Padre Complex

I was re-rereading ‘The Soul of Cyberspace’ by Jeff Zaleski (interesting book — you might enjoy it). He interviews John Perry Barlow the co-founder of the Electronic Frontiers Foundation. Jeff makes the following statement about sacraments on the net which ignites a conversation about metaphors.

JZ: The Catholic Church has many websites, but they haven’t yet put any sacraments onto the net.
JPB: I wonder why that is?
JZ: Probably because a lot of religions believe that sacramental energy has an intimate and necessary connection with the body.
JPB: Ah. That’s what it is. Let’s take Communion. What communion is really about is the experience of entering that metaphorical gap between the wine and the blood. If you don’t have the grounding in the wine, the physical manifestation, I can see where they would think that there’s no potential for that holy voltage between the physical symbol and the spiritual reality.
JZ: What do you think?
JPB: I think there probably right in a way. One of the reasons people have such a difficult time understanding metaphor now is because most people actually live in a metaphorical condition all the time.You know, they’re living in this completely informational environment where there’s no relationship to the physical world anyway, so what the hell would a metaphor be? Metaphors always have that grounding element. And so much of what the spiritual process is about is sliding up and down between those poles of the physical and the immaterial.

I’m finishing up a paper on ‘Internet Communion’ for a Liturgical Theology class and am fascinated with some of the ongoing scholarship related to religion online. Is the internet the air we breath — and in 100 years religious communities will worship, receive the sacraments online and never have been physically in the same room? Or is it a corruption of the very fabric of our lives together — a symptom of the pervasive individualism and fragmentation of our social diseases - and no good will ever come from the mixture of religion and the net?

Thoughts?

Addition after the fact… More of my thoughts on this subject can be found on these other posts: Communion on the Internet, and Religion, Faith, and Online Gaming

The Cedar Room mixes Tarantino, Hosea and Jesus within a conversation about Dream Spouses… the outcome is…

Jesus was a rich man, and His dream girl was a poor hooker. They really only had one thing in common and that was that they were both desperately in love with the same person. Jesus loved the poor hooker, and the poor hooker loved herself.

Not for the faint of heart.. but certainly for the thoughtful.

I am working on a Sermon for Ash Wednesday entitled Cheaters using Psalm 51 and Hosea 1-3. The above was encountered when I googled Hosea, Ash Wednesday, and hesed.

I like the ending…

Most men marry way out of their league, and yet I still hear single guys talk about the girl of their dreams. It’s not so much that they have a dream girl that seems wrong, it is that their dream girl is always already perfect. The Lord has a girl of His dreams and it is us, and we know what we’re like at our very cores. Jesus didn’t come to earth looking for a nice Presbyterian girl who liked Radiohead and The Flaming Lips just like He did, who had large breasts, long legs and wide hips and thought that infant baptism was really important, too. He came for us, and before we knew Him, we were emaciated whores.

Scott McKay.. a friend, colleague and to a degree a mentor of sorts has joined the ranks of the blogosphere. When Grace Happens is its name.

Scott officiated at my wedding ceremony to Amy, was our campus minister in undergrad and now shares an accountability group with me and a few other pastors.

Not much at his weblog.. but I am sure you’ll want to book mark it.

Welcome Scott.

Things are busy right now. I am working on post papers for the January term of my D.Min program. The two papers are interesting — but church and family work has had some more pressing issues. My daughter has had a virus and a longtime church member died of cancer after a four year battle.

Last week I noted that my Christmas gift finally arrived — an iPod Shuffle. Since then I have loaded CDs into the library, purchased music, and also purchased an audiobook. I am currently more than half way through See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism by Robert Baer. The book is fascinating and full of Tom Clancy type cloak and dagger stories — as well as an argument for more human intelligence in our national defense. My hope was to buy something entertaining and not work related — and I think See No Evil has been ideal.

All that to say that life has trumped weblogging. But then — there is always next week.

New to the site…

Under Blogroll I have added two distinguished weblogs - they aren’t new — only new to me.

–Only Wonder Understands - is a great pomo weblog that discusses church, emergent issues and theology.

–Faith and Theology - is an entirely refreshing and at times academically wise website. A good read for those of interested in more than just the surface.

I added a site with a recurring Top 20 Podcast list — Podcast Bunker - to the Podcasts list.

Enjoy.

A dilemma is the need to choose whether to spend your time getting your Valentine card for your beloved (the day before) — or playing with the newly arrived iPod Shuffle (that was backordered from Christmas).

A paradox is trying to explain to your beloved why there is no Valentine’s Day card.

Salvation is a reservation at her favorite little Cafe.

Pray for me… I have joined the ranks of iTunes.

We have started in the last month a ‘prayer’ time for our toddler before bed time. We brush her teeth, change the diaper, get in pjs and read a book or two in the rocking chair in her room. Before putting her down we ask her if it is time to say prayers - she usually enthusiastically says ‘Yes.’ Then we begin a little litany of sorts. I say ‘God bless’ and she fills in the blanks. Initially we had to prime the pump - God bless GamGam, God bless Buddy (her grandparents). Then she began to get the hang of it.

Over the last month we have had some interesting additions. My wife restricts the answers to people — I am a little looser. Some of the interesting ones have been:

God Bless Chocolate
God Bless Ashley (her babysitter)
God Bless Elmo (the red furry monster from Sesame Street)
God Bless milk
God Bless swings (as in at the playground)
God Bless parks (as in the kind that have swings)
God Bless stroller (what can I say she likes the outside)
God Bless shopping (she is her mother’s child)
God Bless Walmart (scary I know… )

and the cutest and scariest of all…

God Bless boys.

Just thought someone would get a kick out of that…

Did you notice the outfit worn by the Italian hosts carrying the placards for the opening ceremonies at the Olympics?

Notice the resemblance to a mountain…

For what its worth..

I wanted to share a story with those of you who are pastors here in the states.

A year and a half ago I was a new pastor in town, settling in with a new baby, and starting a D.Min program. I received a phone call Christmas Eve after the church’s service. The man asked for me by name, said he had visited the church with his young daughter and wife about 5 weeks ago. He said that since then he hadn’t been able to be in church. His mother died from a drunk driving accident, the funeral was yesterday. He had run out of cash - was bereft with grief and just wanted to get his family back home. His mother lived in Florida (we’re in Texas). He had boxed up his mother’s belongings and paid cash for a storage unit. The car they were using had thrown a rod and he was calling from a pay phone 60 miles or so up the road. He knew how much the greyhound bus fare was - but didn’t have enough for it.

I was well aware of the need to be on the look out for con-artists who would paint a bleak picture for a handout. I knew how to ask the right questions. But this guy had just enough answers for those tough questions. I was so new in the community that I didn’t know if he had been attending for a while. I was so busy during the Christmas holidays that I wasn’t exactly sure if a young family had come or not come in the last month. In the end I wired him the money. He pledged he would come by for grief counseling when he got to town. I never saw him again — I asked around among the church leaders, looked in the phonebook for his last name and street address, and finally just chalked it up to a bad decision — and a con job.

This morning — after five days of the flu — I was enjoying a moment of sleeping in in an attempt to rest up for writing my sermon today - and lo and behold the phone rang. My wife answered it and then came and got me. She said it was someone who asked for me by name and that it was a collect call. Within three sentences — I was pretty sure it was the same guy. He made similar statements about the loss of his mother, the injustice of the drunk driver, the need to get out of his mother’s house because it smelled like her, and the feeling that he had regularly that his mother might walk back in the door. And he needed money for bus fare to get his family home.

I told him that about a year and a half ago I had someone call with a similar story, about a man who had lost his mother and needed bus fare for his family. I told him that the man had promised to come by for counseling and would repay the money with interest. And although we were able to help then the church was in a different place financially now — and has limited its financial help to specific issues. He remarked how sad it was that someone would con the church, wanted to know where the guy was from.. etc. I mentioned how peculiar it was that his story and this man’s story matched up so well.

He interrupted me then and asked point blank, “So, I guess your not going to give me any money this time?”

I said, “Nope.” And he hung up.

What did Jesus say — be as crafty as serpents and as innocent as doves — it is a jungle out there!

Been under the weather with an ugly case of the flu. While out of action I took advantage of netflix and caught up on my movie watching. Dvds work better than the TV when you have the flu — you can pause the DVD to take care of gi symptoms…

Watched A Day without a Mexican yesterday and really enjoyed it. It is a sleeper, low budget, indy movie that asks some good cultural and immigration questions.

It feels kind of ‘Left Behindish’ but instead of the faithful being swept up into the sky - in ADWAM all of the Mexican immigrants disappear one morning. And around the state is an impenetrable fog that keeps anyone from going in and out. The movie focuses on TV journalist who appears to be a mexican woman. The tricky part is that she wasn’t ‘taken.’ The story unfolds through the struggle of politicians, scientists, and evey day people in struggling with the question of cultural-ethnic identities and how minorities are treated here in the USA.

As I watched it I thought it would be interesting to watch it as a church community. But … not until I am over the flu…