overheard

in today's christianity today home page tim keller exhorts us to be a "christian counter-culture for the common good." i think keller has a distinctive, theologically grounded and culturally aware perspective on how we can help bring shalom to our cities. i hope you can take a moment to read the article, but for you lazy asses i've posted an excerpt below.

"It will not be enough for Christians to form a culture that runs counter to the values of the broader culture. Christians should be a community radically committed to the good of the city as a whole. We must move out to sacrificially serve the good of the whole human community, especially the poor. Revelation 21-22 makes it clear that the ultimate purpose of redemption is not to escape the material world, but to renew it. God's purpose is not only saving individuals, but also inaugurating a new world based on justice, peace, and love, not power, strife, and selfishness.

So Christians work for the peace, security, justice, and prosperity of their city and their neighbors, loving them in word and in deed, whether they believe what we do or not. In Jeremiah 29:7, Israel's exiles were called not just to live in the city, but also to love it and work for its shalom—its economic, social, and spiritual flourishing. The citizens of God's city are the best possible citizens of their earthly cities."

today we salute you: mr. foot in the mouth

on tuesday night, in the cozy confines of the brewers’ dugout, i asked our fifty year old assistant coach if the twenty-something girl bringing him updates on the sox-yankees game was his daughter. after he turned two shades of red he smirked and said “actually, she’s my girlfriend.” after i apologized for my oversight he quickly said, “that’s okay. you’re from the midwest and unaccustomed to such twists.”

ugh. i hate having foot for dinner.

this encounter reminded me of the time my friend clark, who had come out of the closet to me only days before, came into my dorm room wearing a somewhat muted but still unmistakable hawaiian shirt. as soon as my roommate kurt took one look at clark he said, “clark, don’t take this the wrong way, but the only people who can pull off hawaiian shirts are fat guys and flaming homosexuals.”

good times.

has your foot provided you with any memorable meals? if so, spill.

the hot new accessory for cardinals fans



okay, so like i said, i want hard eyes and a soft heart.

my hard eyes are telling me that the cardinals are dead in the water without pujols. our cheap-ass, revenue rich republican owners tightened the purse strings this season, leaving without a viable left fielder or second baseman, and our right fielder is average at best. any cardinals fan worth his salt would have agreed with me when i said last year was this incarnation of the team's "last, best shot of winning a ring," but none of us expected the owners to royally screw us during the offseason.

fortunately, albert’s magnificent season was keeping our worst fears at bay…until friday night. in aaron or dustin’s space a couple of weeks ago, i predicted that the cardinals without pujols would probably be about as bad as the cubs without lee. now, after we dropped two of three to the scrubs and have been swept by the reds at home (our first two series losses at the new busch) i’m afraid that my prediction is in the process of coming true.

on the other hand, my soft heart is telling me that i cannot give up on this team. i want to believe that jocketty will find the right players at the break, the owners will use their exorbiant tax refunds on something worthwhile, mulder will show flashes of his former, steroids enhanced self and albert will be back by july. as much as i hate to admit it, i’ve given up on cardinals teams before. this year i’m going to overcome my fears, tie my ass to the couch and see if the boys can work yet another miracle.

here’s to "leaning in" to the rest of the season and hoping my heart doesn’t get shredded.

for more on the cardinal’s precarious situation, read cardinals uber-blogger lboros’ take.

musing...

although i’m a bit of a hard-ass, i’m pretty quick to have pity on others. throughout my life i’ve bypassed the cliques in the cafeteria to try and befriend the friendless, shared my resources with those who have needs and looked beggars in the eye whenever i’ve extended the change that’s in my pocket. i tell you this not to trumpet my own righteousness, but to suggest that such acts are not evidence of righteousness at all.

i’m quick to take pity on others, but i’ve been called to love. i’m beginning to suspect that substituting the former for the latter is not only misguided, but sinful.

Jesus is not calling me to merely have pity on the needy by providing them with a taste of food, but challenging me to forego my dinner plans to break bread with the destitute. Jesus does not want me to simply feel sorry for my maladjusted coworker who was fucked by her family system, he wants me to believe that she can be born into a new family where beauty, truth and goodness reign. Jesus does not expect me to simply serve individuals who are being crushed by the powers, principalities, structures and institutions of the world, but to subvert the oppressive, death inducing powers of this world with the liberating, life-giving way of the kingdom.

for far too long, i’ve walked through this world with sentimental eyes and a hard, cynical heart. by God’s grace, through the power of His Holy Spirit, i hope he flips my script by turning me into a man with hard, discerning eyes and a warm, hospitable and always hoping heart.

today i’m

singing johnny cash in my head, loathing tepid coffee, reeling from spending a weekend in the rain, missing preaching, starting to read jpod, wondering why the umpire shoved me last night, wishing i was writing something substantial, completely clueless as to what that would be, loathing horse-hair plaster, in hock, tired of peanut butter, sick of rain, aping coupland’s juxtapositions, sending crooked river burning to an unsuspecting friend, contemplating a conversion to wordpress, believing tony soprano is the best tv lead ever, hunching over my desk to avoid detection, wanting to share more stories about work, afraid of getting dooced, almost ready to take a shit, committed to not taking jpod with me, hesitant to check the box scores, abhorring the taste of maxwell house, leaving you to procure a cup.

what's up with you?

memorandum from captain random

before we begin, let’s stop and mutter a prayer for those poor souls throughout the south who will be squirming in the pews while the preacher spews apocalyptic fury tonight.

speaking of the south, my day started with a bang when a sales rep penned an email that began “JELLO JAY, I WAS JUST ABOUT TO JUMP INTO THE SHOWER, BUT I WANTED TO EMAIL YOU THESE CHANGES FIRST.” this is the same representative who has recently explained her old maid status to me, suggested that one of our customers might be easy to deal with now that she’s “getting laid” and who calls me to develop a sales strategy on a daily basis. i wanted to immediately respond by: a) suggesting that she never call me jay again, b) pointing out to her that typing in all caps violates internet etiquette 101 and c) affirming to her, once again, that if i wanted to relate with overly familiar strangers, i’d move to dallas. however, after my second cup of coffee took the edge off and i remembered that she can only respond to one suggestion at a time, i only included admonition a.

does anyone believe that bush’s revitalized advocacy of a constitutional amendment against gay marriage is anything more than a blatant attempt to bolster his base? anyone? anyone?

work has been almost bearable lately. i suspect that the latter condition is directly linked to the conclusion of american idol.

so i just received a third chatty, hell i'd say it borders on flirty, email from my batty old rep. i will now burn my clothes and take an hour long shower.

overheard

“a person can be in love with the idea of love. a person can fall in love with the idea of another person. less commonly, a person can fall in love with another person.

in fact, a person always falls in love with the idea of another person, not the person. falling in love with the actual person takes too much time and too much honesty. in the time it takes for it to be enough time, and to summon the strength it takes to mount enough honesty, it’s too late. a person is calling love something love that isn’t love.

unless it is. some people luck out. the thing they’ve been calling love turns out to be just that. such people exist. film at eleven.”

mark winegardner, crooked river burning, pg. 344.

musing...

i really don’t want to go too far into this, but i was a lonely kid. i realize that everyone probably shares this story at some level and i don’t really believe that my experience was all that peculiar. but it still hurt.

my relative lack of inhibition, tendency to give the old fuck you to the authorities and self-depreciating sense of humor often ensured provided me with an immediate “in” with the most popular kids in school, the prettiest – if not the most pious - girls at camp and the most talented players on the team. however, soon after i started sharing my opinions (of which, i have many) and conversing with people in a manner that i considered dialogue and they considered debate, i found myself suddenly walking the hallways alone, catching an early ride home from sunset bible camp and riding the pine beside the second string right fielder. i don’t want to over-psychologize things, but i think that my early years were all about my unrestrained ID.

fortunately, around the time of my 19th birthday and after being arraigned for my fourth misdemeanor in six months, i was freely given a super-ego by faith through grace. little by little, that superego began to reshape my life and left me a little better prepared to enter into relationships. of course, i could also talk about the super-ego as the new man, the id as the old and the fully restored ego as the resurrection body that still lies, i think anyway, just over the horizon, but there are many different ways of telling the same story and i feel pretty freudian today. so there you go.

why am i sharing this? well, it’s a long introduction to a simple assertion: i am beginning to believe that community is the richest fruit and (perhaps) the greatest proof of my salvation. about halfway through our rain-soaked, alcohol aided, wild at heart weekend, i realized what a wonderful gift friendship truly is. as i chatted late into the night with james and cade, laughed hysterically at the sound of craig and jamie’s paean to pocahontas and threatened to disturb dave’s sleep with a golden shower, i was overwhelmed with gratitude for friends who: love me enough to admonish me, listen to my hasty opinions without condemnation and choose to accompany me through the best of times and the worst. community – yes, i’m including my family here – is the clearest reflection of God that i have yet to see and, i suspect, one of the best apologetics for my faith that i have yet to find.

for once, that’s all i have to say about that.

overheard: garrison keillor shares his passion for preaching, the necessity of comedy and his faith in grace



in my humble estimation, garrison keillor is one of those cash-esque celebrity christians who constantly escapes categorization, reminds us that incarnation is the best form of proclamation and would leave me sans clean shorts if i spied him listening to one of my sermons. this week CT is helps prepare us for Friday’s release of a prarie home companion by posting an intriguing interview, a piece of which i’ve posted below.

CT: Of your work, William Lee Miller once said that "one of [your] most striking themes is what one might call a positive or benign irony: getting more than, other than, better than, you deserve." Often in your stories something really good comes out of something that seems bad. Is that a recurring theme for you?

Keillor: I don't know as I would use the term "recurring theme," but I certainly would feel good about being able to do it and being able to do it in a plausible way. I feel that among writers of fiction there is a great deal of pretentious gloominess. Gloominess is nothing that an older person has a right to impose on young people. Young people can be very pessimistic and dark all on their own without us adding baggage to what they already have. And I like the idea of being 63 and trying to get people in their 20s to lighten up.

I think comedy is truthful in that respect. I think this is so much more the truth of ordinary life than the sudden catastrophic worst moment of death coming around the corner. I'm just finishing up a semester at the University of Minnesota teaching composition of comedy, and my students have a problem with comedy. It's because of this pretentious gloominess, which they've picked up from movies and wherever. I enjoyed the same sorts of things when I was their age, but they insist that they can't write comedy and I have to convince them that comedy is another way of telling the truth.