I’m going to channel my writing into a blog that is more centered around Pittsburgh and the goings on there. Some of you might find it interesting, but most other non-burghers probably won’t. Stop by once in a while and say Hi at my Carpetbaggery site.

Thanks for your posts and interest.

Thanks to my friend Tricia for this awesome link. Finally an answer to the question: Ok, cool, the rapture is here; but what about my pet?

http://eternal-earthbound-pets.com/

“For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.”

Ted Kennedy was elected to the Senate the year I was born—1962. Only two Senators in history have served longer. For many on the right, Kennedy was the demonized face of liberal politics. He seemed to have received the philandering and alcoholism genes from the Kennedy family, and he had the gall to grow old and puffy on TV instead of dying young and handsome during a time of much less media scrutiny.

Today I find myself an independent, politically. I’ve been pushed away from the Right by their tendencies toward military aggression, their cozy relationships with powerful corporate interests, and their blindness to poverty and suffering in the name of increased materialism and profit. (I know I’m generalizing here.) I’m also a bit frightened of the other suitor—the Left, those tree-hugging, wild-spending, amoral hippies who shun personal responsibility. (Again, really generalizing here.)

  But I find myself somewhat inspired by certain aspects of Ted Kennedy’s political life—if not his personal one. After suffering severe injuries in a plane crash, Ted found himself in a hospital, benefitting from the best medical care that money could buy. In his place, I feel that most conservatives today would redouble their efforts at protecting a system that provided them with such vital care. Kennedy, however, looked around and wondered what happened to people who didn’t have his money or family legacy. What happened to poor, uninsured people in his position? Certainly they would be patched up in an emergency room, but then what? Would they receive the physical therapy, the equipment, and ongoing care they needed? He dedicated much of the rest of his career fighting for universal healthcare.

I wish that conservative Christians today would react this way more. I just don’t see it. I hear them talking about protecting their lifestyles, their borders, their families, their healthcare, and their various freedoms. Protect. Defend. Rights. Guns! I don’t remember Jesus talking much about such things. He was more about giving it away. He was more about healing people in the face of resistance from unjust power systems. Jesus came at a time when His people were conquered and enslaved, but He didn’t put up signs reading: THEY ARE STEALING OUR COUNTRY! To Jesus, there were more important issues.

Is my first response to protect and defend and judge, or to spend my life and money figthing for those who don’t enjoy the benefits I’ve had by being born white, male, affluent, and American? In some ways, Ted Kennedy lived his life much more like Jesus than I have. 

“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.” —Kay (Tommy Lee Jones), Men in Black, (1997)

What a great line of dialog from a pretty darn good movie. We all marvel at how man has historically gotten it wrong, and most of us are fairly confident that what we believe as Truth today is just that. We’ve finally got all of it right.

Truth and Faith. These are concepts I’ve been wrestling with lately. I’ve been contending with them to the point that I now label myself as a Christian Heretic to close friends and confidants… and now you. I guess it is because I hold certain Truths more loosely than I once did. I’m afraid that loosening my grip on some of these truths would cause some in my life to brand me a heretic. As a result, however, I think I have experienced a greater reliance on Faith—one might say I’ve become a better Christian. (Not better in the sense of “better than others,” but perhaps “better than I used to be.”) In other words, the older I get, the less I’m absolutely sure of—but that’s okay.

I recently read this amazingly deep and honest article/essay on faith and truth and doubt. I quote it below. Take the time to read it if you want, or just skip it.

Scripture tells us that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1 NIV). I think I like the New King James Version better: “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” I like this better because, as history proves, being sure and certain doesn’t necessarily make it so. Besides, if you are so sure and certain, you wouldn’t need faith!

I’d rather think of my faith as the substance of my hopes and as evidence that there might just be more to life than what we see around us.

I love this quote in the article I highlighted:

The art of growing up is coming to terms with the disturbing fact that even the very smartest people don’t always have the answers. Let us remember that it was only a generation or so ago when new mothers smoked cigarettes on the maternity ward while nurses fed the infants nice big bottles of formula. Only two years ago, children were still being taught to believe that poor Pluto was a planet.

If history teaches us anything, it’s that the truth is subject to change. This means that what is standard practice now may someday be eschewed, in the same way that no health-conscious person puts plastic in the microwave anymore. It also means that notions we now consider dubious may, somewhere down the road, become widely accepted.

This is, to an extent, what I have experienced lately. I find that my faith is leading me to be more politically liberal, even as most people of faith in this country seem to go in the opposite direction. For me, liberal (once an evil, dirty word) means to give it all away: your money, your possessions, your position, and even your life. Conservative means the opposite: to store, to protect, to defend, to hold on to what’s rightfully mine. Which of these stances would seem to reflect the heart and words of Jesus more? I’m just asking. Some of you probably have different definitions. Some would say, “I’m all for giving to those in need, just don’t put a gun to my head and legally require me to do so. Let it be my choice.” To you, I’d say, “Valid point.” But health care, like police protection and national defense, does not seem to be a need the church can provide. If there is injustice… if there are have’s and have not’s… then doesn’t a civil society step in and say, “We all need to take care of this”? If Microsoft has the power to purchase healthcare at a discount rate that Joe’s Plumbing (yes, I brought Joe back into it!) will never be able to afford, do we just say, “C’est la vie”? AND… although this is not really part of the current debate, can American companies really compete globally if they are forced to pay for the health care of Americans? Starbucks pays more every year for healthcare than coffee! How can GM compete with Toyota when they have to pay for all the health care of their employess and Toyota doesn’t? After all, you are not insured by your insurance company; you are insured by your company that pays for it. The insurance company just shuffles the paper and reaps the profit.

Thus, I find that I staunchly back the effort of healthcare reform. Not that any of it is perfect, but I believe health and healing are moral and spiritual issues. I’d like to still believe that there is actually “freedom and justice for all.” A person’s access to proper healthcare shouldn’t be tied to what job they have–or, for children, the jobs their parents have. Let’s face it. Medical practice wasn’t that important in the days of our founding fathers. Back then, most people thought that if you were sick, it was probably due to witches or evil spirits! There were no vital operations or medications or diagnostic testing. Today, there is. Where you were born and what job have shouldn’t dictate whether you and your children live or die.

So, yes, I am willing to pay a little more to ensure that everyone has equal access to proper healthcare. Besides, maybe my friend who just shut down her small business would still be operating if she didn’t have to get a “real job” with healthcare. Maybe some I know who are stuck in their jobs because of health coverage could do what really makes them happy.

Many are obsessed with the Truth that the U.S. has the greatest healthcare in the world. They hold on to this notion as if it needs to be true or else there is something wrong with the universe. They ignore the facts that other countries with universal health care have longer life spans, lower costs per capita, and lower infant mortality rates than the U.S.

I still actually consider myself an Independent politically, mainly due to the fact that I consider the entire process a corrupt enterprise that further corrupts those who become involved in it. But I also believe that this nation is amazingly strong and resiliant. Our consitution and its seperation of powers have withstood wars, civil unrest, and over two hundred years of time. When I listen to those on the Right, however, it sounds as if they think this country is made of glass that will shatter because of a few initiatives from a former Illinois Senator. Do Republicans really think that even Democrats would stand for “death panels,” euthanizing babies and old people, and forcing truly sick people to die in waiting lines? Democrats have babies and grandparents and diseases like everybody else! We’d all rise up if that were to ever happen. Thus, for now, I am siding with the folks who would like to extend health care to every U.S. citizen.

Besides, if the only industry fighting against it is the insurance industry… isn’t it probably a good thing?

In the future, if I get brave, I may ponder the other Truths and Doubts that keep me up at night. We’ll see how this goes.

From Primary Speech: A Psychology of Prayer by Barry and Ann Ulanov:

“If we can let ourselves go in prayer and speak all that is in our minds and hearts, if we can sit quietly and bear the silence, we will hear all the bits and pieces of ourselves crowding in on us, pleading for our attention. Prayer’s confession begins with this racket, for prayer is noisy with the clamor of all the parts of us demanding to be heard. The clamor is the sound of the great river of being flowing in us.”

First, let me say that I don’t put a lot of stock into surveys because along with praying every day, most people also lie every day—especially on surveys. The survey takers themselves suggested that 5% of the atheists may have just been “messing with the people doing the survey.” Jews have various requirements for what they consider prayer to be. They don’t recognize the short blessings they recite of meals and hand washings to be prayer. For many Jews, according to the article, prayer requires a minyan, or a gathering of ten adults. That could explain their low numbers.

Second, I feel the need to get real here. If three quarters of Americans are really praying every day—I’m not one of them. And if I—a Christian for a quarter century, pastor for thirteen years, current church planter and Christian publishing editor—struggle with being able to pray every day, I find it hard to believe that the rest of America is out there just praying away.

Now the hard part. Why don’t I pray every day? Good question. I guess the only answer is: after all these years, I still don’t really know how prayer works. I’m sorry. I don’t.

My friend John got sick a little over a year ago. Guy’s about my age. He had a liver transplant years before, but seemed to be through that. Then he just gets sick. We prayed for John to recover. John died. I’m okay with that. I’m not mad at God or anything. I trust that it was John’s time. But where did prayer fit into the whole thing? Did I really need to pray for John to recover? Was he going to die anyway? Was God waiting for me to pray before He’d do anything? Did John die because I didn’t pray hard enough? And, if healing John was the “right thing to do,” shouldn’t God heal John whether I pray or not? If it’s not the “right thing,” then John should die whether I pray or not. What is this little prayer game God is playing with us?

In Luke 18:1–7, it says,

Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart, saying: “There was in a certain city a judge who did not fear God nor regard man. Now there was a widow in that city; and she came to him, saying, ‘Get justice for me from my adversary.’ And he would not for a while; but afterward he said within himself, ‘Though I do not fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubles me I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.’” Then the Lord said, “Hear what the unjust judge said. And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them?”

Really? Is that how it works? That’s kind of disappointing. Don’t you always hate it when those who complain the loudest get taken care of first? (Maybe you don’t if you’re a loud complainer.) Is that how God works? He waits to do something until we whine about it enough?

All in all, I do pray, but not nearly enough. Why not enough? Because even if I’m not sure what prayer is or how it works. When I read the words of Jesus, however, one thing is crystal clear: prayer matters. I don’t know how or why, but it just does. So, I can’t go on ignoring, avoiding, or putting off this thing called prayer.

So I’m going to pray today. I don’t really care that’s it’s the National Day of Prayer. But I’m going to pray anyway. We’ll see about tomorrow. If you pray, pray for me. If you want me to pray for you, let me know. I’m no expert, obviously, but I will. I promise.

For many people, economic recovery means getting back to where we were a few months or years ago. That means recovering our consumptive, greedy, unrestrained, undisciplined, irresponsible, and ecologically and socially unsustainable way of life. I’d like to suggest another kind of recovery, drawing from the world of addiction. When an addict gets into recovery, he doesn’t want to go back and recover the “high” he had before, or even to recover the conditions he had before he began using drugs and alcohol. Instead, he wants to move forward to a new way of life—a wiser way of life that takes into account his experience of addiction. He realizes that his addiction to drugs was a symptom of other deeper issues and diseases in his life—unresolved pain or anger, the need to anesthetize painful emotions, lack of creativity in finding ways to feel happy and alive, unaddressed relational and spiritual deficits, lack of self-awareness, and so on.

Similarly, I’d like to suggest whenever we hear the word “recovery,” we as a nation see it not as a call to get back our old addictive high, but rather as a call to face our corporate and personal addictions, including the following:

1. Our addiction to carbon. Fossil fuels are an addictive substance. They give us speed, quick energy, serving as a kind of cultural amphetamine. Meanwhile, they toxify our environment and throw the ecosystem in which we live into dangerous imbalance.

2. Our addiction to weapons. Weapons give us a feeling of well-being and security, removing our feelings of fear and anxiety, much like a barbiturate. But like a drug, they make us lazy and slow in the much more important work of relationship-building, justice, and peace-making—lazy in seeking the common good. And they plunge us into an addictive cycle, because if everyone in the world is getting more and more weapons, we aren’t safer … especially when increasing numbers of those weapons are nuclear, biological, and chemical.

3. Our addiction to fear. Religious leaders, media leaders, and political leaders have all discovered that you can raise quick votes, dollars, and members through the hallucinogenic stimulant of fear. By making straights afraid of gays, conservatives afraid of progressives, Christians and Jews afraid of Muslims, citizens afraid of immigrants, and vice versa, these leaders get a quick organizational high—”crack” for their unity and morale. But the more fear you pump into your system, the more fear you have, and pretty soon, you go from being stimulated to paranoid, seeing things that aren’t there and missing things that are. And soon after that, you move from paranoia to paralysis, leaving you in greater danger than ever.

4. Our addiction to stuff. Jesus said that a person’s life doesn’t consist in the abundance of her possessions. An economy that measures growth by the number of durable goods (resources) extracted from the environment and turned into non-durable goods that are bought, used, and then thrown away into a landfill … that economy “succeeds” by turning goods into trash, and calling it success. That’s not success. We need to imagine moving beyond an extractive, consumptive economy to a sustainable economy, and beyond a sustainable economy to a regenerative economy. I believe that in God’s world, if billions can be made destroying the planet and exploiting people addictively, trillions can be made caring for the planet wisely and caring for people justly.

5. Our addiction to a single bottom line. During the president’s town hall meeting, a man from Indiana told how he started a solar-powered attic fan company, and how he chose not to ship manufacturing overseas, but instead, to provide good employment for his neighbors. That meant, he said, that he had a little less cash in his pocket … but wouldn’t you agree that being a good neighbor has a value that can’t be measured in dollars? The single bottom line of financial profit is addictive, and like an addiction, it destroys families and communities. We need to rediscover a triple bottom line—financial sustainability, social sustainability, and economic sustainability. So we need a recovery of family values, and we also need a recovery of community values, and neighborly values, and ethical business values.

6. Our addiction to easy answers. “Government is the problem.” “Just throw money at the problem.” We can’t afford our addiction to these kinds of easy ideological slogans and facile reactive fantasies in a complex, real world. Ideology is, in many ways, a drug that substitutes the quick high of unthinking reaction for the hard work of acquiring wisdom.

So … maybe we can sabotage our addictive tendencies by letting the word “recovery” have a meaning that wakes us up rather than drugs us into the comfortable, dreamy, half-awareness in which we have lived for too long. That’s my hope and prayer.

Brian McLaren is a speaker and author, most recently of Everything Must Change and Finding Our Way Again. This piece is taken from the God’s Politics blog at Sojourners and from Inward/Outward.

What he did inspires me. Quit his job and went for a dream.

Check it out if you’re looking for some good new music. He’s on iTunes.