striving to get by in pricey, pricey Seattle

The Flight of the Conchords sing my pain. At least they have synthesizers.

Sometimes I Feel Like This...

Further Proof That My School Rocks!

Not only will Mars Hill Graduate School be featured in this month's Belltown Messenger and on the front page, we were given a fantastic write up in the Seattle P-I!

I continue to hope and pray that MHGS continues to have a good impact on the Belltown community. MHGS, along with First United Methodist, are asking the questions and attempting to be Christ in this area of Seattle.

It's an odd community because it has many new condominiums housing the young and wealthy that live amongst such poverty. When things go well, the paper calls it "Belltown". When something criminal happens, its referred to an older name: the Denny Regrade.

This creates opportunity to bless both parties. May the Spirit grant us creativity and boldness in revealing the humanity of both groups to each other and let love pour down from the heavens.

Born in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time: The Tragedy of the East German Olympic Young Women

Brett and I watched this documentary last night on PBS. Secrets of the Dead: Doping for Gold tells the story of the young women of the East German Olympic team in the 70s. They were born behind the Iron Curtain, part of a country under constant surveillance of the Stasi while living in constant fear and paranoia. Gulags and disappearances loom as a threat to any person that disobeys the Soviet regime.
These girls were doped, mostly without their knowing, with steroids. This resulted in increased liver trouble and incredible masculinisation: deepened voices, pale pattern body hair, Adam's apples and the like.
These women suffer irreversible damage. Katerina (I believe that is her nam) is now in her 40s. She looks like a man. She said that she just stopped trying to wear feminine closthing since so many commented in public that she looks like a man. This breaks my heart.
Another figured that she was so far down the man path already, she had a sex change. Andreas married a former swimming medalist from the same era.
What broke my heart the most is what I now have led up to. A silver medalist swimmer of that era, an American, traveled to Berlin to make sense of this. She felt that, in a sense, she deserves the gold medal and wished that the gold medalist would give it up for her. That would be right to her. She met this woman. This East German woman suffered abuse under the communist regime and has incredible health issues as a result. The markings on her soul will be taken to her grave.
As the American medalist said "As an American..." it just ran fingernails over my inner chalkboard. I know what she was meaning. When I moved back to the States, its the thing that infuriates me: entitlement. I deserve what I want because: I earned it, worked hard for it, paid for it, I'm an American.
As a barista in the coffee capital of the world, I deal with rather particular people on their purchase: not too hot, extra hot, no foam, split shot, wet cappuccino, dry, espresso picked by an old blind man in Zimbabwe while whistling show tunes.
At what price?
Somewhere along the line, humanity is ignored. We may not see it, but there is a person behind our purchases. There are people behind our "entitlement".

What is a good reading of Scripture?

The last part of the term is always crazy. Blogging is on the lower end of the priority list. Papers, counseling practicums, group presentations, and an art project later I have finished. Now I have about two weeks until I start Hebrew.

Dr. Joann Badley taught perhaps my favorite class this term. "Reading Practices" used to be called "Interpretive Methods". I'm very pleased with the textbook: The Art of Reading Scripture, edited by E.F. Davis and R.B. Hays. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.

We looked at historical and textual criticism, literary method, Patristic scholars,critical traditioning, deconstruction, and other forms of approaches.
Our final day, we came up with a working list of approaches of the reading the Bible.

Here is what we came up with:

What is a good (‘better’) reading?

• Living in the primary rhythms of scripture: Exodus/ Resurrection
• Ways the story of God disarms the other stories of our culture
• Claiming truth where you see it.
• Habits of reading and practices of discipleship affect our reading (guard against bad readings)
• Frees us to hold complexity rather than reducing the meaning (e.g. to a moral reading); especially with respect to the application
• Invites other people into wonder and imagination, because primary purpose is the presence of God; so may have drawn on various other readings (so not just ‘academic’, as per Sadducees);
• Enliven as per, not in dissonance with, the life of Christ; gain understanding through worship and other forms of Christian formation.
• Saturated with humility; God is big, and knowing there are other voices;
• AUTHOR/author; incarnational theology; Acknowledge the trinitarian character (kenotic work) of God.
• Remember canonical frame
• Informs the way that we live (reciprocity: the way we live forms the way we understand); implications for spiritual practice as well (e.g. food); implications for life in community (e.g. forgiveness, peace-maker); requires something of us (challenges us)
• How does it bear witness to God; cross as corrective
• Pays attention to the actual words; not constructing a hypothetical text

Finally: Jens

I stumbled upon Jens' "When I said that I want to be your dog" at Easy Street records in 2004, I felt compelled to buy it. It was from a Swedish guy who called to me in a simple black and white photo with his guitar. When I finally gave it a listen, I became a fan.
Who is like Jens Lekman? Jonathan Richmond...kind of. Imagine a beautiful crooning baritone voice with incredibly clever bittersweet lyrics. Or, don't imagine. Here is a clip from his show last November in Fremont (a Seattle district):
Last night, I got four hours of sleep. My joy propelled me into an amazing energy at work today, though. I saw Jens at Neumo's on Capitol Hill!
What kind of power does this man possess? He got a huge crowd of Seattle indie fans, well known for their minimal expressions and morose emotion, whistling, clapping, dancing, singing along, and full of such happiness.
Thanks to my friends who joined me: Chase and his sweet ride, Brett, Tomika, and Brandon (who I think yelled "nice shoes" to Jens). Good times and a wonderful memory.

A break from the deep stuff and illuminating the mundane

The street in the Market was shut down for making a movie today. Jennifer Aniston is in town. Whup-de-doo! If I saw her, I wanted to be a dork and say: "Ross is too good for you! You were a jerk to him." At first I heard that she isn't shooting today. Then I heard that she is but not until 5 (I got off work at 2:30). Then I heard the location of her dressing room was on Stewart. Weird. Hollywood people in my town.
I did see Aaron Eckhart though! He was the guy in "Thank you for smoking". Cars stopped for him, and then he signaled for them to keep going. Professional acting at its finest. I was tired so I went home. I opened my cafe, after all.
Yesterday I had fun with my M.Div classmates. We did these book reports for Badley's Reading Practices class. We were all so into it. I did mine on the Wesley Quadrilateral. Good times. Girl Shannon was impressed that I used the word "cusp" conversationally. In our following class during break, Dr. Brown had some hymnage going down on her laptop. This resulted in breaking out into song by several of us. Good times! I'm impressed that people knew those songs since we all have come out recently of the "Praise and Worship" thing.
Well, I'm saving my usual deep mystic existential musings for another day. Peace out, yo.