and isn't it ironic?

an amish woman just placed a telephone order: for CDs.

the amish community in inola, oklahoma - where my family has been
known to eat - sneaks out the radio and the pick-up trucks when they think the customers aren't looking.

the amish communities of lancaster county have separated themselves from "the world" in order to satiate the world's consumer needs and send them back to philadelphia and surrounding environs with bloated bellies.

it appears that our anabaptist bretheren and sistern have finally rent the "boundary" between the sacred and the secular. i think it is time for their fundie and evangelical friends to follow in their hand-cobbled footsteps instead of romanticizing their supposed lifestyle.

for fun images of amish boys doing crystal meth and amish girls busting out the clevage, check out the devil's playground.

memorandum from captain random:

on monday afternoon thomas, one of my after school kids, said that he needed a copy of the boston globe for a school assignment. when i inquired about the nature of the assignment thomas said, "i need to cut out the right wing and the left wing." i found this statement more than a bit confusing, so i asked him to clarify. "the left and right wing of what?" i asked. "are you referring to advertisements or something?" "no," thomas tersely replied, "i am talking about right wing and left wing perspectives." "okay," i said, "what can you tell me about the right wing." "they hate change," thomas quickly replied. "alright," i continued, "what current political group embraces right wing policies?" "i dunno," thomas said thoughtfully, "the fascists?"

while sitting on a lifeway crapper yesterday, i read a couple of the brief biographies of emergent leaders that is included in gibbs and bolger's emerging churches. reflecting upon his early attempts to plant churches in san francisco, mark scandrette offers that "my retrospective assessment is that it is hard to create something healthy and sustainable during a personally deconstructive phase" (appendix a, pg. 305). i found this statement quite prescient. i think that a number of us who are involved in the emergent conversation would do well to spend some time reflecting upon this statement and asking the Spirit of God to lead us from a place of thoroughgoing deconstruction to a place of missional creativity.

i picked up a copy of lyle lovett’s Joshua, judges and ruth out of the bargain bin at vagabond records and have been thoroughly impressed with the album. I am constantly amazed by (a) the quality of contemporary Americana music, (b) the overwhelming riches of classic country – thinking of the carters, cash and even a little george jones here, and (c) the fact that most people back home and in the backwoods new england states leave these riches undisturbed in order to listen to hacks like kenny chesney, cowboy troy and rascal flatts.

i may or may not know someone who just named their firstborn son "ranger denny." for a long time i have thought that the creative name game was a little cracked, but now i've been converted! what wonderful combination of a civil service profession and common american name are you going to bestow upon your firstborn? kellie and i have settled on "crossing-guard carol" if we have a girl and "lifeguard lenny" if we have a boy.

in emerging churches karen ward of the church of the apostles in seattle likens the emerging church to "'a road of destination' where Christ followers, formerly of divergent pasts, are meeting up in the missional present and moving together toward God's future." isn't that a fantastic definition?

photographic evidence

going home is always a bit of a blessing and a curse. it is a blessing to eat my mom's fried cornbread, rest my head on my grandfather's shoulder and needle my baby cousin. however, it is a bit of a curse to be constantly confronted with what a confounded, arrogant, presumptuous little e.o.e.er i once was.

regarding the latter, a case in point. on friday kellie and i had the opportunity to dig through tons of family photographs at my grandmother's house. i was surprised to find pictures of my grandfather flying his L-9, depression era snapshots of my grandmother and ad hoc family photographs of my father when he was young.

unfortunately, as we continued to work our way through the photographs, deliberately moving from the past to the present, i was rather startled by the photographic evidence of myself. in almost every picture i corrupted there was an easily distinguishable arrogance in my eyes and a clean angle of a nose that rested well above the horizontal. originally i assumed that this particular pose was the result of the rather aggressive form of camera shyness that i have long struggled with. however, as the evidence began to mount, i was forced to conclude that i was indeed a arrogant, presumptuous little e.o.e.er.

the boy in those photos thinks he has the world's number and is destined for a life of nobility. little did he know that he was embarking upon a life that would be riddled with humiliation, confusion and a constant call to sacrifice and slave on behalf of a suffering servant.

i would like to think that if the boy i once was knew what i now know hospitality instead of hostility would have issued forth from his eyes and his stoic, staid nose would have been lowered and perhaps krinkled with a loving grin. but of course, there's nothing i can do about the past.

however, by God's grace, i can do something about the present...so from now on i'm setting out on a photographic expedition in hopes that i will find a man whose eyes are open with hospitality, grin betrays good humor and arms are a symbol of a perpetual embrace.

musing...

death is our constant. occasionally it confronts us in its chilly, final form, but more often is surprises us with its subtlety. a friendship, once treasured, unravels due to nothing so much as a lack of use. a family tradition, worn and comfortable, wears out as the atomic weight of extended family breaks us down into nuclear units. a dream once enshrined in our hearts and our heads vanishes due to a lack of industry or, perhaps even more confounding, an excess of ambition. perhaps the reason we fear corporeal death is the final act averts our attention from the innumerable fucked up scenes that comprise our ordinary lives.

we are people of the resurrection because we could not continue otherwise. as saint paul reminds us, if there is no opportunity beyond unemployment, love beyond abandonment, and life beyond our concrete crypts, we are people to be pitied.

so let us keep our eyes and hearts peeled for the resurrections that issue forth from our ordinary lives. if we have no expectation of or inclination towards these ordinary resurrections we might find it difficult to experience and, perhaps, participate in the resurrection par excellance.