Officially Moved

I have completed moving my blog over to another site. This site will remain here for reference. All of the postings from this site have been moved over, but they are best viewed here in their original context. I have also moved over most of the working links so they may be referenced on the new site.

The new site is called Mahzzo't, follow the link: http://mahzzot.wordpress.com/

Blessings, Justin

Another Translation Coming Soon

Another translation of the canonical and apocryphal books is soon to be completed by a diverse team of translators with the input of lay readers. The new translation will be known as the Common English Bible (CEB). Follow the link for a list of the translators and contributors here.

You Can't Take it With You

As Tall As Lions (ATAL) released their latest album, You Can't Take it With You, August 18, 2009, with Triple Crown Recordings. Check out the full album online here. ATAL will be in Minneapolis, MN, at First Avenue on Saturday, October 17, 2009.

Life is For Living

Lyrics | Coldplay lyrics - Life Is For Living lyrics

Everything's Not Lost

Lyrics | Coldplay lyrics - Everything's Not Lost lyrics

The Blues

Lyrics | Switchfoot lyrics - The Blues lyrics

Poets Prophets Preachers

http://robbell.com/poets-prophets-preachers/

Dr. Norman Habel

Question to ponder:

Is Genesis 1 about "domination?"

Eating Mercifully

"Tragic Error"

"The earth is the Lord's, we gabbed,
and the fullness thereof-
while we looted and pillaged, claiming indemnity:
the fullness thereof
given over to us, to our use-
while we preened ourselves, sure of our power,
wilful or ignorant, through the centuries.

Miswritten, misread, that charge:
subdue was the false, the misplaced word in the story.
Surely we were to have been
earth's mind, mirror, reflective source.
Surely our task
was to have been
to love the earth,
to dress and keep it like Eden's garden.

That would have been our dominion:
to be those cells of earth's body that could
perceive and imagine, could bring the planet
into the haven it is to be known,
(as the eye blesses the hand, perceiving
it form and the work it can do)."

Denise Levertov (1923-1997)

see also Earth Gospel: A Guide to Prayer for God's Creation
by Sam Hamilton-Poore pg 44

New Hope

I re-invent myself on new hope.

- Barbara Mitchell

About the Bible

Short Answers to Big Questions
A Helpful Resource Revised and Expanded

Answers? Perhaps. Responses? Yes. Earlier this month Augsburg Books released a revised and expanded edition of Terence E. Fretheim's About the Bible: Short Answers to Big Questions. I have personally benefited from the first edition and have recommended it to many friends and family members. This welcomed revision provides a highly accessible resource for laity, pastors, students, and general inquisitors concerning pervasive questions with respect to the Bible. Two of the additional questions addressed in this edition include: "Did God create the world good and not perfect?" and "Does God cause natural disasters in the Bible?" While the questions in this volume are not ones that all have asked, I would submit that all who think about the Bible deal with some formulation of these questions to an extent, and to that end, this collection of responses is pertinent.

http://www.augsburgfortress.org/store/item.jsp?clsid=196246&productgroupid=0&isbn=0806657677

The Prophetic Imagination

The church will not have power to act or believe until it recovers its tradition of faith and permits that tradition to be the primal way out of enculturation. This is not a cry for traditionalism but rather a judgment that the church has no business more pressing than the reappropriation of its memory in its full power and authenticity. And that is true among liberals who are too chic to remember and conservatives who have overlaid the faith memory with all kinds of hedges that smack of scientism and Enlightenment.

It is the task of prophetic ministry to bring the claims of the tradition and the situation of enculturation into an effective interface. That is, the prophet is called to be a child of the tradition, one who has taken it seriously in the shaping of his or her own field of perception and system of language, who is so at home in that memory that the points of contact and incongruity with the situation of the church in culture can be discerned and articulated with proper urgency.

Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, pg.2.

Holistic Vision of All Life

For Africans, the salvation of individuals is no substitute for the complete salvation of the entire human condition. The African person is not an individual, for personality is defined by relationship. The African does not reflect the ideology that says, "I think; therefore I am." Rather, for Africans, their reality is expressed by the saying, "I am, because we are; and because we are, I am." Nor do humans as community live their lives in splendid isolation from the rest of creation. Rather, there is an intrinsic relationship among sky, humans, and earth - and authentic human living is at the harmonious intersection of these three interdependent realms. Human beings cannot be fully saved unless the co-determinates of authentic human life are simultaneously saved. In this regard, Revelation reinforces the African worldview, for Revelation envisions a future not of isolated individuals but of a community living in the holy city and nurtured by the river of life and the tree of life.

James Chukwuma Okoye, "Power and Worship: Revelation in African Perspective," in From Every People and Nation, ed. David Rhoads, pg. 122

Amos 5 KBV

“I hate, I despise your lectures and seminars, your sermons, addresses and Bible studies…When you display your hermeneutic, dogmatic, ethical and pastoral bits of wisdom before one another and before me, I have no pleasure in them…Take away from me your…thick books and…your dissertations…your theological magazines, monthlies and quarterlies.”

Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology, pg. 120

Prayer of St. Patrick

Christ, be with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit, Christ where I arise,
Christ in the heart of every one who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every one who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
Salvation is of the Lord,
Salvation is of the Lord,
Salvation is of the Christ,
May your salvation, O Lord, be ever with us.

St. Patrick, 389-461

Oxford Book of Prayer, pg 129

Suffering

Lord, comfort the sick, the hungry
the lonely and those who are hurt and shut in on themselves,
by your presence in their hearts;
use us to help them in a practical way.
Show us how to set about this
and give us strength, tact and compassion.
Teach us how to be alongside them,
and how to share in their distress deeply in our prayer.
Make us open to them and give us courage to suffer with them,
and that in so doing we share with you in the suffering of the world
for we are your body on earth and you work through us.

Michael Hollings and Etta Gullick

Oxford Book of Prayer, pg 130

Creating God, Your Fingers Trace

Creating God, your fingers trace
the bold designs of farthest space;
let sun and moon and stars and light
and what lies hidden praise your might.

Sustaining God, your hands uphold
earth's mysteries known or yet untold;
let water's fragile blend with air,
enabling life, proclaim your care.

Redeeming God, your arms embrace
all now despised for creed or race;
let peace, descending like a dove,
make known on earth your healing love.

Indwelling God, your gospel claims
one family with a billion names;
let every life be touched by grace
until we praise you face to face.

Words: Jeffery Rowthorn
Words © 1979 by The Hymn Society

Long Loneliness #2

"I clung to the words of comfort in the Bible and as long as the light held out, I read and pondered. Yet all the while I read, my pride was fighting on. I did not want to go to God in defeat and sorrow. I did not want to depend on Him. I was like the child that wants to walk by itself, I kept brushing away the hand that held me up. I tried to persuade myself that I was reading for literary enjoyment. But the words kept echoing in my heart. I prayed and did not know that I prayed."

Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness, pg. 81 (italics added)

The Purpose of the Bible

"The whole purpose of the Bible, it seems to me, is to convince people to set down the written word in order to become living words in the world for God's sake. For me, this willing conversion of ink back to blood is the full substance of faith."

-Barbara Brown Taylor

For the Beauty of the Earth

For the beauty of the earth,
For the glory of the skies,
For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies,
Lord of all, to thee we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise.

For the beauty of each hour
Of the day and of the night,
Hill and vale, and tree and flow'r,
Sun and moon and stars of light,
Lord of all to thee we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise.

For the joy of ear and eye,
For the heart and mind's delight,
For the mystic harmony
Linking sense to sound and sight,
Lord of all to thee we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise.

For the joy of human love,
Brother, sister, parent, child,
Friends on earth and friends above,
For all gentle thoughts and mild,
Lord of all to thee we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise.

For each perfect gift of Thine
To our race so freely giv'n,
Graces human and divine,
Flow'rs of earth and buds of heav'n,
Lord of all to thee we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise.

Folliot S. Pierpoint

The Long Loneliness #1

"Children look at things very directly and simply. I did not see anyone taking off his coat and giving it to the poor. I didn't see anyone having a banquet and calling in the lame, the halt and the blind. Those who were doing it, like the Salvation Army, did not appeal to me. I wanted, though I did not know it then, a synthesis. I wanted life and I wanted the abundant life. I wanted it for others too. I did not want just the few, missionary-minded people like the Salvation Army, to be kind to the poor, as the poor. I wanted everyone to be kind. I wanted every home to be open to the lame, the halt and the blind, the way it had been after the San Francisco earthquake. Only then did people really live, really love their brothers. In such love was the abundant life and I did not have the slightest idea how to find it."

Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness, pg. 39. (italics added)

She Who Is

Bonhoeffer's insight continues to inspire religious reflection: "God allows himself to be edged out of the world and on to the cross...and that is the way, the only way, in which he can be with us and help us...Only a suffering God can help." But how can a suffering God be of any help? There is an element of truth to one woman's appalled objection to this kind of language with which many would sympathize. If I were at the bottom of a deep pit, aching, cold, and nursing a broken arm, she writes, "what I want and urgently need is a Rescuer with a very bright light and a long ladder, full of strength, joy and assurance who can get me out of the pit, not a god who sits in the darkness suffering with me." What she rightly rejects is the notion of a suffering God who is powerless, the antithesis of the omnipotent God. However, the human situation of agony and death is more internal to ourselves and more socially complex than this example would allow. Closer to the point is the reflection of another woman who spent endless days and nights on a hospital ward with her tiny, sick daughter, helping the nurses with the other babies when she could. It was a dreadful exposure to the meaningless suffering of the innocent. "On those terrible children's wards," she writes, "I could neither have worshipped nor respected any God who had not himself cried out, 'My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?' Because it was so, because the creator loved his creation enough to become helpless with it and suffer in it, totally overwhelmed by the pain of it, I found there was still hope."
This is one way the symbol of a suffering God can help: by signaling that the mystery of God is here in solidarity with those who suffer. In the midst of the isolation of suffering the presence of divine compassion as companion to the pain transforms suffering, not mitigating its evil but bringing an inexplicable consolation and comfort. In her phenomenology of compassion Wendy Farley notes how compassion with its sympathetic knowledge:

does not stand outside the suffering in handwringing sympathy. It does not peer down on the victim and demand a stoicism that denies the pain. It begins where the sufferer is, in the grief, the shame, the hopelessness. It sees the despair as the most real thing. Compassion is with the sufferer, turned toward or submerged in her experience, seeing it with her eyes. This communication with the sufferer in her pain, as she experiences it, is the presence of love that is a balm to the wounded spirit. This relationship of shared, sympathetic suffering mediates consolation and respect that can empower the sufferer to bear the pain, to resist humiliation, to overcome the guilt.

Communion becomes a profound source of energy for the healing of suffering. Knowing that we are not abandoned makes all the difference.

Excerpted from: Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is, pp. 266-267

The Suffering of God

Search the Scriptures,
for in them you will find
this God of the loveless,
this God of Mercy, Love and Justice,
who weeps over these her children,
these her precious ones who have been carried from the womb,
who gathers up her young upon her wings
and rides along the high places of the earth,
who sees their suffering
and cries out like a woman in travail,
who gasps and pants;
for with this God,
any injustice that befalls one of these precious ones
is never the substance
of rational reflection and critical analysis,
but is the source
of a catastrophic convulsion within the very life of God.

Karen Drescher

in The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective
By Terence Fretheim
(Opening Pages)

The Effects of Human Sin on the Environment

Hear the word of the LORD,
O people of Israel;
for the LORD has an indictment
against the inhabitants of the land.
There is no faithfulness or
loyalty,
and no knowledge of God in
the land.
Swearing, lying, and murder,
and stealing and adultery
break out;
bloodshed follows bloodshed.
Therefore the land mourns,
and all who live in it languish;
together with the wild animals
and the birds of the air,
even the fish of the sea are perishing.

Hosea 4.1-3 (NRSV; italics and bold added)

The Temptation of Adam

Lyrics | Josh Ritter lyrics - The Temptation Of Adam lyrics

A Wesley Prayer

Thou art never weary, O Lord, of doing us good. Let us never be weary of doing thee service. But, as thou hast pleasure in the prosperity of thy servants, so let us take pleasure in the service of our Lord, and abound in thy work, and in thy love and praise evermore. O fill up all that is wanting, reform whatever is amiss in us, perfect the thing that concerneth us. Let the witness of thy pardoning love ever abide in all our hearts.

- John Wesley

Maybe I'm Just Tired

#2

Lyrics | Coldplay lyrics - Violet Hill lyrics

#1

Lyrics | Foreigner lyrics - I Want To Know What Love Is lyrics

The Big Question

I am in the process of "answering" an important question. It is a question that I have only recently realized that my life has been begging. I will not go into detail at this point, but rather, I will be posting a series of songs/music videos that I believe attempt to answer this question in some manner; or at the very least deal with possible responses to such a question.

Prayer of Good Courage

O God you have called us to ventures of which we cannot see the end, by paths never yet taken, through perils unknown. Give us good courage, not knowing where we go, to know that your hand is leading us, wherever we may go. Amen.

Kent Gustafson, Mountain Vespers

IF

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

- RUDYARD KIPLING


http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_if.htm

Native American Prayer

Great Spirit,
Give us hearts to understand
Never to take from creation's beauty more than we give,
Never to destroy want only for the furtherance of greed,
Never to deny to give our hands for the building of earth's beauty,
Never to take from her what we cannot use.
Give us hearts to understand
That to destroy earth's music is to create confusion,
That to wreck her appearance is to blind us to beauty,
That to callously pollute her fragrance is to make a house of stench,
That as we care for her she will care for us.
Give us hearts to understand
We have forgotten who we are.
We have sought only our own security.
We have exploited simply for our own ends.
We have distorted our knowledge. We have abused our power.
Great Spirit,
Whose dry lands thirst,
Help us to find the way to refresh your lands.
Great Spirit,
Whose waters are choked with debris and pollution,
Help us to find the way to cleanse your waters.
Great Spirit,
Whose beautiful earth grows ugly with misuse,
Help us to find the way to restore beauty to your handiwork.
Great Spirit,
Whose creatures are being destroyed,
Help us to find a way to replenish them
Great Spirit,
whose gifts to us are being lost in selfishness and corruption,
Help us to find the way to restore our humanity.

Author Unknown

http://www.eagleswingsministry.com/articles/poemsprayersponderings/prayer.pdf

"How Social Justice Got to Me and Why It Never Left"

"My friends: Let us listen to the voices and see the faces of the wronged. They are everywhere, about us and among us. And let us not harden our hearts."
- excerpted from the following article by Nicholas Wolterstorff:

http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/76/3/664

"How Social Justice Got to Me and Why It Never Left." Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2008, Vol. 76, No. 3, pp.664-679.

Yesterdays

Lyrics | Switchfoot lyrics - Yesterdays lyrics

"A friend told me that he had given copies of Lament to all of his children. "Why did you do that?" I asked. "Because it is a love-song," he said. That took me aback. But Yes, it is a love-song. Every lament is a love-song."

- Nicholas Wolterstorff
Lament for a Son, pg. 6

Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.
Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will; that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with Him in the next. Amen


Reinhold Niebuhr

Praying With My Legs

Here is a clip from a forthcoming documentary about Abraham Joshua Heschel: Praying With My Legs.

See also:

http://www.prayingwithmylegs.com./home.htm

and

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week1120/feature.html

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Refusing to Lead - Peter Rollins

Kingdom Citizens

"...Latin American theologian & author Rene Padilla discusses our Christian citizenship and God's sovereignty."

http://www.theworkofthepeople.com/index.php?ct=store.details&pid=V00313

Reduce or Wrestle - Peter Rollins

A Prayer From Jonah

This displeased Jonah terribly and he became very angry. 2 He prayed to the LORD and said, "Oh, LORD, this is just what I thought would happen when I was in my own country. This is what I tried to prevent by attempting to escape to Tarshish!– because I knew that you are gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in mercy, and one who relents concerning threatened judgment. 3 So now, LORD, kill me instead, because I would rather die than live!"



Jonah 4.1-3 (NET)

The Top 100 Theology Blogs

Here are the top 100 theology blogs according to christiancolleges.com:

http://www.christiancolleges.com/blog/2009/top-100-theology-blogs/

A Prayer for Translation

He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing thou art.
Thus, always taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskillfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolaters, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if thou take them at their word.

Take not, oh Lord, our literal sense. Lord in thy great,
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.

C.S. Lewis

Oxford Book of Prayer
Pg. 70

Letter From Birmingham City Jail

As considerable attention is focused on the life and times of Martin Luther King Jr. today it is fitting to consider one of his ideological and literary contributions; namely, his "Letter from Birmingham City Jail." Although I have yet to read all of King's archived writings, this is the most striking I have come across to date. The original letter was revised and published again. I have included a link to one edition of the letter for those who have not yet read it.

There are several elements of these words that have resonated with me as I reflect upon them. I am continually struck by the adeptness and familiarity of King with scripture. I am not surprised that he knew scripture, he was after all a minister, rather I am in awe of his ability to relate the stories of the past to his own social locale. Not only does he relate the past with the present, but he used them in a prophetic manner. He criticized to energize (to borrow some language from Walter Brueggemann's Prophetic Imagination). The use of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from Daniel as an illustration of civil disobedience is a fascinating example of his ingenuity. Biblical knowledge aside, his philosophical, theological, and historical acumen are also elegantly displayed in this letter.

Finally, the rhetoric he commanded shines through as well. He turned the accusations of extremism into a compliment and a motivational rallying cry for perseverance. Indeed, he called not for an extremism of hate, but rather, creative extremism of love. As a national holiday winds down and a nation gears up for a presidential inauguration hopefully anticipating change; I wonder how many will remember that one of the greatest catalysts for change in the 20th century in America was not a politician, but a pastor?

http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/frequentdocs/birmingham.pdf

Girl in the War

Lyrics | Josh Ritter lyrics - Girl In The War lyrics

'Til Kingdom Come

Lyrics | Coldplay lyrics - Till Kingdom Come lyrics