Tag Archives: General

Power = Love

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The Prayer Appointed for the Week has me thinking again.

O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Grant me the fullness of your grace, that I, running to obtain your promises, may become a partaker of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Emphasis mine)

I can’t help but recall the verse in Romans: “God’s kindness leads you to repentance.” And also the chorus of “See the World” by Gomez: “And when all’s been said and done/ It’s the things that are given, not won/ Are the things that you earned.”

Power is most truly expressed in kindness, mercy, pity, or put another way power is expressed in love.

Another thought I’ve had recently is this: Something worth fighting for isn’t the same as something worth killing for.

Food That Lasts

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So here is The Prayer Appointed for the Week from The Divine Hours:

Grant that I, Lord, may not be anxious about earthly things, but love things heavenly; and even now, while I am placed among things that are passing away, hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives nd reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. [emphasis mine]

I’ve been reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, and I can’t help but draw a connection between this prayer, no doubt inspired by Jesus’ words in the Gospel of John to at least some degree, and the food chains Pollan describes in the first two parts of his book. He contrasts the industrial food chain, which in his words is largely floating on an ocean of oil, with alternative food chains that take their inspiration from the inherent rhythms and interdependence of nature. I’ve not finished the book, but I have a sense of where he is going.

Reading and praying… a dangerous combination, for they inevitably lead me to thinking and change. And change is hard; “ignorance is bliss” in some very real ways.

Yet I continue to read and pray. Passing more than a dozen chain restaraunts on my way to the local super-sized supermarket, I hear the echoes of the prayer reformulated as a question in my head: “Placed among things that are passing away, will I take hold of things that will endure?“

++ Lord, give me ears to hear. ++

I Am Outraged!

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Tuesday afternoon I’m listening to NPR on the way home from work, and a story covering President Bush’s address to the United Nations General Assembly earlier that day comes on. The story opens with the President’s sweeping statement that “Americans are outraged by the situation in Burma, where a military junta has imposed a 19-year reign of fear.” I’ve since been following the story in Myamnar, and what is happening there isn’t good. But that’s not what has me outraged.

After the story was introduced on NPR, I slammed off the radio (to the extent one can slam off a radio when the action consists solely of pushing a small, fragile knob) and let out a few choice words of my own outrage. Really? With everything going on in the world this is what Americans are outraged about? This is what the President chooses to focus on? Not Iraq or Iran or Afghanistan or Palestine or North Korea or Pakistan? Ye gods!

I did turn the radio back on to see if I was really hearing the story correctly, and I also skimmed the transcript of President Bush’s full address. Myanmar isn’t the only topic, but it is the one that get the most coverage, two full paragraphs. In fact, that section reads more like a policy statement press release than an address to the U. N. The whole of the middle east share parts of three paragraphs, the last of which is a plea for the Human Rights Council to stop picking on Israel.

Am I wrong, but wasn’t this the perfect opportunity for the President to defend the United States policy in the Middle East, and particularly Iraq, before the host of world leaders?  Will there a better opportunity to speak frankly and directly about something that is in many places of the world regarded as a dubious and failed occupation? Given a world stage, President Bush seems to play at slight-of-hand.

President Ahmadinejad certainly didn’t hesitate to speak directly; here is a transcript of his address.

2007 Reading List

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Not sure why I haven’t thought to do this before. Anyway, here goes in descending order of completion…

Praying with the Church by Scot McKnight

A good introduction to fixed-hour prayer for the non-liturgical. I’ve been using The Divine Hours, compiled by Phyllis Tickle, sporadically for a couple years now; so I read the book having already been persuaded by the value of this prayer tradition that had largely been forgotten in the church circles I was born in. McKnight explores the historical roots of fixed hour prayer before surveying prayer books from four Christian traditions: the Eastern Orthodox, Catholicism, the Anglican Communion, and finally Tickle’s own more recent ecumenical contribution. These days I live in the tension of being pulled by both the liturgical and the organic. Wonder if I’m the only one?

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

We have a new running joke in the house: Everything is made of corn. Read the book and you’ll discover just how disturbingly true that statement is, as least as it regards the majority of what we eat from supermarkets and chain restaurants. The book’s subtitle, “A Natural History of Four Meals,” lends a bit more information; Pollan follows the food chain of four meals back, back, back to their very disparate originals. This is one of those books I almost wish I hadn’t read, because having read it I now feel obligated to live differently.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

I finally got around to reading it after having it on my wish list for a year or two. I enjoyed Vonnegut’s prose and the quirky way he meandered through the events. I was struck by what seems to be a powerful statement against war, though he doesn’t really come out and say much against war directly… just something about the dry presentation of events I think.

Marriage Fitness by Mort Fertel

I picked this one up for the marriage blog I write on recommendation from one of the readers there. While I don’t like the sales pitch hype Fertel employs in the introduction, I like both his overall thesis as well as many of the action steps he recommends. I’ll be blogging about this one more in the coming weeks over at Marriage Actually.

Jesus Christ and Kurt Vonnegut walk into a bar…

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tock tick

Because I absolutely love “Tock Tick,” I have had Slaughterhouse Five on my reading list for some time.

Because I finally remembered to pick up Slaughterhouse Five from the library, I am now reminded of this link at the God’s Politics blog culled from Mike Todd back in the early spring. So it goes.

It’s Almost Fall

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Does this mean I’ll be back to blogging? I’ve had a look at the Fall prime time TV lineup, and there wasn’t much that caught my eye. How many episodes can you make from a Geico commercial? Anyway, I’ve been missing writing and thinking here. Spent way too many hours wasting my time on StumbleUpon. We’ll see I suppose.

Parenting with Perspective

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worn teddy bear
I came across Hour Challenge a little while ago, and have been enjoying it. This post caught my attention the other day, probably because I think about this with regard to my own kids a fair bit.

I see two challenges: The first is to raise my kids in such a way that they have a proper perspective on wealth. I want them to understand that we are indeed wealthy by any real standard, that our wealth carries certain responsibilities toward others, and that much of our culture will not support this perspective. I also want them to hold this perspective without feeling guilty for being wealthy, for just as most did not choose to be poor, they did not choose to be wealthy.

The second challenge in not suffocating their childhood innocence with heavy concepts too soon. So far, we have let their own curiosity and honest answers guide us. As Kerri and I work to maintain a proper perspective in our own lives and to live out of that perspective, we include our kids in our activities. They ask their own questions, and we give them honest answers. In fact, finding ways to answer them honestly, but in terms that they can understand, often proves to be incredibly useful in fine-tuning my own thinking about a topic.

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