Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Venting: In defense of arugula

August 21, 2008
arugala is not a democrat or a republican

Arugula is not a democrat... or a republican

So, here is the requisite “I’m sorry, I haven’t written, blah, blah, blah” but I’m not sorry, because I just moved and have been unpacking and trying to learn to live in a new place and no one is going to publish this blog and you who read it are simply kind to do so, so I’m not sorry and I’m not going to worry about the techno-god (little g).

But that’s what I’ve been up to.  Nashville is what I’ve been up to and avoiding work for my class and looking for a job and fretting over way too much.

But I just saw this article and thought I’d vent to you folks, since, after all, my beef is about food. Specifically, leafy greens.

I just want to say that if you don’t like a candidate because he likes a slightly-bitter form of lettuce and is, therefore, some part of an elitist conspiracy, that is idiotic. Not patriotic.

Especially, if his opponent, Mr. Iceberg USA, cannot recall the number of homes he owns.

Vote for who you want, but don’t let greens have anything to do with it, unless you’re part of the green party.

And here is a great recipe with which you can celebrate the mighty all-American Arugula, I got it from my sister’s blog and can’t find it there now, so this one is from the Washington post.

Jesus for President update and where I’ve been

June 26, 2008

I just came back from papa fest in Illinois, and it was one of the best experiences I’ve had in years.  I met some other “ordinary radicals.” Learned a lot more about being ordinary and being radical and generally grew from the good nourishment that comes from being with thoughtful brothers and sisters.  Got hot. Got sweaty. Danced. Sang. Got dirty. Pooed in pootown.  (That’s my disembodied voice in the video–apparently I got cut from the visuals.–I’m not cool enough for poo.) And grew maybe just a little more into the freedom I was made for.

I saw Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw give their presentation that they are giving on their book tour of Jesus for President. They (along with musical guests Jay and Scotty) do a bang-up job. Go see it, if you can.

It really hit a nerve with me.  If you read this, you know I have supported Obama, but, honestly, I do it somewhat reluctantly. There are ways that I disagree with him and, honestly, ways I don’t quite trust him, so giving him my vote is a bit awkward for me.  I am trying (often faultily) at being a biblical follower of Jesus, and, as such, there are ways that the republican platform is just sickening to me (economic justice, war, race issues, death penalty, humility, etc.) and at the same time I’m not quite at home with my leftist friends, and there are beliefs I have that make my most non-violent, good-natured lefty friends want to kick my butt (abortion, sexual ethics, pluralism/absolute truth, humility, etc.).  The fact is that at the end of the day, I don’t have much allegiance to the donkeys or the elephants, but, instead, follow a different king, a slain lamb, and exist in a different kingdom.  And the other fact is that, when push comes to shove, even Obama is willing to drop a bomb to defend the best interest of the nation-state and our consumption habit.  I can not support that as a Christian. I’ve been radicalized beyond either candidate.

So what do I do? not vote? vote but keep quiet about it? vote and don’t keep quiet but admit that even Obama may end up being against all that I embrace? 

Shane and Chris never encourage or discourage anyone to vote and they don’t endorse, but they make a good point.  As a believer, voting for any one is, at best, damage control.  No one can be our savior.  That job has already been filled.

“Christians know that the world did not change on September 11th. It changed in 33 A.D.” -Shane Claiborne

Happy 75th Birthday Catholic Worker!

May 2, 2008

 

“Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed that easily.” - Dorothy Day

 

 Today is International Workers Day- a day to remember,celebrate, and work for rights of the worker worldwide.  I also heard that it is the National Day of Prayer.

So all day long my mind played with this idea of prayer and the worker. The call to work for those who are often neglected and oppressed, crushed in the wheels of the capitalist machine.  And the call to prayer, to trust, to worship, to pleading, to rejoicing.  This interplay between Christianity and the marketplace.  Personal piety and holiness and social good and equality.

So, of course, all day long, I had Dorothy Day on my mind.  Because this woman embodies a love for God and a commitment to the worker. 

And after feeling like I was walking around with Dorothy Day all day long, I found out that today was also the birth of the Catholic Worker. (A surprising non-coincidence). Today the movement celebrates 75 years. 

So our challenge on this day is to pray and to pray for the worker and to thank God for Dorothy Day. We celebrate the legacy of Dorothy Day and all the thousands of folks who have been part of the Catholic Worker by continuing the work she and Peter Maurin began to make a society where it is “easier for men to be good”- to love God with all that we are and get our hands dirty loving our neighbor. She loved the Church.  She loved Jesus. And she loved the worker. She believed that work should have dignity and that the teachings of Jesus challenged the hegemony of the free market.  I am no where near the woman Dorothy Day was and I hope to be more like her, but I want to say thank you to her and the Catholic Worker, God has used her and it to help challenge and shape me. 

My favorite book in the world is the Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day’s auto-biography.  And if you never have read it, I highly recommend you do so. I wanted to share a quote with you from it, but it is impossible.  It is the story of Day’s life and to take any one passage out of the rest would just not represent how rich a meal this book is. 

But as an appetizer…

Here is a great little article by Jim Forest, who knew Day and was part of a Catholic worker house.

Umm… Dude, where’s my banner?

April 23, 2008

My banner just disapeared 9the thingy at the top pf the page). Can anyone explain what happened? dit-dit-dit- DOT-DOT-DOT-dit-dit-dit 

Food for Thought and a Lenten Review

March 29, 2008

So if you’ve been wondering why I’ve posted less the last few weeks, this post may explain some of it.

I’ve practiced Lent in years past, but not really. It was more like Lent with training wheels. I was never at a church that made a big deal of the church calendar and, though I craved it personally, liking the idea that time itself is shaped by the life of Christ and his bride, I never was able to experience high church Lent–that is, Lent with my whole, local congregation celebrated in symbol, ritual, and worship. But last summer, we began going to an Episcopal church, so this year, the training wheels were off and so was I.Here I give a review of two of many things that I learned while practicing Lent.

_______________________________

Ash Wednesday service was one of the most profound experiences of mourning and hope that I’ve had maybe ever. I’m still reeling from it. The ashes marked on all of us, every kneeling soul felt like a mark for execution. We were all going to die. It was bleak. Honestly, I felt rage. I wanted to go knock the ashes out of the priest’s hand. Could not one be spared the curse that he spoke over us- even the babies were marked! The sanctuary was perfectly silent and I wanted to scream “Do you people know what is going on here? We are being marked for the slaughter by God himself!” I wanted to beat on the altar and cry foul, but like the rest I acted like a civilized person preparing for my funeral. But then, as I knelt, preparing to take the Eucharist, angry at death and ashes and black robes, it dawned on me that Christ himself was marked by the same execution ashes. The cross on my forehead was not a stranger to God. His own holy forehead was marked, but ever so much deeper and darker and with blood. And I knew that the greatest human suffering on earth was entered into and experienced to the full by our Rescuer. As I took the Holy meal, I was overwhelmed by God’s grace. He had submitted himself to the curse and broken it open to give us life.

________________________________

After Ash Wednesday, the church practiced Lent together. Many friends of mine fasted for some period of time and from all or certain foods. I have a minor but chronic medical condition that prevents me from fasting (I learned this after I tried to fast five years ago and made it two meals–we’re talking like only 10 hours here–and ended up in the Emergency Room dehydrated from vomiting). So I looked at my life and what I consume, and really what I consume is input, specifically media input. We don’t have a TV, but I still download episodes of some of my favorite shows; we watch movies; I listen to NPR like it is aural crack; and I surf. So I gave it up.

Now, I cannot say that I really went without any input for 40 days. I didn’t. I had moments of insanity when I binged on political blogs and had unavoidable run-ins with badly written Disney TV specials with my four year old niece, but, all in all, my time spent around screens and Terry Gross significantly decreased. It was a fascinating experiment because, like food, the very beginning of the media fast was no sweat, but also like food, (to my surprise) after a week or so without media input I began to crave it with a nearly neurotic longing. However, getting away from it is the best way to see the damage that all this input wrought in me–in all of us.

During my fast, I read Marva Dawn’s A Royal Waste of Time. In one of the very best chapters in an overall great (though overly wordy) book, she looks at the influence of TV and the web on our culture and, specifically, on our churches. I won’t outline the whole chapter here—you ought to read the book–but she lists twelve or so areas of fall-out from our media saturation and along with discussing changing brain chemistry in young children and the blinding assault of advertising and commercialism, she discusses insightfully what she calls the low information-action ratio of TV and blogs. Both television and the web connect us to a world of information, but give us very little idea of how to respond to the information that they give us. Therefore, we are trained to imbibe information passively. Whether the information be about tales of suffering in another country or down the street or the book of Luke, we are taught to take in the information and change nothing (or little) about our lives or our world. This low information to action ratio has enormous impact on how we live, worship, and receive the truths in the scripture.

Now it is Easter and I have begun slowly to venture into the world of blog-reading and NPR-listening again, but the time away makes my experience of media richer; it is much more aware and nuanced now. I am grateful for having means of input (especially NPR), but I am even more wary of media saturation than I was in January (and I was pretty wary then.) The bottom line is this: we are all being indoctrinated or trained by something all the time. As believers, we do well to be cautious and wise about what is primarily shaping us. Is it rhythms of worship and service, the scripture, and the community of saints or TV, blogs, and radio? Fundamentalists may decry violence, sexual immorality, and other woes of media (and this is often legitimate), but TV and the web’s more profound danger is how it trains us to be passive consumers of everything–information, communities, resources, people, and God. Like fasting from food, fasting from input can often lead to nourishing insight, wisdom, and worship. And practicing Lent with my church makes Easter all the more celebratory.

-thw

Justice through pants

February 11, 2008

 Lent began.  For the first time ever, I had ashes put on my forehead and was told that I’m going to die and so is everyone else.  It was, actually, really incredible and I could write much about it.

But I didn’t.

Because the day after Ash Wednesday, I got just a little touch of death myself–in the form of some awful sort of bronchial cold/flu thing.  Like Dave Wilcox says, a Cold is when “the reaper pulls you over for a warning.”

So I’m sick, my father is sick, my co-workers are sick, everyone in central Texas is sick. And the CDC is concerned.

But I want to tell you about what I’m wearing, which sounds kinky but it isn’t.  See, being sick is no fun at all. But of paramount importance when you are sick is that you have something really comfortable to wear-since you already feel horrible. You want something that is not scratchy or too tight or ugly or scratchy or too loose or scratchy.

So I am very thankful that two weeks ago, the gnome bought me these yoga pants from No Sweat.   And I am shamelessly endorsing them here because when you are sick (or just any ole time), you want to lounge around in something that was not made by children in sweatshops and this is how you can.

Work for peace while you are sitting around, drinking tea, and blowing your nose to it is all red. Because if you are going to feel like crap, you can at leastdo so in pants that are just.

Make Beauty, Not Money (or Mucus)

January 25, 2008

 

I’ve been meaning to write quite a lot lately, but the gnome  is illin’ and I’ve discovered that when my husband gets really sick, I get really busy.  So life’s been crazy with my chores, his chores, sick chores like doctor’s visits, soup making, and cough medicine purchasing.  Things have been hectic. 

It is cold and gray outside.  And I think that approximately a trillion folks in my area are sick this week, so I thought I’d take a brief moment to pause and pay tribute to beauty because we need some around here.

So first:

– This is one of my favorite poems/quotes.  I used to keep it posted on my wall.  I think it is a beautiful comment on how the stuff of earth (and, for our purposes, food) can either point us toward  the More and toward worship or can dwindle into mere consumption.  I find both in my own life and this poem reminds me to seek the former.

Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God.
But only those who see take off their shoes.
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.
  -Elizabeth Barrett Browning

And Second:

– My friend Josh is a great guy and an burgeoning photographer.  He is a card-carrying Anglican and his sacramental theology shows in his work.  He takes the mundane and, through it, somehow shows us the transcendent.  I really like this picture he took of a classmate of ours.  Check out his work.

Have a beautiful day. (Even if it is gray and raining and you’re sick.)
 

Merry Christmas!

December 21, 2007

 

 

From Mary’s Magnificat in Luke 1:

….He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.
~Luke 1: 52 & 53

Merry Christmas! During this season and this new year, may you know Blessed hunger, and be filled to the brim with the best of things!

Peace, comfort, and joy to you.

 

Gifts that Wage Peace in Teeny Ways

December 21, 2007

Christmas is the season of consumerism, but it is meant to be a season of waging peace.  So I propose that the church rebel,  in small and big ways, in order to seek peace this Christmas.

Two little ways to wage peace this Christmas:
1. Buy Fair Trade.

2. Give money.  Every year after we give a fair amount of gifts (many of which will collect dust) to all of my dear family members, we return to our favorite Christmas catalogs and give gifts to people we don’t know in honor of our family members.  So each year the stockings contain a little note from us of what my family gave to whom.  A goat to a family in India (we usually draw or print out a picture of a goat with a Santa hat and put it in the stocking), money to aid in human-trafficking investigations, or (for my sister who loves books) books to help rural schools in developing countries.

If you haven’t finished your shopping (or even if you have),  let me recommend giving in this way.  Give tidings of peace this Christmas!

In the past we have given to Heifer, IJM, and Samaritan’s Purse.  But I found out that Food for the Hungry also has a gift catalog, so check that out.

Peace.

Theology begins with Tea

December 19, 2007

 Decemebr 15 was Drink Tea Day, and at that point, I was drinking about a billion cups of tea and working frantically for my class, so I wasn’t able to tell you about it.

So this post is in honor of tea, my favorite hot drink.

You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.” C. S. Lewis
 

Why I love tea (an abridged list):

  • It places pleasure and beauty over efficiency. It slows us down.  We kick back on the porch with it in the summertime, and we have to wait for it to cool in the wintertime. 
  • It is healthful.  Chamomile helps my headaches or a sore throat, ginger tea takes away stomach aches, and green, red, and white teas are  full of anti-oxidants. 
  • It brings people together. The best conversations happen over tea.
  • It taste so good and so varied. Rooibos with milk, mint, chai, green, red, raspberry, rose petal, or plain old English Black tea. The taste options are endless here.
  • It is a key ingredient of hospitality. I learned this in Ireland.
  • It is cheery and comforting, like an old friend.
  • I don’t know if it is the beauty, the taste, the steam, or that it slows me down, but resting with a cup of tea helps me to think bigger, greater thoughts- about life, God, or friends, and it even helps me to think little good thoughts, like how grateful I am for socks.

you gotta see this :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1l93DJpnXs

Thanks James for the Tea Day update and the video!