Hesitancy

At the end of a nice call with dear ol’ dad recently he asked, “So, have you found a church to go to?” I gave a friendly chuckle on my end, hoping to defuse the question. I didn’t expect that one. A week or so ago a new friend who had been cruising my blog asked, “So how’s the God search going?” and then immediately add, “sorry If I overstepped ,” when I hesitated with an answer. In both cases I hesitated because I knew that a straight forward answer would have been the exact opposite of what they were hoping for or anticipating. For my dad, his faith is such a deep seated part of his whole reality and I’m the son who has a degree in Biblical Studies and more recently was very active in my church back in CA. And with my friend, I’m under the impression that her conversion experience is something very new in her life. I didn’t want to say something that would upset their experience of life. It’s funny, my hesitancy comes from the fact that I care enough about them that I don’t want to upset them or disappoint them with my contrarian point of view.

In the past I’ve been accused of writing things in my blog that seemed to show no regard as to whether what I wrote might be hurtful to others and in some cases writing things with the intension to hurt. Truthfully I might have written things in my blog that I was so passionate about or overwhelmed over that I didn’t or couldn’t look too far beyond my angst to realize how some might take my venting. So, it seems odd to me, in my old age, that I’m so hesitant to work out my “faith issues” here in my blog…

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“Natalie” from the Stormmaker 2003 recording

I wrote some time ago about the Curse of Digitally Enhanced Memories because it has a tendency of painfully pointing out how I seem to make the same relationship mistakes time after time. As if that weren’t bad enough, I have recordings from a former “Christian musician” life that most of my current friends would have a good chuckle if they were to discover. Well, like the former relationship foibles, I’m going to own up to these recordings from many, many years ago and “enjoy” the nostalgia of it all. This first tune was something that I wrote for a friend’s infant daughter named Natalie…

For my friend, Sukie, thanks for the encouragement. More ancient tunes to follow…

Technologically Rich but Quality of Life Poor

I have a very good job in Florida teaching masters students how to use media and technology in their classrooms and businesses. I left a very uncertain situation in public education in California where most of my co-workers are going to have to look for other teaching jobs or interview to keep the jobs they have in the next two-years. Another friend, who has been battling on-going medical issues, openly wondered whether it was worth the hassle for her to keep her house as the medical bills mount up. And yet with all of this my friends and I are by world standards very, very rich. Our difficulties are generally not about survival but about which luxury activity we’re going to have to forego because things are “a little tight.” It’s hard to balance this kind of life with issues like Poverty.

In a discussion session with a group of masters students last night, one student posed the question about whether our use of technology (some might say “addiction”) was preventing us from living a life connected to our neighbors, our environment or our heritage. He followed up with an observation that it seemed like places that are less driven by technology like some parts of Europe and the Third World move at a much slower pace and seem to actually have a better quality of life. It was an interesting insight to imagine that we are technology rich but our lives our poor in terms of meaningful connections, whereas parts of the world that we would consider poor might have richer, more meaningful existence.

I do not pose these thoughts in an effort to generate some “we should feel guilty for being so rich” kind of thing. If anything it should be obvious that there isn’t a one-for-one connection between being “rich” and the quality of one’s life. I’ve been thinking for some time that I need to contact my local chapter of something like Habitat for Humanity and get involved. In a life that’s often overly crowded with things and thoughts I need to do this for me, get my hands dirty and join others helping ourselves by helping each other. Sending a check isn’t such a bad idea, but spending some weekends in someone else’s shoes and neighborhood would be much better… for all of us. jbb

Music: Mad World from the album “Donnie Darko (Music From the Original Motion Picture Score)” by Michael Andrews

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This post is part of Blog Action Day 08 - Poverty

21st Century Christianity Hidden Under 19th Century Robes

This has been a week of change for me. I finished my first course at Full Sail and started my first course as an Assistant Course Director (ACD) for someone else’s course. I also decided to update my profile info in e-Harmony and restart the long dormant “find me a match” process. I also decided last night that I should check out a church that was recommended to me by a co-worker, teasing that if this church didn’t work for me than my next stop is Buddhism. Well, after this morning’s visit… I do have the belly specifically for Buddhism.

Way back in Long Beach days when sister-in-law, Connie, heard that I was interested in going back to church she suggested a church that she heard was very open to all kinds of people (she knows me well). I resisted the suggestion, mostly because, for all of my liberal tendencies, I have limited respect for those who twist the Scriptures to their favor or seem to make it up as they go along. I know, talk about contradictions. I have the utmost respect and feel drawn to Biblical studies, but I know that I don’t fit with garden-variety Bible-thumpers. Add to that, I now live in the official Bible-Belt. Damn.

So, First Congregational Church of Winter Park (UCC), walking up to the nice traditional looking brick-building I passed some choir people in robes… okay, robes. Wow. Raised Roman Catholic on the West Coast, I remember robes but since then except for a brief stint with some conservative Presbyterians, not so much. On the inside of the church it was very much the nice conservative 125-year-old community church with a raised platform for the choir and pulpits, all painted white. It also happened to be World Communion Sunday, so I was ready for the tiny bit of bread and grape juice. Did I mention that this fellowship has been together for 125-years? And unlike other “older” congregations that I’ve visited this one was well attended by people of pretty much every age-group and a lot of little kids. It’s been my experience that one sign of a healthy congregation is how well the various age-groups are represented. So healthy but what’s with the robes?

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Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty

This item crossed my consciousness via Twitter, thanks to the EdTech blog “willisays.” I love the serendipity of the web. Visiting the site, I see links to Publish, Donate & Promote. I’m not going to wait until October 15th to begin the conversation…

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

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With One Voice Reflections

Saturday Afternoon, The Theater at Avalon Island, Downtown Orlando. The speaker shared his insights into what he called the seven concentric circles of spirituality or mysticism. I’m usually leery of anything that looks like a kind of spiritual “system.” But then as I listened I was reminded of my first year of university, at LMU, taking a class on Christian mysticism, and how surprised I was to discover that my conversion experience as a teenage could be understood as a mystic or mystical experience. And all these 30-years later I’m left with the term, Das Heilige, which encapsulated the idea of an encounter with The Holy that is both internal and Other.

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Pondering the Meaningless of It All

Not me, you silly goof…

BTW, just in case you are not familiar with the Onion News Network, this is a parody/comedy website. But that doesn’t dismiss the actual thoughts presented in this “dramatization” of a football team falling apart because one member of the team and then eventually the whole team succumbs to despair following an existential epiphany. The comment in the piece that the only choice they have left is suicide reminded me of a comment made by Bart Erhman in his book “God’s Problem.” …
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Finding Center

I uploaded my first modules for my course this afternoon. Sigh. Needless to say, the crush to get the course up and running has been getting heavier and heavier over the past weeks day-by-day. Adding insult to injury, over the past week I got a new 320GB hard drive just dying to be installed into my Mac Mini, a new copy of Mario Kart waiting to be played on my Wii and a stack of DVDs languishing next to my TVs. I’ve been able to marginally keep the blogs going, but some of my favorite sections such as “Sex and the Single Brain Cell” have gone without any new content that hasn’t been borrowed or ported from other sections. I’m going to be very happy when this weight becomes more manageable. Odd that I would look at the coming season of teaching as a time when I will be able to better achieve “Center.” When I saw the following video on one of my many searches across the Internet media jungle I was encouraged. I am hopeful that I will regain my spiritual center…

Alone in Kyoto AIR

[via FoxyTunes / Air]

Hard and Soft Approaches to God & Religion

It’s recently come to my attention that I have an addiction. I’m guessing that this addiction flew under the radar before because I was never in a position to indulge it, but for some time now I’ve been spending more and more time… watching videos… on TED. As I previously noted the horror of all of this is that I am exposed to some very brilliant people who hold beliefs contrary to my own. Case in point is the following video, by a soft-spoken Englishman name Richard Dawkins who, it seems, wants to end the state of detente between the intelligentsia and people of Faith and declare war between Science and Religion.

Richard Dawkins: Militant Atheism

This second video is by another Engishman, but one coming for a very different point of view, a point of view that I more closely identify with.

Rev. Tom Honey - God as “In” and Not “Agent”

I vaguely remember studying pantheism and animism back in my more “black and white” era and rejecting the position because it didn’t seem too “Biblical” and seemed to be used by crazies to say that they were “god.” That part hasn’t changed, but my confidence about anyone’s ability to rightly divine biblical text or that the whole truth is in the text, has change.

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Design by God - God by Design

One of the greatest benefits of living in this age is the possibility of going directly to the first sources when one wants to read or listen to the thoughts of any particular speaker or thinker. Back in my Fuller days in the early 80s one of my favorite professors, Colin Brown, commented that then popular Christian writer, Francis Schaeffer, got Kierkegaard all wrong, adding that Schaeffer probably never really read Kierkegaard. Without leaving my computer I can look up the works of any of these folks and directly interact with the material. One amazing venue for connecting with today’s sources is TED, which stands for “Technology, Entertainment & Design” and whose tag-line is “Ideas worth sharing.”

The following link was given to me by Full Sail coworker, Linda, who was impressed with Rick Warren’s ability to present his belief system without sounding “religious.” I appreciated that Warren seemed to respect the venue he was speaking at and addressed his thoughts as not addressing religious issues, but as human issues. Warren came off as firm but nurturing, understanding but uncompromising and very matter of fact, all hallmarks of a somewhat laid back “Seeker Sensitive” California attitude. Enjoy.

Rick Warren @ TED: Living a Life of Purpose

Dan Dennett @ TED (Feb 2006) - The Biological Evolution of Religion

Interestingly for me both of these speakers represent a bifurcating pull in my own thinking between this “matter of fact” Christianity and a more scientific, cultural-anthropology view of things…

Music: “First Prayer” by Randy Stonehill

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