A Week In - or at least Around - Paris

My wife and I snuck off last week for 7 days in Paris visiting friends. Here's a quick slideshow of a few pictures of people, events, and places around Paris, Rueil-Malmaison, Poissy and St. Germain-en-Laye. We were lucky 7 days of beautiful sun - with nearly warm weather - and the beginning of spring.

Here's my highlights (in no particular order):

1. Hanging out around Montparnasse (my favorite Paris area!)
2. Eating Couscous in Montparnasse
3. The Coq au Vin I ate...mmmmm.
4. Spending a whole day with the most faithful follower of Jesus that I know.
5. Playing "mouchoirs" with my newest friends Hannah and Louise
6. Seeing Ianis - our godson
7. Discovering Poissy and worshipping with friends at the ERF there.
8. An amazing all cheese all wine apperatif dinner in St. Germain-en-Laye.
9. Seeing, hearing and talking about Obama everywhere - an entry to come.
10. Shopping in 2 of my favorite French stores Celio and FNAC!

Link that makes you want to get busy with InDesign

Corndog sent me a link to this fun video entitle "Animator vs. Animation."
Made me want to become a designer.

Faith in the Global Market Place of a PostModern World

Good friend Ryan passed on a tip about an interesting article that appeared in yesterday's Oakland Tribune. "US faith market proving volatile" It points to what another friend and I were discussing yesterday, talking about the ways in which the Presbyterian Church (USA) is failing to really face the challenges before us. Instead of acknowledging the rapid paced growth, radically transformed desires, and technologically uber-enhanced emerging forms of communication, we seem to focus on polarizing cries regarding doctrine & dogma to rally the troups around the flag-pole in order to fight with, or against, our brothers and sisters. OK - so maybe I come across as a modernist liberal. Yet I'm not really. I think it's more about being a present participant in the emerging semi-worldwide - postmodern worldview and experience.

Here's an excerpt that I found poignant:
"The survey found Americans freely changing their religious identities. Forty-four percent of American adults have left the religions or denominations in which they were raised. Some have found new faiths, some remain religious but have no affiliation, and some have abandoned religious belief as well as practice.

People who believe without belonging have become one of the largest groups in the religious landscape. More than 16 percent of Americans say they are religious, but don't identify with any particular faith group....

"One thing this study shows for me is that people are starting to see religion in a marketplace framework," said Jim Donahue, president of Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union.

"Once you see it as a marketplace, market principles apply. People are shopping around. It underscores America as a voluntaristic society."

The shift among faiths is the most brisk among those younger than 30, who are more likely to change affiliation across faith traditions compared to older believers."

We seem to be a church, at least in the PC(USA), that remains committed - or stuck - in our ways of doing leadership, discernment, and decision-making. We look to those that are established, experienced, and thus necessarily with vested-interests in preserving the familiar forms of institutions in order to ensure pensions, etc. Makes me think of the primary battle between Hillary and Obama, which has been cast as a choice between experience and hope/change. If you've read monteskewed before you'll know that I support Obama because of something he said, "We want to change the system we live in and expect that someone issued from that system can do it. It just can't happen." I think that the same thing is going down with Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow who is running for moderator of the PC(USA) this year. I have to wonder, do we - in the church - really want change, not for change's sake, but in order to authentically and organically lives as witnesses to the faith we profess today?

Blogging Towards Sunday
March 2, 2008

John 9:1-41

I can visual the story unfolding as I read it. That's part of the power of John's story telling. I'm struck by the challenge of the narrative. What am I like? How do we live out our faith as a community? Do we live as healers, affirming the life-changing, sustaining, and giving power of faith in Christ? Or do we live as something else? As I look around I hear much of the church community - in the larger sense of the world - viewed as polarizing, dogmatizing, and doctrine-focused as opposed to justice-doing, community-making, and faith-building through diverse actions and commitments to healing. So often our church institutions become focused more on sin than faith, seemingly interested in polarization and division rather than wholeness and life in a new community around the One that makes all things new.

A great article I found on this week's page of textweek.com asks some great questions.

"As a folk healer, Jesus restored meaning to people’s lives...
Are we engaged in life-giving or death-dealing deeds?
Are we restoring meaning to life, or robbing it of the meaning intended by the Creator?"

Read the whole thing HERE.

Faith isn't about rigid observance or rules or rituals. Jesus affirms this in his absolute rejection between the historically suspected link between sin and physical disability. Jesus challenges and subverts the religio-cultural affirmations of his time, culture and day by asserting that there is a randomness or otherness to disability, decay, or a lack of physical wholeness. Where the religious leaders of his day see a strict fundamentalistic interpretation of the Word of God, Jesus paints a portrait of faith that frees, liberates, renews life in a radically new way. It's a challenge for us in our practice of faith as individual followers and as a community of disciples. How is our faith impacting us and our world? To what to we attach our faith? Is it to elements that constrain and limit our human-ness, or that free us to be wholly for and of God's goodness? Another great article on textweek by William Loader highlights some of these questions posed by the text.

As I studied this text the song "The Gentle Healer" by Michael Card kept playing in my mind. Here's a version of it from youtube.com

Do We Take Play Seriously?
i'm trying my best.

I'm off for a week of vacation. I heard about a great article in the NY Times Magazine today about play, how we do it, and asking if we do enough of it. Worth the read - even on vacation.

ARTICLE

Blogging Towards Sunday
February 17, 2008
The Second Sunday of Lent
Genesis 12:1-5
John 3:1-17

OK - hard to write about these passages as the Genesis 12 selection is one of my top three favorite passages from the entire Bible. If you ask me what Bible story represents or embodies my life and calling it's - Genesis 12:1-5.

We are challenged to live lives of faith as Abram and Sarah - visionary, daring, hopeful, active, stepping out. They were most likely rich and content in their lives in ancient Mesoptamia. But God called them to step out, to dare to dream of more, to live differently, to not settle for the 'traditional' way of knowing God and being known by God. So they left the world of ziggurats and sacrifices behind to discover and follow a God that encountered them in the darkness of the desert night, at the table as unexpected visitors and as a voice in the thicket providing a ram. For me it's what faith is all about - leaving our 'homelands' behind to become sojourners, traveling, longing and lookng for a better home, a wider country, a more real experience of life.

Nicodemus in John 3 is looking for that - I think - but he's too timid, reserved, calculating, careful to be able to recognize it when it comes knocking and to embrace it without proof. He comes to check out Jesus in the dark, at night, when no one can see him, catch him in the act, or prove that he's cohorting with the potential ennemy. Yet he's also too excited, to interested, to empassioned to not check out this Jesus guy that everyone is talking about so much.

How much in our lives do we settle for the calculated and careful instead of risking the daring and dangerous invitation to set out, to find a new country, to live as sojourners in a foreign land - calling the living God our home as opposed to our familiar traditions, stereotypes and suspicions. This is the crux or the foundational question of human existence. Who are we? Who is God? Who then shall we live in response to our answers to those 2 questions? Do we settle or do we strike out? It's not just that black and white, and yet it is.

The whole thing makes me think of the current fighting about illegal immigration as well as the remarkable movie "A Day Without a Mexican" The film basically confronts the questions about immigration/xenophobia/fear/global economy by positing what a day would look like in our country, specifically California if there were no latino immigrants. Basically everything falls apart. I think a lot of times our reaction to issues - at least what the political parties are really saying - plays up and to our fears of losing our place, of uncertainty, of anxiety about what will happen. (Online views of John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama) We run away from the future, hiding our heads in the sands of a preconceived subjectively remembered past, as opposed to embracing a new, emerging future, shaping it and allowing God's leading in it to shape us.

Makes me think of well as Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow who is running - I mean standing - for moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA). He's getting a lot of flak, from folks saying that a 2.0 moderator should basically be more like Nicodemus than dare to live as Abram and Sarah. Granted Nicodemus came around in the end (check out John ) but we live in such a time that we are called to step out in faith - bringing our past- tradition - whatever you want to call it - with us but leaving for a new place, unchartered territory - a promised land. Learn more about Bruce over on his blog www.mod.reyes-chow.com

Happy Lunar New Year! Gong Hay Fat Choy!

I was unable to attend the celebration in the Laurel this morning and missed the lion dancer at Farmer Joe's this afternoon. BUT - Tim Chapman did capture it all with his camera and post it to the Dimond Weblink if you want to check it out! HERE. Also more photos over at Farmer Joe's and Friends.

123 Book Meme

I was tagged yesterday by Leslie in an online blog game in which the rules are:

1. Grab the nearest book of 123 pages or more.
2. Open it to page 123.
3. Find the first 5 sentences and write them down.
4. Then invite 5 friends to do the same.

If you'd like to learn more about 123 Book Meme, Bruce recommended some online reading Blog Meme from the Quixtar Blog.

So here's mine. The nearest book on my bedside table is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. Page 123:

"But 'locally grown' is a denomination whose meaning is incorruptible.
Sparing the transportation fuel, packaging, and unhealthy additives is a compelling part of the story, but the plot goes beyond that.
Local food is a handshake deal in a community gathering place.
It involves farmers with first names, who show up week after week.
It means an open-door policy on the fields, where neighborhood buyers are welcome to come have a look, and pick their food from the vine."

OK - couldn't resist - the 6th sentence (end of chapter) is:
"Local is farmers growing trust."

I tag Sharyl, Corn Dog, Karl, Matt Edminster, and the Kapics.

Thinking Globally Acting Locally
Nominees for Local Hero 2008
for Oakland's District 4

Check out the nominees for this year's local heroes - includes a photo and short description of them and their local work. Online at Jean Quan's website HERE.

JUNO
when does a joke go too far?
when do we begin to let Hollywood
assume our responsibilities?

An article in the San Francisco Chronicle this morning ("'Juno' joke on adoption upsets parents, teens") got me thinking. This is one of the best movies (ok one of the few I've seen in the theatre in these last few months) I seen in the past year. It was real, authentic, messy, dirty, down-to-earth. It dwelt with remarkably difficult themes (teenage pregnancy-love-divorce-adoption-acceptance) in a way that wasn't trite, didn't involve a light saber, or even had Bruce Willis save the day. The article talks about some criticism of the movie for a line about adoptions and China. Now the joke isn't the most PC, or humanly thoughtful comment. Yet it was something that a regular teenager would say to a friend in a moment of real-life as opposed to a policy-motivated statement that the Surgeon General should include in his report on teenage pregnancy.

I found myself wondering where we draw the line between humor and instruction, between when a joke goes too far and when we start to expect others (in particular our modern, capitalist-based media houses) to raise and educate our children. Read the article. It's good. I tried to find the clip that they talk of, but I suspect that Youtube has already purged it due to pressure. If you know where it is post the address in the comments box. Here's the trailer for the movie.

Who are WE?

In ran across some thoughtful articles in this week's edition of Newsweek that dialogue with the themes of temptation, brokenness, cubism and practice that emerged for me in studying and preaching last week. They lift up the reality that we see what we don't see and don't see what we see. (Words that were used in our prayer of confession in worship at Fruitvale Church last Sunday).

Here's the words of the prayer.

Confession of Sin & the Sin of our World

People: God of Mercy, you created the world in perfect order, gifting us with all we need to live in joy and happiness. In our sin and brokenness we turn away from you, losing our way, spoiling your creation. We chase after our petty needs and our needy pettiness. We focus our hearts on ourselves instead of you, putting you and each other in a box. Blinded by our self-centeredness we fail to see the injustice we perpetuate, the needy at our doorstep, the destruction and division that we enable, and we fail to see just how much we see. In your grace-full mercy God of Life, make us whole, bring us to new life, that we may see as you see and respond as you have in Christ your Son. Amen.

Here's the two articles from Newsweek

I'm Not Who You Think I Am

The Secret Haters (different but still a propos).

Spiritual Practices

growing your faith through daily practice

Throughout Lent I'm working to encourage folks to not 'give something up' but rather to "take something on" - a new practice, new discipline, new openness to God's presence in our world. So each week I'll post a spiritual discipline on the blog (it's also in our weekly bulletin at church) for you to try out if you like. Tell me how and if it works for you!

The Jesus Prayer

This is one of the most famous prayers in the history of Christianity. You will find a version of it in the Gospel of Luke in the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector (18: 13 ) . Jesus praised the tax collector for humbling himself in prayer, saying, "God, be mer­ciful to me, a sinner!" Christians later expanded the prayer to "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." In the Gospel of Mark, blind Bartimaeus cries out to Jesus, "Son of David, have mercy on me" (Mark 10:47). Orthodox Christians in the Middle Ages popularized this prayer, believing that the name of Jesus was a source of power and grace leading to a state of inner silence known as hesychia. In short, this prayer-though sometimes spoken-led them to a place of deep contemplation or centering prayer.

Today many people find the Jesus Prayer to be the ultimate "prayer of the heart." Some repeat it silently as they take long walks. Others use it to lead them into contemplation. Some popular versions include "Jesus, have mercy on me"; "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me"; and the simple "Christ, have mercy." As the Reverend Damel Wolpert points out in Creating a Life with God, "The exact wording, so long as it contains the name of Jesus, is irrelevant."

Intention

To experience the power in repeatedly praying the name of Jesus.

The Exercise

· Decide how long you want to spend in this prayer.

· Choose a variation of the Jesus Prayer that suits you best:

"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

"Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me."

"Jesus, have mercy."

"Christ, have mercy."

· You may find a comfortable seated position, or you may choose to walk around while engaged in this prayer.

· Breathe naturally and repeat the Jesus Prayer silently for the length of time you have chosen.

· When distractions crop up, return to the prayer.

· When your time is up, reflect on your experience of the Jesus Prayer. Describe your experience. (You may want to write in a journal on this.) How did you notice the presence of God or Christ in this prayer? What is the value of repeating this prayer over and over silently? Did you notice any inner movements within your spirit as you prayed this prayer?

· End with a short prayer of gratitude.

The moment we start to notice our breath, we invariably begin to control it. The goal in any breathing meditation is to inhale and exhale naturally, without trying to control our body's nat­ural pace. The point of taking five deliberate breaths is to con­sciously slow down. Once you move on to the phrases, let your body set the pace for the breath.

Tips for the Practice

It’s natural for people who first pray the Jesus Prayer to feel that they “aren’t doing it right.” Silent, repetitive prayers like the Jesus Prayer and centering prayer are not goal oriented. Distractions are perfectly normal. If you return to your phrase consistently, you are doing it right. There’s not much more to it than that.

Think of this less as a discipline you have to conquer and more as a way of opening yourself to God’s wide mercy and love. The repetition soothers our soul and relaxes our bodies to be more receptive to God.

Taken from 50 Ways to Pray: Practices from Many Traditions and Time by Teresa A. Blythe pages 38-40. If you liked this entry buy the book for 49 more prayer practices!

Blogging Towards Sunday
February 10, 2008
Genesis 2:15-17 & 3:1-7
Matthew 4:1-11

What does it mean to be human? How does living in community shape what it means to be human? What does relationship with God have to do with living our humanity in all our fullness and wholeness? These are the questions that these scriptures ask.

Genesis tells of Adam and Eve, of the choices that they make - the same choice that we all make as human beings: to mistrust each other and the intentions of God, to live in a way that is self-centered and even self-aggrandizing. The story deconstructs us - forcing us to face the same question that they did. What is the meaning of life? How do we make meaning of life? What does it mean that we are created to live from and into community?

Matthew 4 tells us the story of the temptations of Jesus - to take God's place, to want to big bigger than we are, to mistrust and choose power over solidarity, tyranny over collaboration, isolation over community.

So what does it mean for us to be human? How do we maintain our full humanity in the face of the world we live in? Genocide, Abortion, Nuclear Warfare, Global Capitalism, Pharmaceutical testing in Africa, the polarization of our red-blue political context, the cultural wars in which we live. How do we live as fully human, treating others in that same way? Is it a power that we have? Or does such ethical responsibility have to be given to us by the divine?

Two things struck me in my reflection on these passages:

1. Cubism - an art movement of the past century that basically sought to deconstruct and the reconstruct what was seen and experienced by the artist in order to empower us to question what is and how we live. It's the means to an end of having a wider perspective of what is from diverse points of view and origin. This painting of "Adam and Eve" by Marc Chagall does that - in the same way that the story of the Temptation in the garden deconstructs our humanity.

2. A song by Madonna - Nothing Really Matters - maybe not on the same artistic scale as Chagall, but in terms of contemporary culture - however Hollywood driven it may be - the words and story she tells echo the same deconstruction of what it means to be human and live in community.




So how do we live as human beings in our emerging post-modern world? What is the connection between living in community and living in relationship with the divine?

Community vs. Chaplaincy
Change ●Collaborate ● or Die Already

I find myself often a bit conflicted in the winter months. Christmas and New Year's have come and gone with their celebrations of community and promise of new things. Then January and February remind me that things don't change all that fast. That between the joy of the future and the comfort of the past (whether real or subjectively recalled) most of us want a chaplain, someone to take care of us in the dark, damp and depressing times. Someone who will hold our hand and tell us that things will all work out.

I increasingly find that when I began to allow myself to buy into this line of thinking I'm unexpectedly surprised. We actually want communication, conversation, collaboration and dialogue - the essence and ends of community more than we feign to long for chaplaincy. This might not make sense but it's my thoughts at the moment as I lead worship at our church and participate in an online discussion about the Presbyterian Church and Bruce Reyes-Chow standing for Moderator in a 2.0 way.

Last night at the Ash Wednesday gathering at our church I was humbled by the community response to our practice of lectio divina on Luke 18:9-14. Many and varied were the responses shared, people's dreams, desres and discernments. The gathering was all about dialogue, participation, experience and connection - it was community in word, deed, and presence. It was authentic, organic, instant, mutual: hanging it all out there risking acceptance, rejection and hoping for connection. That's what those in the church community I know (and the larger one I suspect as well) long for. It's the thing that those who long ago gave up on the church have resolved to find elsewhere. It's what our postmodern or emergent - or maybe just the context you live in - culture is insatiably hungry for. Blogging, Instant Messaging, Youtube, the youthful support of Obama, Community Yahoo Groups, the deep cultural adaptation of cafe culture, and shared meals all point to this undeniable aspect of human nature. We long to be together, to talk with (not just to) each other, to laugh, love and make-meaning of our lives and the world we live in. That's what faith is all about. It's what Jesus talked incessantly about in teachings, around tables, on the road, and with the sick. It's what the Church (the community of the gathered) comes together for.

But somehow we get lost on the way. Call it human nature. Call it sin. Call it brokenness. Call it chaos. Call it mistrust. We lose perspective of who we are, of who others are around us, of who the Divine is. We lose perspective on the difference between our needs and our wants. We dream of more and end up settling for the status quo, the familiar, the stuff that we can tolerate even if we don't love it. That's when we face the choice of community vs. chaplaincy, working towards something authentic and unchartered or asking for comfort and familiar words that won't rock the boat.

Bruce Reyes-Chow is standing for moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA) as a catalyst, or at least as a conversation-starter for dialogue, collaboration and community that goes beyond the comforts of chaplaincy. Some are saying that he's going about it wrong, too fast, to electronic, too "all hanging out there" (read his latest blog entry on such comments "Problems with a 2.0 moderator") and yet isn't that what we want as people, as people of faith, as presbyterians? Aren't we longing to know and live from a transformation community that forms how we live, move and have our being in our culture, churches and families? You could argue that the technology we're surrounded by, and that Bruce is seeking to use in his standing for moderator of the GA, shapes the way that we communicate...but isn't the reverse also possible? That maybe the techonology we're developing and implementing was created to enable the way that we've longed to communicate? in particular in our faith communities both local and disparate?

Another articulate piece of the conversation comes from Shawn Coons at Igeekrev.com and his post "Not your father's moderator candidate"

New Business in the Dimond
An Indian Restaurant
at 3434 Fruitvale Ave.
(next to the Dimond Bakery)

I learned this morning of a new business, an Indian Resturant, moving into the Dimond District aiming to open in about 3 months.

Read more HERE on the Dimond Community Server.

Cheers to Tim and Michael for the news.

Mardi Gras Fat Tuesday Shrove Tuesday
pancakes galore

Today is Mardi Gras or Shrove Tuesday, the last day of Carnaval and thus the day before the Season of Lent starts. In the Christian Calendar it's an inbetween time, half way in a sense between Christmas and Easter. A time to rejoice, for Carnaval is the season going from Epiphany, Twelth Night, of January 6th until Lent. Today traditionally is a day of celebration not just with beads and removing your bra or dropping your pants, but with pancakes. Seems crazy but the idea goes back to ancient times when folks tried to use up all the fattening and delectable foodstuffs in their home before starting a season of reflection and fasting in Lent. So what better way then to make some pancakes and load them up with butter and sugar.

Here's some online helps if you're in need of assistance to make your pancake feast tonight:

1. A video from England to teach you how to do it the British way...turn up the sound



2. A step by step video to teach you how to make pancakes from scratch



3. A How-to-Make Video for French Crepes

VOTE TODAY

If you don't know where to vote today in the election
here are some links to local county registrar of voters sites
that you can use to find your polling place.

Alameda

Contra Costa

Marin

Sacramento

San Francisco

San Mateo

All of California (sorted by county)

Also couldn't resist a shameless plug for my candidate.

A Beer-Brewery-Pub in the Dimond?
wouldn't it be nice

Tim Chapman put up an interesting post about historic breweries in the Dimond District on his blog. "Dimond's Beer Gardens" Very cool with historic photos and documents, as well as modern-day photos of these historic places. He posted this after reading a recent article in the Tribune about a brewery in Oakland trying to revive the beer history of our city. "Brewery set to rekindle Oakland's Heydey"

I learned last week that the Dimond Merchants' Association may be focusing their efforts on an emerging effort to revive an historic Dimond Tradition of an Oktoberfest Celebration at the Altenheim. Wouldn't that be great? The only thing that could be better would be for a brew-pub, family style wine bar sort of place to open in the neighborhood to build on the transformation already happening along the intersection of MacArthur and Fruitvale. Maybe in the old Blockbuster building?

faith 2.0

I have this bumper sticker in the back window of my car. A friend gave it to me. I've found in the last 3 weeks, through 3 conversations which emerged from statement of this bumper sticker, some good food for thought about faith, dialogue, the human condition, and the integration of 2.0 to those worlds.

One man - an older Anglo man stopped me in our driveway as I unloaded my children from our station wagon. He stood silently behind me. Making me anxious. Then he asked me, "What does your bumper sticker mean?" "Do you believe that?" I said "yes. I don't think Jesus would bomb anyone." He responded - a response that surprised my judgmental attitude expecting an attack of my political, religious, theological, and philisophical view - right in front of my children. Yet what I heard instead was, "I think you're right." Touche. I was surprised because where I expected judgment there was actually a desire for dialogue.

Another man - a young African-American man - stopped me in a totally different way. Arriving at preschool one morning in East Oakland I began unloading my daughter from the car when another car raced at nearly 60 mph down a neighborhood city street lined with parked cars. Speeding towards me, hip-hop blasting, he slammed on the brakes right behind me as I stood with my back to the street taking my daughter out of the car. I expected explicitives, slurs, violent vocabulary. Instead I failed to understand the words, "nobody." "What?" I replied. "The answer is nobody! Jesus wouldn't bomb anybody!" said the driver as he then sped off. Not at all what I expected. Again where I thought I was going to be judged, I was the one judging and choking off presumptuously any aspect of dialogue.

A third man - that same day - an Asian man in his late 20s approached me in front of Farmer Joe's as I again unloaded my daughter from the back of our station wagon. Again - I should have known by then - I thought that he was going to ask me for money. The way he stood right behind me, silently, too close for comfort, swaying back and forth - made me so nervous. And then he said, "I don't think Jesus would bomb anyone. He's for peace. He'd be against what our government is doing." A paradox. I expected a request for money. Instead I got a reality-check.

I told this story in worship at our church recently during my sermon to make a point. We often - at least I do - judge when we aren't being judged. We often choke off conversation when others are dying for dialogue. We reject discussion out of fear, instead choosing speaking at instead of daring to talk with. We rarely - if ever - can recognize our own humanity, our own brokenness, enough to really dare to dialogue with someone else - like these 3 men tried and desired to do with me. I'm increasingly struck by technology, and the web 2.0, which can enable us and empower us to choose dialogue over diatribe, discussion over sermonizing, collaboration and connection over condemnation and chaos. Maybe web 2.0 is just the thing that we need to transform the way that we live faith in a daily way, practice it in community, and fathom it as a gathered people? Could it be that my emerging spiritual practice of dialoguing with others about faith through blogging might be opening my eyes to the depth of faith, the transformational power of it, and the complexity of human nature? What do you think?