Bumper Sticker of the Week

OK.  This isn't a sticker (I've run out of e-files of them) yet it's a hilarious image from a friend's facebook page.  It recalls a very funny moment on the Ellen show last year.  One that still makes me chuckle when I think of it.  I actually had a handful of thoughtful conversations about faith and life because of the show .  I think we tend to overlook the ways in which pop culture - even bumperstickers - can invite to discussion not simply proclaim one's values or moral sense.

Love: Cupid or Stupid?

Living cross-culturally always provides for insight, discovery and cultural challenge.  Culture is so much an innate part of the basic fabric of our lives that we don't always see it, nor can we be aware of it.  Valentine's Day is a big thing in America.  True - like in Europe - it's a money-maker for restaurants, florists and other commercial activities.  Yet the now-traditional and historically-exaggerated celebration of the Martyr Valentine isn't just about lovers, over-priced roses or reserving a table months in advance.  It's about love, saying it, expressing it, celebrating it.  This year our children have been decorating for weeks, making cards, boxes to receive Valentine's all the familiar kid things that happen in America and yet are so foreign here in France.  So we had a giant celebration with yesterday at home with about 8 cupcakes for each person.  Here in France, it's purely commercial, for lovers, seen as something that cheapen,s, consumerises and cheapifys love.  Yet maybe the international, and multi-cultural visions of Valentine's Day are actually revelatory of the ways in which love has been commodified, capitalized and codified in our cultures.

Advertising & Faith

I read an interesting article in SF Gate this morning detailing a current ad campaign "good without God?" (now playing in and around Sacramento after previous stops elsewhere) that is "plugging" atheism.  The article is interesting.  The best part for me was to read the comments and see the inter-faith bickering, name-calling and fighting. It made me wonder: can you actually advertise faith, or non-faith?  Does it even matter, or reach anyone?  Or is it merely preaching to the choir and rallying the troops around the flag-pole?

Here's some of the billboards in and around Sactown.

Blogging Towards Sunday February 14, 2010

Luke 6:17-26 | 1 Corinthians 15:12-20

What is life about?  How do you live a good life?  What is a good life?  Jesus offers a vision of a nonviolent world of peace, fullness and God-centered-ness in his beatitude teaching, as Luke tells it.  Paul talks about resurrection and how it informs and forms faith.  It's hard to know what "blessed" means in a world in which blessings are associated with brief pre-dinner prayers, year-end compensation, or miraculous salvation from sickness and disaster.  Can you be blessed in everyday life?

Blogging Towards Sunday February 7th

Isaiah 6:1-8 | Luke 5:1-11

Stories about our vocation to the mission we have as the people of God is what dominates the texts for Sunday.  Isaiah is called to serve as prophet, not to tell the future, but to speak God's word for the present, to give a different perspective to those around him.  His response is one of availability "here I am" to be used for God and to part from his past into and towards a new or emerging future "send me."

Luke tells his version of the miraculous fish-catch encounter as one of vocation of the first disciples.  Jesus comes to them, in their terms and on their turf to invite them to step out, to set their boats towards deeper waters, beyond the safety of the shoreline, to cast their nets in unfamiliar ways.  They're called to reprioritize their life, leaving behind the abundant catch of fish for the risk and potential of the unknown future of following after Jesus.  They're encouraged to try again, to despite their potential disgust, despair or disappointment with their lack of catching anything until then, to try again.

Bumper Sticker of the Week

This is my last one for a while.  (Thanks Nani!) I've run out.

If you see any good ones, email me a photo!

Blogging Backwards towards January 31

Luke 4:21-30 and 1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13

The passages proposed for Sunday play with the themes of hearing, seeing and recognizing the presence of God and the living Word of God in our lives both individual and together as the community of faith.

I found this funny image while surfing the internet that illustrates the paradox of the texts:

Bumper Sticker of the Week

I see this one a lot.

Blogging Towards Sunday January 24, 2010

Luke 4:14-21 and 1 Corinthians 12:12-31

What does God want to for the world?  How is/does God accomplish it?  What does that have to do with us?  In the wake of the earthquake in Haiti we ask ourselves the questions that resound through the limitations of our humanity: who are we?  is there a God? what's the connection?

Is Food the Future?:

Alice Waters and the scope of education

SF Gate recently ran an article about Alice Waters [The Scavenger blog], and specifically an Atlantic Magazine article [Cultivating Failure] criticizing her foray of the slow food movement into politics, specifically elementary education in America.  Is prioritizing the teaching of sustainable gardening and cooking to kids in school taking the place of the teaching of mathematics, English, science or other arts?  In a time of slash and burn education budgets is she wasting limited resources in view of teaching children an upper-class Bay Area-ite foodie culture practiced by the prius-driving latte-drinking über crust of our society?  Or is she as she would claim a sort of centurion for truth and justice fighting against the titan-like governator in Sacramento?

Marriage Equality: talking from beyond our polarization.

The definition of marriage in terms of legal rights, institutional definition, and constitutional ramifications continue to be a large topic in our ongoing dialogue about religion, church practice and what it means to be American in 2010.  This weeks' edition of Newsweek contains an article that is quickly making the rounds on Facebook and becoming a topic of great conversation.  "The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage" [includes a video] by Theodore B. Olson.  What makes the article so interesting is the fact that the author writes from a perspective that would seemingly be associated with an opposite viewpoint: a Republican actively working for Marriage Equality.

Bumper Sticker of the Week

Blogging Towards Sunday, January 17th

John 2:1-12

Water into wine: is that a big deal?  It almost doesn't seem to be when you read the gospel text for this coming Sunday.  No one draws attention to the sign or miracle - that Jesus performs at the wedding he is attending with his friends and family in Cana.  It's only when the wine is tasted that the miracle is revealed. It seems like there are two conclusions to the story: the first in verse 10 - a remark that the best wine was surprisingly served last (post-Jesus-intervention) and then a second one in verse 11 - by the narrator telling the story, informing us that the real miracle was that the disciples put their faith in Jesus and believed.  So what is the miracle: the water into wine, or the 5 disciples present moving from followers to believers?

Are GLEEks racists?

I read this fantastically surprising article about racism in Glee on colorlines.com:  [Is Glee off Key on Race?] talking about how liberals often get it so wrong, possessing and re-iterating the same basic racist perspectives underneath what they claim to be race-neutral.  While I'm a fan of the show, and laugh hardest with Sue does her uncomfortably inappropriate hyper-racist ranting, you do have to wonder if and how the show does belittle the minority characters and their travails - how it all might contribute to furthering the very stereotypes that it's - supposedly - seeking to deconstruct.  Or maybe it's all just about good fun and the either naive or bleeding-heart-optimistic hope that we all can "make it."  What's tragic, in terms of our society, when you stop and really think is that many of the charaters won't "make it" - yet the quarterback and pregnant chastity-queen cheerleader most likely will.  Granted - reality television - is anything but what the names implies.  Who wants to watch the reality we live on tv for entertainment.  Yet at what point does entertainment we take in to escape life, become a force that shapes the life we live the next day?

Tolerance and faith sharing in a pluralist society: 
is it possible?

Brit Hume - Tiger Woods - Jesus and the Bouhdda

I awoke today wot some interesting news about Brit Hume, an ex-FOX news anchor sharing publicly some religious advice to Tiger Woods, encouraging to embrace Christianity and to let go of his bouhddist background.  Here's a news clip of the moment:



Can you say such things?  Can you say them publicly?  Is Hume being intolerant, belittling one faith to proselytize with his own?  To what point can we go in terms of talking about faith and positively encouraging it?  What is the line between sharing your faith and hope in a personal context and proselytizing in a superioristic way?  Is it merely the religious (fundamentally the Christian one) perspective that is intolerant? and/or can you argue that a secularist perspective can become fundamentalist, extremist and intolerant as well?  Where do you, where can you draw the lines in a pluralist society that seeks not to control but to value its diversity and the parts that make up the whole?
[Washington Post article by Michael Gerson].

Blogging Towards Sunday January 10, 2009

Luke 3:15-22

Who are we and how do we define ourselves?  In a sense that's the question that I hear this passage about the baptism of Jesus and the conclusion of John the Baptizer's ministry ask.  In a world in which we're most often defined by our job, our wealth (or lack of), our passport, or our education.  In a world in which our identity can be stolen from our mailbox or our credit card, Christianity offers a different path.  We are because we're in relationship.

Bumper Sticker of the Week

OK, this isn't a bumper sticker.  But is just too funny to not use.

Oakland in the News as a Marijuana Mecca

I caught up on some www news cruising today and ran across a video - supposedly one of the bests of original films of 2009 - on newsweek.com talking about and fearturing Oakland as a "marijuana mecca" and a, if not the, primary model that other cities are looking towards in America.  Interesting view, with lots of local celebrities, if you haven't seen it or are even just vaguely interested.  Granted it's dated October...but I'm slowly catching up on Oaktown news.

Bumper Sticker of the Week

Christmas Prayer in a time of Nationalism and Xenophobia

I received this prayer, originally in French in the mail this week, finding it thoughtful and poignant for our world today:

Lord Jesus, you were born to a Jewish Mother.

Babylonians came to worship you.

You rejoiced in the faith of a Syrian woman

and that of a Roman centurion.

You welcomed the Greek pagans who came looking for you.

An African carried your cross.

Remind us that you came for every man, every woman.

And that it's for all of us, each one of us,

that you promised to make us capable of saying:

"Lord, I am one that follows you."