http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/playstation-2-component-incites-african-war/1231745
I discovered the above link on yahoo — a surprise to find something disturbing in a substantive way when yahoo ordinarily sticks with celebrity weirdness. It gives you cause to think about buying your kid a playstation, getting a slick new cell phone or even a new computer!
In The New Christians, Tony Jones explores attributes of the emergent movement. One of the largest components of the movement is its focus on community. People and the cultures we abide in are part of our lives and affect our faith journey. These are not things to be shunned by emergents, but embraced as part of who we are. Two of the aspects of this focus on community include –
- Emergents see God’s activity in all aspects of culture and reject the sacred-secular divide.
- Emergents believe that an envelope of friendship and reconciliation must surround all debates about doctrine and dogma.
How do these cultural approaches to faith differ or affirm what you have experienced in the past?
What are the benefits or dangers of placing relationships before dogma?
Do you see these descriptions as helping or hindering “evangelism”?
Sorry for the delayed book discussion this month, I’ve been kinda out of touch online since my son was born a month ago. But it’s the summer, so laid back is all good right? 
Anyway our book club selection for this month is Tony Jones’ The New Christians. If you don’t know Tony is the national coordinator of Emergent Village and so is in a great position to tell the story of this new movement called the emerging church. And telling that story is just what he does in this book. From its beginnings as a young leaders attempt to do generational ministry, The New Christians describes the formation of emergent, its main influences, and the ways it has manifest over the years.
So as we start this discussion I want to ask a few basic questions –
- how aware are you of the emergent movement and its history?
- what manifestations of the movement have you encountered?
Much has been said regarding differences of opinions as to what the “real” version of emergent is. Some say that Tony’s perspective is just one of many. Given that emergent isn’t a denomination, but an organization and conversation, such differences are perhaps to be expected. In light of that, did the story of emergent told in The New Christians resonate with you or did it seem outside your particular experience? Do you think emergent will ever be a cohesive group or is the diversity present in the movement something to be valued and upheld?
Next week we will explore some of the characteristics of the new Christians that are described in the book, but I hope that we can explore the larger issue of the movement as a whole this week.
Alright. I confess. When I first heard about Jonalyn Grace Fincher’s recent release, Ruby Slippers (Zondervan, 2007), it was with a twinge of something between ugh! and egad! This reaction morphed into a full-blown wince when I caught the sub-title: How the Soul of a Woman Brings Her Home.
“Please tell me this isn’t yet another worn-out rehash of `the Proverbs 31 woman’ or a trip down the `yellow brick road’ equating Christian femininity with Suzy Homemaker, June Cleaver, and married with children.” It isn’t. Carefully integrating philosophy, psychology, theology, history, women’s studies and “my own walk with Christ into a primer on the woman’s soul” (p. 193), Ruby Slippers is a much-needed and long overdue look at God’s ideas about womanhood.
Intelligent and incisive, Ruby Slippers is alert, agile, and penetrating without being pompous or trite. It avoids strait-jacketed “Christian stereotypes” and clears the way of narrow definitions, presumptions and prejudices to find out what makes women different and precious. Through careful biblical exegesis, meticulous research, thoughtful analysis and a well-rounded philosophical approach, Fincher shows us the real soul of a woman and its inestimable worth as a unique reflection of God’s nature.
Fincher issues “one important caveat: I am not claiming to have the final words on women” or “an exhaustive index on femininity or the only biblical model for Christian womanhood,” leaving the door open for further discussion. She also provides “Soul Care” questions at the end of each chapter for further thought.
In terms of writing style, Fincher’s is generally tight, crisp, and lean. She shares personal anecdotes and experiences and analyzes vast quantities of data through a biblical grid. The author also brings an essential that’s often lacking in many “women’s ministry” paradigms and “women’s Bible study” authors: demonstrable expertise and impeccable educational credentials. She’s done her homework and has the background and qualifications to give this book gravitas. (Fincher holds a double Bachelor’s degree in English and history from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in philosophy of religion and ethics.)
Sumptuously sprinkled throughout the main text are relevant observations from such Christian luminaries as C.S. Lewis, Henri Nouwen, G.K. Chesterton and Dorothy Sayers, to name a few. The material bogs down momentarily in Chapter 2, Uncorking the Soul, with a somewhat overlong discussion of soul and spirit, but it picks up steam thereafter. The discussion on The Same Planet in Chapter 3 regarding “gender roles”, “equal without being identical” and “similar though not the same” is delicious.
Further on, Fincher masterfully deconstructs John Gray’s “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” mythology, and the inadequate, incomplete “helper” rendering of Genesis 2, among others: “… contrary to popular pagan myths, contrary to Goddess Earth myths, and contrary to much Churchianity, God makes Woman to provide and offer the hope, the ezer for Man.”
Other myths put to rest include: “East of Eden” femininity, “godly submission,” “the weaker vessel” and “boutique form(s) of gnosticism and neo-paganism” which glories “fertile, female bodies over female souls.”
More stand-out sections include Prescription Lists, Corsets and Slippers that Don’t Fit (pp. 14 – 18), Why the Trinity Dignifies Women (pp. 156 -158), Natural Femininity (pp. 102 -140), Learning from Women (pp. 159 – 164) and Jesus in Female Form (pp. 185 -186).
As beautifully and as nimbly crafted as the Emerald City, Ruby Slippers is a ground-breaking work with much to offer in the on-going discussion of gender theory, cultural stereotypes and authentic Christian femininity. This fine work is perhaps best summarized in Fincher’s own words: “I am becoming more free. Not free to live out my dominations or check off my lists or squeeze into a corset. But free to be more like the triune God, the way he has redeemed me: fully female, fully human.”
While showing readers how women are unique bearers of the imago dei , Ruby Slippers celebrates the soul of a woman within a thoroughly sound context of biblical truth. These Slippers are as welcome as Glinda’s “Toto, too.” Five stars.
Ruby Slippers: How the Soul of a Woman Brings Her HomeBy Jonalyn Grace Fincher
Zondervan, 2007
ISBN:-10: 0-310-27243-2
For more, visit: www.soulation.com
over at Jim’s Blog, Lori wrestles with her struggle to figure out the Jesus of conventional faith, asking, “Why do I self medicate when my emotional pain is unbearable? Shouldn’t I be strong enough? I have JESUS!!! Nothing is impossible with JESUS!!!”
Religious people tend to say that “Jesus” will fill in those big empty holes in us. As if they think that the word JESUS is spackle for the soul and maybe church is the bandaid that holds the spackle in place.
For most of us, or all of us, it does not work like that. Most of us don’t wake up one morning, discover this Jesus-figure in our heart, and suddenly find our life laid out in a near-perfect rhythm of bible reading, church attendance and true inner peace.
What is the saying? “Nature abhors a vacuum?” Those holes in our soul are a vacuum. We spend our lives trying to fill them, whether with rage, or helplessness, or self-injury or self-harm or promiscuity or whatever toxic, empty, dark actions or attitudes offer temporary respite from an ongoing awareness of our own emptiness.
It’s not until we begin figuring out how to heal ourselves that our holes transform into a less destructive presence. I agree with Jim that healing begins with an awareness of our own value. Scream the word JESUS all you want—but the word itself is not a talisman. Nor is church, nor is the bible.
The magic of healing begins when a person recognizes the hole, then makes peace with its presence. At that point, peace begins soothing, covering, protecting, the dangling nerve endings, dripping capillaries, and torn flesh at the hole’s raw edges.
Church and bible-reading and Jesus can play a huge role in this process when they reflect an awareness of humanity’s significance in God’s grand plan. But—and this is the part that most church-based faith doesn’t seem to recognize—healing is a process, not an act. If we push the idea that JESUS will fix everything for us, we short-change our hurting brothers and sisters and neighbors out of the one thing that the Jesus story really provides: A sense that, as individuals, we matter. We matter so much that God created the story upon which Christianity is founded—that God sent his child to die a painful death for the benefit of individual humans.
To Lori, to myself, to you, I offer this: Be brave enough to heal yourself. If you want to bring Jesus into the mix, do it because of what you believe Jesus did for you, and allow your healing journey to be about you and your journey rather than about whether you and your faith in the word “Jesus” are good enough.
For many of us, filling the hole will be a lifelong process. It may never be filled. But we can learn to live peacefully in its presence. And that’s pretty good healing.
I thought that I would post this in case there are any readers from the Philly area.
“God always shows up in the most God-forsaken places.”
—Alan Roxburgh
In some ways, it doesn’t get any more God-forsaken than suburban America. This “Missional In Suburbia” seminar will take a look at two important topics: Suburbia and the Church. For some people, there is a sentiment that its impossible to really be the church in the ‘burbs. But for others, we believe that this is the place that God has called us. If we are going to stay, we need to ask what it means to “be the church” in a culture that is defined by comfort, consumerism, isolation, wealth, strip malls and hidden poverty.
This one-day seminar will focus on the development and culture of suburbia and the opportunities and challenges that this context presents the Church. We are honored to have Al Hsu, author of The Suburban Christian, lead the discussion along with some other local pastors and thinkers.
This one-day conference is open to all and will be helpful for pastors, lay leaders, and members of congregations. Our goal is to have some substantial discussion around practical issues that relate to the everyday practice of the Church and the Christian life.
Event Details:
* Location: The Well (Feasterville, PA)
* Cost: $25 (includes lunch)
* Dates: August 9, 2008 (On Friday night, August 8, there is an optional “open house”/”meet and greet.”)
* In Partnership With: Philly Emergent cohort, Ecclessia Network, and C4ML at Biblical Seminary
Register online now at: church.thewellpa.com
I’ve been thinkin’ a lot lately. This isn’t new: I often stare abstractedly out the window, or soak in the tub watching bubbles pop and fade, or forget whether I’ve added salt to something I’m baking because I was thinking. Just thinking.
About sacraments or how I’ve missed gardening this year; about Luther’s experiences with death and the tv show “The Closer”; about African tribal beats and if we’re getting low on milk; about the free market and the recent article in the New Yorker on Keats and death and beauty.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about fracture, breaks, and falling. Ache, stiffness, and surgery. But I haven’t broken any bones. My teeth, tibia, fibia, all of it – intact. Never a broken bone. Never a hospitalization. But pain a doctor can’t treat. And it’s not fibromyalgia.
Two years ago a phone call threw my world into a 9/11-esque blur of crumbling (ivory) towers and smoke and the smell of casualty. I thought someone had died when I heard the message from Mom on the phone.
But it was the death of my parents’ marriage: over thirty years of union wheeled into the morgue with a fresh toe tag. Maybe that sounds melodramatic. But “grown children of divorce” is as sanitized as “post traumatic stress disorder” is, as George Carlin observed: language about veterans has changed from “shell shock” – a vivid, live, cutting image – to a clinical, removed phrase. Would we see war, or veteran’s suffering, differently, if we kept the brutal language? Would we see divorce differently if we described it’s outcome as cold and dead in a morgue instead of, well, “results of divorce”?
I’ve been thinking a lot about the rending sensation that tore apart a good kind of innocence that day. There goes tower one. There goes tower two. Is it unrealistic to expect that terrorists won’t bomb moms and uncles and aunts? That peace and safety are the norm and not the exception? Is it unrealistic to expect that people will love each other and act on it even when it’s hard? Which is the real world? The Trade Center standing, or the Trade Center falling? The marriage vows, or the discarded ring? These are important questions, because I am a young woman growing up in this world, and I need to know what to expect. I am recently married, and I love it. Is it childish to expect that people will be kind and giving and generous and helpful? Or is it childish to think that people will be cruel and selfish and vindictive?
Every July my September 11th comes. I don’t think the world has to be that way; I should never get used to flames and shrapnel; I should never get used to fracture and decay.
But your presence – your presence – your presence – is needed at home. In the stairwells of collapsing buildings. Beside the kitchen stove. On ash-clouded streets. On the living room couch. Aboard the fire engine. I need you. We need you. We all need you. Never underestimate how important your presence is at home. At the World Trade Center.
I finally noticed some other survivors of their own 9/11′s huddled under stairwells, coming out, waving me over. The healing touch of another human is, itself, life sometimes. This glimmer of hands stretching out over the rubble is evident here: http://childofdivorce-childofgod.blogspot.com/ . It shows up many other places, too.
I need you. We need you. We all need you. You are needed at home. You are needed at Ground Zero.
