And just like that, U2 sings into my life yet again...

Of course I got "No Line on the Horizon" right as it was released.
From the song, "I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight":
Is it true that perfect love drives out all fear?/
The right to appear ridiculous is something I hold dear


How I need that love, that acceptance, and to know that whatever risk I take, it's going to be alright, even if I look ridiculous. I see often Christians (myself included) not living out their lives because of fear of breaking some kind of moral code. Scripture is often reduced to some kind of moral do's and don'ts. Though morals are included, reducing Scripture to only a puzzle of morality stifles the life Scripture breathes and the very word of God.

Ok, so the last paragraph is loaded. It's a sign of my wrestling with Something greater. I'm afraid to even press further at this time because I know that I will have to eat my words because I don't act out on my intellectual belief....I don't "do"...I haven't risked enough yet. I fear even naming it, but I am afraid of something greater behind it.

All I know is that I can't move forward without dwelling in that perfect love that casts out all fear.

I have freedom, yet I don't act as if I am free.

My Church Is Historical

Sigur Ros and the Kingdom of God

I cannot expound better on this amazing Sigur Ros video. My M.Div. brother Scott Small did such an amazing job. Please follow the link. I'll re-post the video here.

May we be like children and let our Kingdom imagination take flight.



Scott's write-up: http://treasureeverywhereblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/rhythm-of-kingdom.html

Snowpocalypse becomes Slushnasty

I have hot water folks. Thank you for your concern!
Seattle is dirty and disgusting. Now I can't get back to my parents' house for Christmas.
I've been working a lot at my coffee shop. Person after lost-looking person comes in because they can't fly out of SeaTac airport.
I'm ready to crash.
Blessings on your Christmas Day. May it truly be about Jesus, Emmanuel, God With Us...and not stuff.

Living Without

It is currently 6:30 in the evening. Temperature: 26 degrees Fahrenheit. Seattle has nearly shut down. Because of the snow? That's not it. The roads are covered in inches thick of ice.

My low-income apartment in haughty Belltown has no hot water. We haven't had any for a week, except on Monday. Our Landlord is busy trying to get it fixed.

Twice this week I've taken a bath by boiling water on the stove...which takes a long time. Baths are my way of "taking care of myself", as they like to say at my school. I like candles, maybe a glass of wine, Sigur Ros playing, and a warm bath. Sometimes I forgo the first three for listening to a podcast of This American Life.

I usually don't mind cold water showers, but it's just unsafe in this weather.

I feel like a pioneer. Or, really, that I'm a person who just has had to learn to do without.

I go into work tomorrow at 5:30 in the morning. Wish me luck.

Another poem that I didn't write (but wish I did)

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

by Mary Oliver

My Rule of Life (work in progress)

Tom Cashman, my professor for "Prayer, Practice, and Presence" had us write a rule of life. He acknowledges that it is definitely a work in progress. So here goes:

I dedicate myself to the working out of love and justice in and through the church;
To read and wrestle with Scripture in an honoring way;
To live simply so that others may simply live;
To search for the handiwork of God in people and their artistic expressions;
To move past self degradation and authentically love myself;
And develop practical ways to receive affirmation and other kinds of love so that I may give love to cultivate peace in and through me.