 3rd person about how the universe responds "the clouds..." before conluding with an affirmation of faith about how God led the people through the sea, delivering them, guiding them to free, liberated life under the leadership of Moses and Aaron. The psalm-poem challenges the isolation felt by the depressed poet, inviting her to open her mind and world-view to recognize that she is part of something bigger, that her life is part of a chain, interdependent and connected to those that have lived before her (and who'll undoubtedly come after her). It's a freeing movement from the depravity of isolation to the meaning-making of community, from an experience of drifting chaos to one of centered rootedness, from me-centered to other-centered life.
In Luke 9:51-62 Jesus is confronted with different responses to who he is as a Jewish man, as well as by diverse reactions and interpretations of his call to discipleship. When the Samaritans, who were the racially excluded and oppressed victims of Jewish culture at that time (because they were viewed as hybrids - not in a good Prius-sort-of-way, but in an impure, traitorous, heretic way), reject Jesus, the latter's disciples want to reign down fire on them. They want to avenge this rejection through violence, subconsciously or maybe overtly wanting to perpetuate the genocidal/racist/elitists division and self-righteousness that they've grown up with through more violence in the hope of wiping the bad guys out. Jesus rebukes them (How? Interesting that the text doesn't say in v. 55). As they continue to journey along the road a fellow disciple/traveller announces proudly, "where you go Jesus I'll go too!" Jesus then sets about with some seemingly depressing and discouraging proclamations. Is Jesus trying to discourage his followers? Is he trying to weed out the losers? Is he anti-family in saying that you have to "let the dead bury the dead", not worrying about dying (or most likely alread long dead) family members, but rather follow him? What is he some sort of radical extremist karesh-styled cult-leader? I think that Jesus is actually unmasking the powers and excuses through a radicalized invitation. You can't have 2 masters. You can't have it both ways. You can't have it your way. You either follow or you don't. His response seems to be "Get over yourself and follow me!"
At first reading I'm a bit scandalized. I mean I want to be open, not tolerant for tolerance's sake, not open to keep all my options open, but open in the sense that I have to believe that just because I say it's true doesn't mean it's the Truth. I want to, and have committed to, follow Jesus with all of my life; yet I don't want that to imply a self-aggrandizing or self-righteous judgement of everyone else as lost, loser, or destined to burn in hell for all eternity. OK - so you say the scriptures might say that....but I'm not sure that they really do. Maybe I'm a product of my generation and culture....maybe I'm just a Bobo
Instead of community arising as a byproduct of rigid belief, people will return
to religious belief beacause of their desire for community. In other
words, people will return to religious tradition not necessarily because
they accept the truth of revelation, but precisely because the absence of
community and the transience of social ties in the secular world makes them
hungry for ritual and cultural tradition. They will help the poor or their
neighbors not because doctrine tells them they must, but rather because they
want to serve their community and find that faith-based organizations are
the most effective ways of doing so. They will repeat ancient prayers and
reenact age-old rituals not because they believe they were handed down by
God, but rather because they want their children to have proper values, and
because they want to enjoy the comfort of ritual and the sense of sahred
experience it brings. In a sense they will not be taking religion seriously
on its own terms. Religion becomes a source of ritual in a society that has
been stripped bare of ceremony, and thus a reasonable extension of the
natrual desire for social relatedness with which all human beings are born.
(pp. 242-243)
Checkout the book (Bobos in Paradise) at amazon.com or read author David Brook's Blog
I want to believe that we have choice, and yet no choice, that we have freedom and yet we have a deep need for ritual and rootedness in the past. Just because it's old it doesn't mean it's not good. Just because I want the freedom to choose doesn't mean that I think it's all about me - or that it every should be. It's a dialetic - both free to choose and not free not too choose. Reminds me of a quote from the Jewish Writings of the Fathers - the Pirke Avot 2:21,
"You are not obliged to complete the task,
Neither are you free to refrain from it."
I want to find community and both live in it and from it. For me community comes from faith, an invitation to move from me to we, from self-centered to other-focused, from radical consumer-oriented individualism to meaning-making and world-changing community. David Brooks' reflection is thought-provoking, yet I haven't choosen to participate in a faith community only in a search for community. For me Jesus said the same thing, but without the baggage that we've maybe collecteed by living in a time/culture/space stripped of ritual, meaning-making belief, and faith-based community."
Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him
because of the crowd. And [Jesus] was told, ‘Your mother and your
brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you.’ But [Jesus] said to
them, ‘My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do
it.’
Luke 8:19-21
A friend turned me on to this funny mechurch video below. It gives a funny glimpse of the me-focused extremes I'm talking about and the pseudo/psychotic faith that Jesus is trying to unmask in Luke 9 and inviting followers to get over through his challenging words.
I don't think Jesus is a radical extremist all-for-me-or-nothing cultish leader, rather I think he's a prophet of justice and righteousness calling us - still today - on our self-importance, self-absorption and belief that we can satisfy oursevles through our own independent actions, thoughts, and words.
I'm turned on to Brandi Carlile these days, in one song "The Story" she sings the following words that resonate deeply with the scriptures for Sunday -
You see these lines upon my face,
they tell you the story of who I am,
So many stories of where I've been
and how I got to where I am
But theses stories don't mean anything,
If you don't have anyone to tell them to,
You. I was made for you.
If life is a story...which in a sense is what we believe if Jesus is understood as the WORD of God spoken to the universe, to us,...then we are invited to listen to the story, to tell ours...to enter a dialogue focused not upon ourselves, but outside of ourselves...not because it's good for us...but because being in the dialogue is what makes sense of life, making meaning of our actions, words, relationships, work and rest.
God said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord isabout to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting
mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in
the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the
earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire;
and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped
his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then
there came a voice to him that said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ (11-13)
Pour out your Spirit upon us
and upon this water,
that this font may be your womb of new birth.
May all who now pass through these waters
be delivered from death to life,
from bondage to freedom,
from sin to righteousness.
Bind them to the household of faith,
guard them from all evil.
Strenthen them to serve you with joy
until the day you make all things new.
To you be all praise, honor, and glory;
through Jesus Christ our Savior,
who, with you and the Holy Spirit,
lives and reigns forever.
Amen.
is true?
Postmodern Musings
“Postmodernism
is incredulity towards metanarratives.”
- Jean-François Lyotard
The past weeks at our church I've been teaching and talking about reading the Bible. Is is still worth it? How do we read it? How do we understand what the message or messages is/are that it declares? Is it true? Can we claim that it is?
This past Sunday I talked about truth....using the above quote from Jean-François Lyotard who many might consider to be the father-figure of the notion of 'postmodernism' since he was one of the first to have the courage to attempt a definition of it. For him, postmodernism is the suspicion of and disbelief in “big stories” (metanarratives). The central tension for him is between science and narratives. The question of the relation between modernity and postmodernity revolves around the issue of LEGITIMATION. Modernity, then, appeals to science to legitimate its claim – and by “science” we simply mean the notion of a universal, autonomous reason. Science, then, is opposed to narrative, which attempts not to prove its claims but rather to proclaim them within a story. Narrative knowledge is grounded in the custom of a culture and, as such, does not require legitimation. Lyotard says that scientific knowledge, which considered itself to be a triumph over narrative knowledge, covertly grounds itself in a narrative (or orginary myth). Science says its legitimate because of REASON – a supposedly universal criterion. The appeal to reason as the criterion for what constitutes knowledge is but one more language game among many, shaped by founding beliefs or commitments that determine what constitutes knowledge within the game; reason is grounded in myth. What characterizes the postmodern condition, then, is not a rejection of grand stories in terms of scope or in the sense of epic claims, but rather an unveiling of the fact that all knowledge is rooted in some narrative or myth.
In other words there can be no such thing as objective knowledge.
What then are the implications for faith
- in particular the Christian faith I (and maybe you too) subscribe to?
Because the church values narrative, it values story and the way in which stories are told through signs and symbols (such as water, bread, wine, oil, sand, fire, wind, and the cross). The arts will need to be more valued as an incarnational medium that embodies the story of God’s faithfulness. The church need to be characterized by hospitality, inviting the world to hear the story as we live the story for the world.
As I think about this here are some
questions to ponder, reflect upon & discuss (online if you like!)
→We have to ask ourselves what is the metanarrative that we as people of faith, or as church communities, lift up as our identity, purpose, and unity?
→Does our story living support our story telling?
→How does it change our understanding of the Jesus as the truth, the way, and the life (John 14:6) if we also subscribe to the implications of Lyotard's (and others') opinion that no truth, or explanation of origin, is objectively true, or demonstratable in an undeniably proof-able way?
→Does the implications of this thought mean that people of faith are simply more ignorant than others?; or that faith is as equally as valid as a meta-narrative to base one's life upon as the theory of evolution, atheism, or maybe the idea that the world of Harry Potter is the true universe we're supposed to live in?
A lot of the synthesis of my thoughts are results of my reading of a great little book called Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? by James K. A. Smith
Presbyterian Church, the faith community I serve as pastor, you may have noticed some recent construction and changes. On Rhoda Ave. (near the church) the city of Oakland added some speed bumps last week. Check out the photos if you like. Arthur White, a neighbor of our church, and the ringleader for the Rhoda Ave. Neighborhood Watch Group that meets regularly in our church space succeeded in a communal block effort to get some speedbumps on their block of Rhoda in order to slow things down. Kudos to him 
and everyone who worked for so long! Who would have thought that it would take nearly 2 years to get two street-width piles of striped asphalt installed. Thanks for the perseverance and good humor! Plus it looks great!
Jesus is invited to a meal by an at-first un-named Pharisee Simon, undoubtedly eager to learn more by having a tete-a-tete with the great teacher to discuss his questions. He invites his friends to join the celebration. While they eat an un-named lady enters the house, sits behind Jesus and starts washing and cleaning his feet (what Simon or his servants should have done to welcome the special dinner guest) with her tears, hair and ointment in an expensive alabaster jar. Only women of the street would most likely carry such ointment around for professional use. And everyone at the dinner party seems to not only know who she is but what she does. They mutter to themselves their disapproval and disappointment in Jesus who seemed to be a prophet, but must not be since he's too dense to realize what's happening and who this woman is and then to let her touch him in public. Prophets are always in control of what's happening, not victims of circumstance.
Ironically Jesus responds to the muttering and negativity with a parable story, told to Simon and his friends, although Jesus seems to be looking at the woman. It's meant not for her but for them. Both debtors are in debt to the creditor. It's the creditor who takes the initative, pardonning both debts, giving new life to both of his own free accord. So who then will, or should, be the most grateful?
Do they get it? Jesus asks Simon some interpretive questions, seeking to open his eyes to the transformative meaning of the parable - all of us are debtors, equally wether we think we're more reighteous, more equal, more pure, more "good" than others, or not. For those of Jesus' day it was about keeping the law of God without failure, about what you did (prostitutes and tax collectors weren't in the 'in' crowd). Righteousness, or favor from God, was often about race, gender, ethnicity and socio-economic status. Jesus challenges such stereotypes about who is "in" with God and who is "out." I think Simon got the parable, the implication that he too was a debtor before God just like the woman, just like all of us. But his dinner guests....seems to be another story.
Jesus pushes their buttons by saying that the woman's debts (sins) are forgiven because of her love and faith. WHAT? Only God can do that. Who is this uppity carpenter turned teacher from Nazareth, they most likely mutter to themselves. I find myself wondering....WHAT? I thought that the Biblical vision of Salvation was about Grace...a gift freely given by God, by faith alone. Jesus seems to imply that the woman is saved, forgiven, made new because of her actions....that she earned God's love.
Like all of the gospel - it has a message inviting a transforming response to the original hearers (destinatairs) of the word, to the early church for which the gospels were written down, and then also for us today. How is it that the parable is opening my eyes - our eyes - to the way that we treat others, the way that we might assume that we are more loved by God, or even more worthy of God's love - of who is in the "in" crowd and who is "outside?" Maybe our actions are more important than we seem to admit in our Reformed tradition...maybe her faith was already present well before she came to the house (why else would she seek out Jesus like she did, ready with the ointment, tears on the verge of flowing?) So maybe in a sense her actions are simply her visible demonstration of her acceptance of God's grace, power of love, resurrection-giving forgivness and inclusion in her life, which happened long before she bust into this dinner party. In Christian circles we talk a lot about faith alone, about the impossiblity to earn God's love which we can only receive. In non-Christian circles often there is talk that we don't have to earn love, that we all deserve it; we don't have to receive forgiveness, we're already all-right. Yet maybe both sides are off. It doesn't seem to me that we're all-right. When I look at the world I see that we seem to be lost, and lost in even more radical ways thanks to our industrial powers, technological developments, and penchant for warfare, jealousy, and violence. Oftentimes it seems that people of Christian faith talk a lot about salvation, faith, inclusion and grace...yet their actions don't communicate the same message.
Something I read basically said that, forgivness is received, should provoke in us a love of the other, of our neighbor, that such inward trasnformation can only be translated and communicated through outward action.
What do you hear in the scriptures? What does such a message of love, hope, forgiveness and grace mean when we'll gather for Christian worship on Father's Day - a day in which we celebrate Fathers...yet many of us cringe at the thought of celebrating relationships that are non-existant or possibly the opposite of what Jesus is talking about at this dinner party?
the title of a book by sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, who defines Liquid Modernity as the condition of a society that lacks a clear sense of orientation, or the kind of stability that dervies from a long-standing tradition or set of norms. He claims that the culture of New Economy America is characterized by speed, fluidity, and transicence - in short - obsessive change. Being modern in this context means always being under construction, living life like a perpetual game of musical chairs. (my version of p. 15 in the book)
I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.
So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
I was returning from Berekely to Oakland on Tuesday and drove up Ashby and then down the 24 to downtown to get there. As I slowed at the light at Hiller Drive I was blessed with a surprisingly beautiful view of the bay all the way out through the Golden Gate Bridge. It's not that I didn't know that view was here...but it was as if I'd forgotten. The fog has been thick recently I told myself. Then I realized that I just don't ever see the bay. I live and work in East Oakland at the foot of the hills. So I don't usually see the bay, across to the city and up to Marin. My perspective is shaped by the space I live, work, and move in and through. I had to laugh at myself for it seems that in my busyness, concentration, and daily routine, I simply forget where I live, how amazingly beautiful it is and how diverse the landscape - both urban and natural - is. It got me thinking...
In reading some news articles since then I can't help but keep thinking about perspective...my lack of it even when I long for it. Our world is shrinking, Thomas Friedman would say it's flattening even faster through the forces of globalization. The slow food and green movements invite us to grab some perspective, to realize how much fossil fuel is used in order for us to drink the carbonated water from Northern Italy or to eat ripe tomatoes grown in Chile. I'm all for that. Yet our world has changed. Globalization has transformed everything. We need each other in order to produce, consume and move forward. Now I'm not a flag-waving capitalist, but when I read and studied Friedman's book The World Is Flat last year in a group my in-the-closet-socialist perspective was significanlty tweaked (except in terms of health care).
We can't choose to flee the fear of terrorists and Al-Qaeda by burying our heads in the sand of Isolationism like we did before Pear Harbor in the 40s. We can't simply keep ourselves safe from our 9/11-based fears of Islamic Fundamentalism by refusing residency to immigrants who may have used fake papers or guest workers who want to earn money picking the crops of the Central Valley when no one else is lining up to do it. We can't expect American Companies, in particular in Silicon Valley to thrive and excel if we refuse and radically limit the visas that we'll be given to tech workers and innovators from Bejing and Bangalore (among many other places). We can't rally around some fantasy-based monolingual vision of the righteous purity of the glory days of our past by insisting that English be our official language, while the majority of people living on our shared planet are not only bilingual but multi-lingual. We can't simply keep starting wars with whatever country or ethnic group seems to be a potential harbor or safeground for terrorist networks to work within and spread from...if so we'll soon be fighting not only in Iraq and Afghanistan but also in Indonesia, England, Germany and Spain. We can't base our decision-making merely on the repetitive choice of what is familar, not scary or threatening, or vote-getting.
It seems like we're losing perspective as a larger community, in terms of what we're afraid of, what and who we have faith in, and what foolishness we'll let be the foundation of our decision-making. Maybe it's like my loss of perspective living at the cross-section of the flatlands and the hills here in Oakland. I spend most of time in the place(s) that is and are familiar, comfortable and experientially rote. Of course my perspective is tweaked because it's limited by my repeated choice to walk (or drive) the same path and by necessity. But it doesn't have to be. In fact it can't stay that way. Why do we so often let the little picture, our short-term fears, or the details not only influence but shape our bigger persepective and larger world-view. It's like we're trying to find our way by looking at the pepples underneath or feet instead of looking ahead to where the path is going. As a person of faith practicing my own in the context of a Christian Community I find that often I'm frustrated with the church for losing perspective, for choosing the familiar, harkening back to supposed glory days out of fear of the changing world in which we are and a lack of faith that God will - and maybe already has - prepared ways for transformation, meaningful purpose, and new ways of being together in community. The church community seems to base her decision-making process on fear of the future, faith in some sort of vague dream of better days, times and things that can be preserved and re-discovered by keeping ourselves pure, untainted and stuck in the familiar of old hymns, cookie cutter liturgies and comfortable programming. Faith - according to the book of Hebrews - is "being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." (11:1) Or as Eugene Peterson translates it "The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It's our handle on what we can't see. The act of faith is what distinguished our ancestors, set them above the crowd." I'd much rather have faith and trust be the foundation of my decision-making than fear and the familiar.
I think about my
Here's some of the reading I've done these past days that influenced some of my thinking...
"A divisive declaration of official English" (SF Gate 6/6/7)
"Anger over visa provision in bill" (SF Gate 6/7/7)
"Immigration Bill survives in Senate" (SF Gate 6/7/7)
"Beyond Bush. What the world needs is an open, confident America" (Newsweek 6/11/7)
The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman
Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire by Morris Berrman
The Church in Transition by Tim Conder
work. They also stole the IMac Laptops from the school's computer lab. I went by the school this mornign. If you can help this local Oakland Unified School please contact the school office asking either for acting Principal Ruben Aurelio or Charlotte Bremond. If you know anyone who works for Apple or other computer companies that might be able to help this struggling local school with donations of computers or other help please refer them to the school.Crawford, Texas (AP) May 23, 2007 
A tragic flood this morning destroyed the personal library of President George W. Bush. The flood began in the presidential bathroom where both of the books were kept. Both of the books have been lost. A presidential spokesperson said the president was devastated, as he had almost finished coloring the second one. The White House tried to call FEMA, but there was no answer.
Couldn't resist posting this ... thanks to Nanni for the laugh.
This is something we've been doing the first of the month every month since January 1, 2005. We always have fun and it's great to make new friends in the community. For more information, call 510-530-3099 or 510-504-2003 (cell). Feel free to forward this to anyone you think might be interested.
