Filed under: rick's ditties
quick post.
this weekend my sister got married, following a 13 year old chain reaction, gave me a nephew.. life is crazy…
congratulations to cheri and gerry B. God bless your life together.
Filed under: josephine
here’s the thing, it’s really simple: Jesus said love everyone unconditionally, pray for those who hurt you. God is the only executor of justice or consequences, not me. if i pass judgement on someone it’s going to be given to me in the same measure, i don’t want that, and i don’t think you do either. it doesn’t make sense to let people die, but Jesus never promised us anything would make sense, that’s why following him is radical. we’re killing innocent people too. i just don’t think that it’s my place to make that judgement. maybe george bush felt it was his. i can’t judge him either. i believe he is a godly man who did what he felt was right. i just don’t see anywhere in the teachings of Christ where killing anyone, even your enemy, even someone evil, is justified. i don’t have the final say, and if i’m wrong, so be it. but if i’m wrong, no one was killed because of it. shane told a story at ecclesia about this little boy who was getting beat up at school and came home and told him about it. so, shane ased him what he was going to do and he said: “well, i always say” (this kid is like eleven) “two wrongs don’t make a right…” they’re our brothers over there. every one of them are made in the image of GOD. i think it’s wrong to kill anyone ever.
Filed under: josephine
this morning i woke up at 7:45 and couldnt go back to sleep, my mind has been wandering ever since.
epiphany #1- 1cor 4.10 We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! we are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless….” and it goes on–back to verse 9 “it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena.” does this not sound to you like Paul is talking to the modern church? where on this earth did we get the idea that God would make our lives good?!!??!? we are called to be put on display as fools. “i met Jesus, and he messed me up.”-shane claibourne
epiphany #2- “be still and know that I am God” (and you are not)….what a new perspective fatalism puts on this verse. we rush around like the little plate spinning man in Terminal, trying to keep all of our plates in the air, when guess what?! we arent keeping them there at all, God is. quit rushing around and know that you cannot accomplish anything,only God can.
this particular epiphany inspired the first song i have ever written:
lay down
be still
and know that You’re God
and i am not
if every piece will fall without me
let them fall
as an offering at your feet
lay down
be still
and know that You’re God
and i am not
you hold my life
in the palm of your hand
and only when i quit trying
can i stand
lay down
be still
and know that You’re God
and i am not
lay down
be still
and know that You’re God
and i am not
so there it is…
now a whole series on epiphanies from the sermon on the mount…
are you aware that three of the eight beatitudes are anti-war?
.7 blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy
.9 blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God
.10 blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
5:23 says dont offer a sacrifice to God unless you are reconciled to your brother (you know the ones we are bombing in iraq)
38-48 says turn the other cheek, pray for your enemies, and give more than is expected of you.
6:19-24 says store up treasures in heaven not here.
and 25-34 says dont worry about what you wear or eat. we know that one right. seek first the kingdom. well we play at seeking the kingdom, but do we quit worrying about what to wear?
so here’s my idea. when i am very sick i am miserable, and i take medicine that works contrary to my body to relieve the symptoms, but mostly the doctor says to rest and get a lot of liquids. so i was thinking, Jesus said the law and the prophets rest on the two greatest commandments; love God, love your neighbor. if we spend our energy on loving our neighbor perfectly (like our Father is perfect) and tackle any imperfection in that area tenaciously with prayer i propose that we wont have to worry as much about not killing him, stealing from him, or having sex with him. likewise, and perhaps more practical; if we wholeheartedly on conquering our fleshly temptation to worry about our wordly physical needs we wont even have to think about staying abstinate, or not being hateful.
here is the plan, and where the title of this post comes in: next time you go out to buy a lovely piece of clothing to refill your wardrobe (which i am not denying is from time to time necessary) instead of paying 35 dollars for a pair of jeans that you will take off as soon as you get home everyday, instead buy a pair of five to ten dollar black scrubs pants. they will match everything, they will be inifinitely comfortable, and they are not revealing in any way. if you need a shirt go to the little boys (or mens) undershirt section and buy a package of 4 black, gray or white tshirts for 6.48. they are shaped best anyway, and any design you can find on the internet and trace onto a piece of stencil paper you can paint on it. if you need to look nicer, instead of rushing to find the trendiest silk camisole, go to the pajama department at walmart and for 1/3 of the price get a cotton one (much more comfortable) that looks essentially the same only longer. if you need nicer bottoms, buy a twin sheet in the back (doesnt even have to be the requisite 200 thread count; sew the ends together foldover a waistband and put a drawstring in it. dont buy another pair of blister rubbing black heels!!!! splurge and spend seven more dollars at payless to get a pair of genuine leather almost skin coloered capezio ballet slippers that are just like the feet God gave you only tougher on the bottom. i refuse to buy into the new age philosophy that one needs a two hundred dollar pair of highly supportive shoes to be a steward of the body that God gave you. every three or so generations a brilliant man does 20 years worth of research and becomes famous by putting out a book that says the human body is the most flawless design in the universe. i think that our feet can take care of themselves if we quit babying them.
-josephine
Filed under: josephine
i found an article on what is called natalism this summer and was so happy to discover that there is a subculture of people who are making their home and family their priority. then yesterday i put the word into google to research this topic a little more, and what did i find? nothing but negative reviews about how natalism means the belief that a persons purpose in life is to reproduce, and they are only selfishly contributing to the overpopulation of the planet. i was really upset by this.
first of all, the purpose of natalism is not to reproduce but as diognetus would put it; to not destroy one’s offspring. natalists aren’t the only people having children, and they aren’t doing it just for the sake of reproduction. natalists are those who choose to care for their children, and actually raise them instead of asking the school system or youth group to do so. a lot of people are having families, the difference is who makes them a priority.
secondly, the problem of overpopulation of the globe is that we are not producing enough resources to meet everyone’s needs. the cause of this is not the amount of people as much as our wasteful, unsustainable, and consumeristic lifestyles. if you want to control population growth get the catholic church to quit putting contracts out on people’s lives for passing out condoms to homeless families in third world countries, and teach high school kids to keep their pants on. the problem is not people who want children having them, its people who dont want children but have them anyways.
if you’re not going to raise your kids, don’t get pregnant, and quit complaining about people who are raising productive members of society.
-josephine
Filed under: rick's ditties
The differences between the First Presbyterian Church, where we slept this weekend, and Ecclesia were highly evident to me. The Presbyterian church was huge and they were still hiring outside people to do things that I think a church that size should have many people volunteering to do. Consider also that a church that size has to have many members who drive longer than fifteen minutes to go to church, maybe even longer than thirty minutes. Normally, I wouldn’t think that a bad thing, but after this weekend I realized that a church that big is probably building oriented. They have a huge building full of people who don’t volunteer to help with the youth or the maintenance, so they hire the jobs out to people who believe that this church is teaching a false doctrine: i.e. infant baptism. To me this says that this huge church is filled with people, who go to church and sing songs, but they do not even take care of their church; how can they be serving the community? What is this church preaching about Christianity, what are they saying about Christ?
At Ecclesia they were almost overflowing the building where they worshiped. What preached the most words to me was the idea to plant another church instead of building a bigger building. This tells me that the Church is by no means building oriented, but people oriented. The Church is not the building, but the people who God has called to redemption. What surprised me more was how they wanted to plant a Church, “I’m thinking about maybe starting a bike shop.” I would have probably had one of the small groups that broke out from Ecclesia start a church somewhere. The problem with that (that I didn’t see until I heard the bike shop idea) is that the new church would have been directly tied to Ecclesia, it would have brought in the same culture and it would have made the Church at Ecclesia more important than the Kingdom that God has established. Ecclesia and the new church would have fallen into the same problem as the modern churches today who mainly draw in middle aged, middle classed, white people. Every other culture is left out of a lot of churches. A bike shop would not interest the same culture as the coffee shop and art gallery does. These two buildings would not be interlinked; they would not be the same congregation. This tells me that the Church at Ecclesia is not interested in seeing their church grow, but seeing God’s Church grow. Once again this shows that they are not building oriented. They are not family with only the people inside their walls. Their building is not the only way to get to heaven, or even the best way. They want only to see people saved and added to God’s number of redeemed, and then to see those people go out and seek the same goal they have: serve the community, and show God to people.
To me the First Presbyterian Church only preached that we should meet and sing, but they did not inspire me to do anything about this hurting world. Ecclesia, however, preached loudly that the church is to serve the community, care for the poor, comfort the hurting, and preach Jesus Christ and him crucified(1 Cor. 2:2), and that this is (y)our spiritual act of worship (Romans 12:1).
ricky barnett jr.
emergent church ditty: preaching
Filed under: Uncategorized
so i just returned from a remarkable life changing weekend about four and a half hours ago, spent the rest of the evening with the love of my life, mostly smiling, and on top of that just watched garden state.
my emergent church class took a trip to houston to visit this church called ecclesia (translated as “church”) and immerse ourselves in the postmodern coffee consuming art gallery inhabiting culture of the art district in houston. i didnt even know houston had an art district. before this weekend basically all i knew about houston was that there are theatres and a hard rock cafe in walking distance from the hyatt with glass elevators, and that was enough to sell me on the idea already. so ecclesia is this church that people might call postmodern or emerging even though im sick of labels. basically they are a community of people who happen to have this building and they sell fairtrade coffee and literature and host a organic co-op farmers market and a swing dance class. they just love people. i always wonder why everyone, including me, makes that so complex. their just people who love Jesus and everyone created in the image of God. they’ve dropped everything about the church except for that–being like Jesus, loving people, preaching the gospel. theyre helping His kingdom come instead of only praying for it. he talked about this passage in mark 1 where Jesus is standing in the door way and they bring all of the dirtiest, sickest, most sinful people to Him and he steps out into the midst of all of that and touches them. we need to quit drawing a line between what parts of this world are “baptized” (claimed by Christ), and what’s broken. the longer i live the more i see it’s all baptized, and it’s all broken. he said a church building or worship gathering or whatever label you want to put on it, should be a place that as people leave they think ‘if the world were all like that, it would be a better place.” because the kingdom of God is a better place than where we are. not physically in space, but in our hearts, in people. andy was saying in class the other day that he knew this guy who when people asked him where he went to church he started listing off people. i made a note in my binder really big–i go to church with rj and chris and isaac and molly and rebekah and joanna, people who show me God in this broken world.
all this and im only warming up…so this guy, shane claiborne, that spoke at the gathering this morning is from a neo-monastic (communal) living experiment in philadelphia (www.thesimpleway.org) it’s crazy because he was just visiting, and all that he said spoke right to the passions of my heart, and he had so many amazing stories to tell i couldnt even start here and do them justice, but he gave me a glimpse of what the radical love of a homeless revolutionary can make you do. i was holding back tears as i prayed that my life would be a radical love. i cant really put into words what i felt and all a million trillion times amplified by the fact that i got to worship with rj, and we took communion together for the first time. i really dont know if anything we do in our lives could be more intimate than that. it was what dr hopp, and ralph waldo emerson would call the ravishment of intellect by coming nearer to the truth, and what lord henry would call touching the sacred.
then we get in our respective vans and make the six hour drive back. rj and i rode in a van with a really amazing girl named cassi. i met her before but was just even more impressed with her this weekend. she’s just really neat and fun to be with. we ate at the fambroughs when we got back and then sat on the couch talking for a while (not cassi, her husband picked her up when we got back, just me and rj) and i am amazed every second by how beautiful a person he is, and how much i cant wait to spend my life with him, and then even more amazed when like a dummy i wake up and realize, hey i am spending my life with him right now.
well when i got to my room i didnt feel so sleepy after all, so i ran down to borrow garden state from donna, since they played it this weekend but to quiet to hear and i was dying to find out what was going on. well its all just more Jesus sticking his fingers into my murky life. it was so the perfect ending to all of the things starting in this weekend. mostly this scene where the characters visit this family who lives in a boat at the edge of a natural chasm that they are trying to protect from developers, and the man goes into it at night exploring and says he likes to pretend it’s inifinte, and they jsut sell jewelry and stuff to get by and the main characters are asking them about their life and the guy just says, i guess i like the adventure of discovering something and i get to be here with this woman i love and our beautiful baby and i couldnt ask for more, (that was a paraphrase since it’s too late to turn it all back on and track downt the quote), and then as they are leaving the main guy andrew says “good luck exploring the infinite abyss”, and the guy says to andrew “you too” and its just like, all of these characters, their lives are so screwed upand weird, just like all of ours are, but thats life: an infinite abyss, you explore it and find beautiful things, and love, and you couldnt ask for more.
-josephine
Filed under: hooker
there are times when i get possessed by this strange, horrifying desire to become famous. paint my skin in neon colours and go stand in the middle of a busy intersection. write a pulitzer-worthy novel. change the world with the tip of a fucking pen. it’s something akin to what it might feel like if my insides were suddenly turned to carbonation and i sat through an earthquake. POP. a thousand tiny bubbles of chris splatter the walls of this shambly dorm and drip down isaac’s stunned face (see the little bubbles in his sideburns? oh how cute teeheheheheeee).
i want to know where that feeling comes from. warpaint my face and hunt it with a knife, or club, or just rip into that need with my teeth and scream through the blood and howl, consuming that evil demon.
i remember. when i was sixteen, i would lock my door, draw the blinds, quiet the lights and just shut the hell up. i would lie on my floor, on my back, crucified to my floor, flattened by the peace that enveloped that room. the yellow steamy dust dropping in through the window, diced by my blinds (they were green. GREEN), and just listen. shut the fuck up and listen, and disappear into my carpet, leave the arcing plane of this world just for one precious hour and become a part of this giant symphony that is LIVING BREATHING PLANET EARTH.
i lost that this afternoon. i was possessed by that demon of success. of loudness. of pride. of fame.
shhhhh…
quiet. cut your hair. grow a beard. sit back in a rocking chair with the light off. listen to the wind in the trees, the sound of gentle entropy, the sound of your skin rubbing away to dust, the sound of new cells growing in their place. i am slowly dying, and it is quiet.
-chris
Filed under: Uncategorized
i had to write a “ditty” on community for my emergent church class and as most papers do it helped to organize my thoughts about something i already knew. one of my favorite quotes is by plato who says the most effective education is that a child should play among lovely things. i had always agreed. i think aesthetics and what your child grows up seeing is very important. childredn should learn from a direct experience wiht nature, not just what someone else has told them(this is attributed to emerson) but even emerson would say in american scholar that you have to have mentors (literary and incarnate in my own personal translation) i think the most effective education is that a child should play and grow and live among lovely individuals. my friends laughed at me because, when asked what person that i didnt personally know would i will my children to in case of an accident, i said a christian rock band. i want them to be taught the eternal truths of God, but i also want them to be raised in an artistic and intellectual environment. what better place than in a communal living area of close friends who i believe to be very wise. we can encourage one another in our dreams and endeavors,a nd bear each other’s burdens. this is what i want my children to see and learn. matthew arnold says that socrates and plato and aristotle and all of the great names had such powerful wisdom because they lived amid the constant flow of thought. doesnt that sound like the best place to be?
-josephine
Filed under: Uncategorized
i was reading this guys blog that i’m assigned to keep up with for a class yesterday and he had an entry from like a week back talking about feng shui. so i put feng shui in google and found this cool site soyouwanna.com that had an article about. it was really in depth on how to get started. so i also read the article about yoga. and then i found another site with info about t’ai chi. all of this to say that i am really fascinated by all kinds of different philosophies and how they can be of benefit to us. i love to do interior design so i was super interested in some basic principles of feng shui and how they can be applied to existing structures. of course i was ten times more interested in learning yoga and/or getting a t’ai chi group started on campus, except i don’t know anyone to teach us. more than the actual practice of hatha yoga for physical fitness and relaxation, there are many kinds of yoga which are all philosophies in and of themselves. karma yoga is about giving without expecting anything in return. jnana yoga is about unveiling the illusions of the world. bhakti yoga is about channeling your emotional energy to your spirit, and khaja yoga is about concentration and mind control. Yoga as a whole means concentrating mind, body, soul, and emotions to bind yourself to God; disciplining yourself so that you can connect with your spirit. when this man came to the cross cultural studies workshop last year he talked about people having “t’ai chi before breakfast and coffee in their pajamas” i love it!
-josephine
