us block parties already planned, but you can also plan your own.
The Oakland Tribune also has an article entitled "Pigging Out at Hogwarts," which is helpful is you're planning on reading all night once you get your copy at midnight and will eventually need to refuel to finish the book before dawn.
Preaching at a wedding this past weekend I referenced a book review that I recently read on SFGate. The article is called "Here Comes the Bill" talking about the recently purblished book "One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding" by Rebecca Mead.
The ideas of the book made for a great introduction in the sermon...reflections on the modern American Wedding and the myths that we have been fed by corporate America over the past 100 years in regards to what constitutes and what doesn't make a traditional wedding.
Every Saturday in July there are an average of 11,00o weddings in America, which cost an average of $27,852 (which equals 8 months of the median salary in our country).
The author of the book, Mead, has an interesting theory about modern American weddings:
"Overblown weddings result from a couple's feeling of emptiness; there's a void at the center of the ceremony that needs to be filled. With the decline in relgious authority, she argues, a wedding no longer has the meaning it once did. With more people delaying marriage until they're older, it no longer marks the transition from childhood to adulthood as it once did. Many people live on their own before getting married, have had sex before marriage and may even have children togther - or from other relationships. The wedding itself, then, becomes the 'traumatic experience' to overcome. The survivial of self-imposed financial hardships and unrealistic expectations becomes the rite of passage. And thanks to our willingness to accede to a consumer-oriented society with its "I buy therefore I am" mantra, wedding planners, gown sellers and travel agents offer therapy. We purchase - things or experiences - to make ourvselves feel emotionally whole."
Shocking words...is it a sign of the decline of our civilzation - like I wrote of yesterday about the decline of reading among youth? Is it a call for a Re-Christianization of America? Is it a call to overthrow the shackling cultural propoganda diffused subversively by corporate America into our values, ethics, and worldviews?
As I reflect on the article, the wedding this past weekend (in which the scripture was Luke12:22-34 - Jesus saying, "Do not worry about what you'll eat, wear or where you'll live. Consider the flowers of the fields, the birds of the air. If God cares for them, won't God care for you who are created in God's image?" I suspect many couples spend so much time worrying about the small details, that they miss out on the whole meaning-making experience of being wed publicly with family, friends and one's community present as witnesses. The writers of the New Testament often write about the Christian Church as the Bride of Christ, articulating the mystery that somehow through Christ and his resurrection, we as part of the community of believers are united - or married - to God in a mystical and real union. I can't help wondering if in our rush to copy what we see in Martha Stewart Weddings or on E! we've settled for becoming Bridezilla instead of dreaming of being the Bride of Christ?
My worldview and belief system form my perspective that God's presence, purpose and passion are at the root, foundation, and the force that brings us together in all relationships - married or not. What does it mean if we're empty at the core? If the major meaning-making events/experiences in life (not just weddings, but births, death, major life transitions) are simply becoming opportune times for us to purchase this or that item in order to satisfy what we can't fill within oursevles and our lives?
I enjoyed a great article on SFGate this morning: "Kids reading fewer books despite Harry Potter hoopla" Read the entire article here.
Here's some of the excerpts I found poignant:
"We seem to be doing better than ever at teaching younger kids to read, but when kids enter adolescence, their reading - and reading ability - falls off. The power of the electronic, commercial entertainment media seems to be taking teenagers away from reading."
also
"While some experts worry that a drop-off in reading is an early warning sign of a culture in collapse, others interpret the results as part of a general shift toward electronic-based commnications, which will simply require new ways of measuring potential. 'You have to be careful when you say kids are reading less,' says Michael Kamil, a professor of education at Staford University. 'It doesn't mean they are incapable of reading. It means they choose to do other things instead.'"
It made me think:
1. Have the new medias and new techonologies available to us transformed the way we communicate in such a way, or to such an extent, that we can't go back? Is it all for good? Or is it a mixed bag? Maybe we are reading more - yet differently. Is it about quanity or quality? How do we quantify literacy in an image-based culture in which we spoon fed 30 second bits of information so that we don't change the channel, turn the page, or lose our attention?
2. What does it mean that children (those most immersed in our new communicative culture) read less and less? Is that a sign of the decay, decline and iminent destruction of our culture/society? Or is it an indicator/consequence of a radical worldview shift? Are we shifting back to some dark ages cultural world in which the priveleged (maybe in the future based on intelligence and reading capability) will rule the world in a big-brother-Brave-New-World sort of way?
3. What does this mean for the way we relate and communicate with each other? I've blogged a lot this past week about communication....are we struggling to communicate (an inalienable part of the human condition I believe) in new and particular ways because of the media shift that's emerging and already partially happened? Are we still fully human if we communicate principally and primarily via technology-enhanced means? It's like email converstaion...it's great! Helpful. Efficient. Fast. But I don't believe it can replace face to face conversations, dialogues and communication. I think it enhances it...but only in a complimentary not a sustitutionary way. Does it make us more passive and reactionary than active and participatory?
4. Specifically what does this shift mean for the way tha we relate and communicate with each other in the context of Christian community, in particular a local church? Here's an example: My daughter received her wildest-dream-come-true present for her birthday recently - Bella Dancerella. If you have no idea what Bella Dancerella is let me bring you up to speed. It's an example or incarnation of what the new media/technology are doing to our communicative reality. Basically it's a DVD dance class. It comes with all the goods - a ballet bar, some dance steps on a nifty plastic carpet (different carpets for different ballets) and some DVDs of Bella - the best ballet dancer (according to her)...who dances her way through swan lake while teaching the watcher the moves. Basically it's a dance class that you don't have to leave home to do. It's a dance community of like-minded friends that are all virtual. And Bella is also an expert at cheerleading, tap, hip-hop, you-name-it, she'll teach it to you in the safety, comfort and isolation of your own home. Here's a youtube clip I uploaded to give you a taste of what it's like.
It's a good thing. I love it. My kids adore it. Yet what does it mean? Are we headed towards some radical sci-fi futuristic imagined reality becoming what we live here and now? Will the future resemble somthing like the school scene in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure where the learning, teaching, and classroom setting are virtual? For education it is actually amazing - the new seemingly limitless opportunities. But what would that mean for things in which community - being with other people - is foundation, paramount and the raison d'etre? I think of Christian Worship - a time and a space in which we gather in community because our common faith gathers us together. Can you gather in such a way through virtual community? Does that cheapen the experience? Are we fooling ourselves into accepting the isolation that most of us seem to constantly be running from in our modern urban life? And what will happen to our gathering "worship" or "church" in which we gather around and are primarily gathered by a written text? Should I be circulating my resume or be enrolling in more programming classes so that I can create my own Pastor-Dancerella type worship videos that can be streamed live to every ipod/mp3 player and iphone in my parish neighborhood? Church isn't a spectator sport. You can't watch it, download it, or observe it. You have to participate in it. So what will the future hold?
other stronger through their mutual growth, giving and receiving of strength. The redwood tree is a perfect icon/image of community and what Jesus is trying to teach us even today through the Parable of the Samaritan. The same question is asked of us today..."Who is our neighbor?" In an era in which our neighbors might be those that have lived here forever, or those that can afford a skyrocket high mortage, or those that are stuck in the same economic circumstances that we are it's easy to feel like we don't have a choice in who our neighbors are. Yet it's not just about fences and property lines. Who do weconsider your community? Is it just those that share ouropinions, beliefs, worldview, ethnic backgrounds? Or is it something different? How do we treat our neighbors? Is our faith or are our 'basic values' evident in how we talk with, act alongside, relate with, and live alongside those who are our neighbors?
a" experience. As usual the crowd at the last stoplight was thick. When I finally got onto the on-ramp I was side by side with another car. They were in front of me, so obviously (to me at least) they should pass in front of me in the merge. They hesitated and I looked over and made eye-contact with the driver, waving him forward ahead of me. As he merged and sped ahead I saw his right hand reach up into the air. Suddenly I was pissed, expecting to see him flip me off - yet what he did was wave generously his gratitude for our merging encounter. I had expected a rejection, and yet the wave seemed to be an invitation to dialogue and relationship. It got me reflecting on urban life, communication, the Harry Potter Movie I'd just come from and some of the recent sharing around "communication" on the blog.
even physical abuse. She's interested foremost and entirely in achieving the results she expects, not in any way in the people she's been called to serve or with whom she lives, works, and exists. Having never shown compassion, humility or any desire for relationship, she falls - rather is taken down violently - by the children of the school when they get the chance to overthrow the shackles of her egomaniac power regime. At the end of the film she mutters to herself, "I hate children." It's in her downfall that we discover the foundation of her self-righteous, persecution-based, power-tripping: she doesn't really care about anyone, she cares only for what she perceives as "order", the "common good," and that things return to the way that they've been, the way that they should always be. She has no interest in relationship. She has no relationships. She - having taken over the school community - has neither an intellectual idea of what community is nor an experience of community.
destructive, and out-to-lunch in terms of the post-modern organically connectional world in which we live (and it is) it's based upon his notion that there can only be one relationship format in the world Christian Community. It has to be based upon the primacy of the Catholic Church. That's what legitmizes his power, place, and purpose. So how can he say that and at the same time seem to place such emphasis on relationships with other Christian Communities, the community of Islam, and other religious contexts? Can he really be in relationship with others that he treats as objects, while demanding that he and the Catholic Church be the subject of and in everything. A good sumamry article is on sf gate "Pope: other Christians Not True Churches"
Thou" way when I had expected the opposite. Maybe we all have that expectation. Someone in one of the communities in which I live has several times told me to "F*%@ Off" whenever I had a different opinion than them, or asserted my own opinion. That person has no desire to be in relationship with me. In fact they're the closest thing I know to Dolores Umbridge in the flesh - a person with no relationships with anyone except themselves. Maybe that's what we're use to in our urban life in which we have to react before we're treated badly, assert our will before we steam-rolled by others, flip off that driver in the other car before they flip us off - or worse pull out a gun. Maybe we're communicationally-challenged because we often don't know what we most long to have: relationships, living in an "I and Thou" sort-of-community.If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a
noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your
soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as
yourself.’ Luke 10:27
"Communication is a miracle."
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a
noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and
understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as
to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all
my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not
have love, I gain nothing.
Yesterday I had a great conversation after church with some friends about doing what God asks. First of all it's hard enough to know what God wants, or as some recently have said to know "What Would Jesus Do?" But these passages seem to point to a God that wants us to participate, to act, to be involved, to offer our testimony - not in some lone ranger sort-of-way, but submitted, informed, formed, sent out. We talked yesterday about WWJD? That in the end the real point is not what Jesus did but rather What Will You/We Do? We have to know the story, claim the testimony of those who've gone before us, for ourselves...and then speak, act, relate, and live from the underlying truth, ethic, and praxis. Jesus never waited in line for an IPhone, lost friends in a drive by gang-related shooting, or crossed a picket line to buy his groceries....so how do we decide and discern how we will live and act from the deep truth that we know in our relationship with Christ?
Not sure how to preach on this, how to present it on Sunday in a way that's both experiential and revelatory, participatory and reflective. Any thoughts?
In my email reading this morning I learned about multiple shootings - most likely gang related - that happened at Fairfax and High Streets in East Oakland this past Saturday. At our place we hear loud bangs - seemingly fireworks - all night long these days. But that might not be the case. You can read about the shootings online in an Oakland Tribune Article Here
One note I read posted to a community website talked about the irony that if the shootings that happend in Maxwell Park (and happen in the Laurel and Dimond at times) were happening in Rockridge, the Oakland Hills, or Montclair (where property values are much higher - and the related socio-economic consequences of that situation) police/city action would be happening at a quicker or more effective rate. I'm not meaning to slander anyone, merely being the messenger of an observation which often seems to be fairly accurate. A response posted encouraged folks to contact our Oakland representatives, to ask for more effective police action - whether that's by email, phone calls, letter or by actually going in person to a City Council Meeting. Here's a link to help you know how to contact the official(s) that represent you.
