A beautiful note on Christian Education

This article was forwarded to me by a friend. It is an excenllent observation which I hope to discuss further in the future. I'm alittle too swamped right now to treat it properly, but please give it a read. To access it, just click on the title of this post.

Communion

The shared union of believers, joining together, remembering Christ's love as it is played out in our common life. I desire this badly. However, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer said (something close to the following) : If you fall in love with your ideal of community, you will destroy it. If you care about and love the people around you, you will find yourself in community.
How bad I am at this! I know just what sort of ideal I have in my head, but I get so frustrated with the people around me. If I would stop idealizing what could be, I might be able to care enough for others to impact them for change and, much greater, change myself in the process. Right now I find myself very frustrated with some close friends, and I am at a loss as to how to talk to them about it. I have the opportunity in a few minutes to go directly and serve them with a humble attitude, even though I don't agree wit hwhat they are doing. A stated goal of our shared community is to help other organizations on our campus achieve their goals. This looks great on paper, until I disagree wit hthe goals and/or the means through which these goals are accomplished. I am frustrated because my friends are in both my organization, and the one I am committed to helping succeed, even though I disagree with their methods. I don't know how to talk to my friends about the conflict in values that I see. Frankly, I don't think they are even viewing the situation through the same paradigm as I am. It is really tough, but I'm going to go over there now, and do what I have committed to do. Moreover, I'm going to do the tougher thing and talk to them about it sometime next week. Pray for me.

Random Thoughts

So this week is like a tornado on speed. Hopefully we will get some actual posting happening soon though.

Just a thought: In Mark where the teacher of the law asks Jesus about the greatest commandment, it says that after Jesus told the guy that he was standing on the verge of hte kingdom of God, the crowd all stops asking him questions. I mean, really? Is that the point to stop asking questions? I mean, I would like to think that if I had been in the crowd, that this would be the moment at which I would step forward adn say to Jesus, "Hey, what do you mean that this is the beginning point of the kingdom of God?" I mean if we are coming this close, where's the self respecting, inquisitive seeker who's willing to take that plunge.

I know that in reality I'd probably be just as dumbfounded as everyone there. I mean, when you think about it, this is pretty freaky. Jesus says that the last step before plunging headlong into the kingdom of God is loving God with all passions, intellect, will, and being, and loving others to the extent that we love ourselves. That's drastic. That means loving the guy who comes into my home to rob me, as much as I love me. So, to the extent that I want to hang onto my stuff, at the same time I should be wanting to help him out so that he doesn't have to do this to get a leg up in life. Intense.

So that begs the question that I mentioned before. If this is the step before life in the kingdom, what does life in the kingdom look like?

Maybe it has something to do with Jesus' answer a few pages back about the rich young man. All these commandments we may keep, but to live in the eternal kingdom of God, we have ot abandon the self love that drives us to hoard up for ourselves. Jesus tells him to sell all he has give it to the poor and then he will have eternal life. Then he should follow Jesus.

I think that maybe it has something to do with abandoning the self preservation thing that we are all so into. As far as a command goes, loving others as much as we love ourselves is a tall order. Where the command to love God is explicit, there is really no greater love for God that we can have, the command to love others is like a highway overlook that gives us a glimpse into the kingdom beyond.

Perhaps there is a principle behind the second command that is greater--something that merits true kingdom living more than just loving others as much as we love ourselves.
I think about a few lines that I have been singing the past two weeks:

"It's as crazy as it seems,
love till you bleed, love in reality.
It's as crazy as it seems,
giving you all comes at a cost for me."

No, I don't think I would have been brave enough to look Jesus in the eye and ask what it takes to live in the kingdom among us. This terrible already but not yet paradox grabs hold of me and scares me deeply. Jesus isn't really asking me to live beyond loving others as much as I love myself, is he?

In the News. . .

So I have a certain friend who is fond of sending me random news articles from a denominational news site. These articles are always intriguing to me, because they make me realize how differently I am thinking about things in comparison with many in my tradition. I came across this article when I was browsing the news site, and I thought I'd put it out here. the link is http://www.faithnews.cc/articles.cfm?sid=6945 The article adresses a speech in which Sen. Barack Obama from Illinois is appealing for cooperation between religious and secular America. I was a little taken aback by the article, because it seemed to characterize the senator differently than I had previously viewed him. I linked over to the transcript of the actual address, and found that I was aligning much more with the senator than with the news story I had initially read. Here's a link to the Senator's site and his speech: http://obama.senate.gov/speech/060628-call_to_renewal_keynote_address/index.html

Anyone interested in dialogue on some of the themes in these two pieces, I'd love to hear from you. I think Sen. Obama makes some great points about people of all faiths translating their values into terms in which they are able to communicate them to all of society. I would argu with the FaithNews Network, that this is not a call to water down beliefs, it is a call to employ our beliefs in making us better members of our communities, and thus more effectiveely connected to the peopl with whom we hope to share our very real faith.

If he did get the presidential nomination for 2008, I don't know of anyone else yet in the runnings that I'd rather vote for.

Learning how to use this thing...

So I'm trying to figure out how to post papers, articles etc. on this thing. I think that it may entail hosting them somewhere else, and then just linking over to them from here. Anyway, as soon as I figure that out we'll get some fun reading up for everybody. In the meantime, I just thought I'd let everyone know I moved to my new apartment and it's great. you should all come over sometime and see it. . . oh wait, that's not really practical, since this thing is connected to the www. Well, in that case I'll try to put up some pics by the end of hte week.

Thanks to our new contributors who have come on board. I look forward ot hearing from them. Also, congrats to one of our contributors, simplegift, on her Graduating this weekend.

what I envision

So ultimately, I would like this blog to be about something bigger than me. In the next few weeks I will be inviting some people to dialogue with me on a few specific topics. I want to create a space where organic discussion can take place between people from different perspectives who share a common interest in the topics I have chosen. My approach is from a Christian theological interest, but I hope to hear from this and other perspectives as well. The areas I want to explore for now are as follows: text/art, community, love for the neighbor, love for the enemy, and justice/justification. Look for some links, papers, new participants and topics to be posted in the next week.

The First Post

okay so This is the first post on this. I wanted to try a new/ experimental blog. unlike the xanga (for my family) blog, the myspace (for my friends) blog, or the facebook (this isn't a blog, but a yeilding to social pressures) page, I wanted a place that I could write on a few specific topics. Those will be outlined in the next post. I just wanted to make this a sort of declaration of what this wasn't.

Peace.
-Daniel