Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Monday, March 17, 2014

Why I Don't Celebrate St. Patrick's Day


Seamus, age 10, and his father in Drumcliff, County Sligo, where W.B. Yeats is buried.

Why I Don't Celebrate St. Patrick's Day
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/seamus-mckiernan/st-patricks-day-ireland_b_4976705.html
Posted: Updated:
Seamus McKiernan Headshot

As a kid, I already had an aversion to St. Patrick's Day. I never wore a green shirt to school on the holiday, a protest that without fail elicited pinches from my classmates -- and even confusion from my teachers. "But your name is Seamus," they'd say, dumbfounded, thinking I'd forgotten the day.

Like a lot of Irish Americans, my name offered the first lesson about my heritage. When your name is frequently mispronounced, you have little choice but to find out where it comes from. (See-mus? Shah-mus? Shameless?) My sister's name is Cáitrín (mind the accents!). That sparked our curiosity about our origins, notwithstanding the occasional butchered pronunciation over the loudspeaker at roll call.

My cultural education in Irish-American-ness came primarily from my parents and grandparents. That meant reading Irish literature from a young age. It meant pulling a Michael Collins biography down from the shelf and peppering my dad with questions about the Easter Rising. Why was the country divided by North and South? I learned that Ireland's flag, which flies outside of bars on March 17 -- the one with white between the orange and green -- was really a statement about peace between the two sides.

It meant family trips were often occasions for lessons about Irish history or current events or folklore, like the story of the famous one-eyed giant who roamed Tory Island. (I think I still believed that one after I knew the Santa Claus ruse was up.) It meant learning to play the violin and veering away from the Suzuki method to the jigs and reels. It meant studying for a summer at a school in County Donegal in a Gaeltacht, a region where the predominant language is Irish. It meant being asked to memorize William Butler Yeats' poem "Easter 1916" for a high school English class. The Irish struggle for independence Yeats writes about felt like distant past -- it was harrowing to find out that it wasn't so long ago. "Too long a sacrifice/Can make a stone of a heart," I remember reciting.

And it meant looking up to my grandfather, Eoin McKiernan, the father of nine kids (Deirdre, Brendan, Fergus, Ethna, Gillisa, Grania, Nuala, Liadan and my father, Kevin). My grandfather, a scholar who was named one of America's greatest Irish Americans of the 20th century, made it his life's work to teach Irish Americans about where they came from. To do this, he founded the Irish American Cultural Institute, which awarded grants to Irish writers, composers, artists, and Irish-language initiatives, including historical tours to the Emerald Isle and Irish language classes. (In fact, I recently learned that long before Seamus Heaney was a Nobel laureate, my grandfather gave him a writer's grant.) He was recognized internationally for his work and invited to the White House on several occasions. Princess Grace of Monaco chaired his Institute.

Forgive the family stuff, which can be boring. But I mention it because St. Patrick's Day is upon us. Today the river in Chicago is dyed green, parades are planned across the country, and people are ready to party. But when I walk around today, I won't be seeing the fullness of my heritage on display. I'm trying to keep in mind what Yeats, arguably the greatest poet in the 20th century, wrote about a sense of solidarity "wherever green is worn." I don't think he meant the annual buffoonery in sports bars in midtown Manhattan that passes for being Irish. He was talking about the deep identity that unites a people.

Figuring out who I am is a work in progress, but I think my grandfather, whom everyone called Grandpa Mór, would have understood. After all, he always said, "What is bred in the bone will out."


Chicago's Green River on St. Paddy's Day
More Photos Chicago Celebration



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Easter, 1916
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172061

by William Butler Yeats 1865–1939


I have met them at close of day   
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey   
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head   
Or polite meaningless words,   
Or have lingered awhile and said   
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done   
Of a mocking tale or a gibe   
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,   
Being certain that they and I   
But lived where motley is worn:   
All changed, changed utterly:   
A terrible beauty is born.


That woman's days were spent   
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers   
When, young and beautiful,   
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school   
And rode our wingèd horse;   
This other his helper and friend   
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,   
So sensitive his nature seemed,   
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,   
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,   
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.


Hearts with one purpose alone   
Through summer and winter seem   
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,   
The rider, the birds that range   
From cloud to tumbling cloud,   
Minute by minute they change;   
A shadow of cloud on the stream   
Changes minute by minute;   
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,   
And a horse plashes within it;   
The long-legged moor-hens dive,   
And hens to moor-cocks call;   
Minute by minute they live:   
The stone's in the midst of all.


Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.   
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part   
To murmur name upon name,   
As a mother names her child   
When sleep at last has come   
On limbs that had run wild.   
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;   
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith   
For all that is done and said.   
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;   
And what if excess of love   
Bewildered them till they died?   
I write it out in a verse—
MacDonagh and MacBride   
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:   
A terrible beauty is born.


FOOTNOTES: September 25, 1916

Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989)



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My Ambivalence About St. Patrick's Day
Posted: Updated:
by Bill Stieger
Writer from St. Paul, MN

Given my surname, I feel mixed about celebrating St. Patrick's Day. I am Irish; in fact, three quarters so. I am descended from the Lennons, the Abbotts, the McCarthys, the Eagans. My cousins include the Kanes, the Runyons, the Flynns and the Russells. I am as Irish as an American can be, except for the German name inherited from my father's father, who had married Catherine Eagan.

Friends, fellow St. Paulites, please consider my dilemma. I am solidly St. Paul Irish. My grandfather attended St. Paul Academy as a classmate of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and knew him. But will I proudly march with the prominent Irish families in my city's St. Patrick's Day Parade? No. I'd attended some of those parades in my early years. During the festivities, someone would invariably ask for my name, which I admitted with a shrug was McBride.

I blame St. Luke's Elementary for planting the corrosive Catholic guilt that sears across my chest as the lies pile higher. In fact, so pathetic is my neurotic attachment to honesty that the Internal Revenue Service is sole entity to which I can lie to with glee.

So, it hurts to be "Stieger" on St. Patrick's Day. The insult weaves through the miserable narrative of my life. It catches me at each station. My first wife was a girl of Norwegian heritage who was an eighth Irish, but carried one of the great Irish names. The only thing Irish about her was her temper, which seemed to have survived the cross-breeding: she was a woman who could start an argument in an empty room.

Another aspect of St. Patrick's Day that grinds does not concern my name. It is this: annually, I ask myself, Why do we Irish work so hard to perpetuate every derelict stereotype of our race on St. Patrick's Day? Stand at curbside as drunken louts in leprechaun suits stumble down Wabasha Street, blowing plastic stadium horns. March beside Elvis Presleys in Green Pompadours. Witness the bleary eyed teens as they upchuck green beer on the sidewalk.

Do you think I exaggerate? Read the messages on the horrific buttons and sweatshirts these revelers wear to degrade the tribe: "10 percent Irish/90 percent beer," or "Member of the official Irish drinking team!" Check out pervy intonations, like "Erin Go Braghless," or "Kiss my Shamrocks," or my favorite of all: "I'm starting a drunken brawl with the first person who stereotypes the Irish."

I mean, please! Can you name another ethnic group so bent on its own self abasement? Imagine any other culture or ethnic group frolicking in costumes and behaving in a manner that perpetuates the stereotypes of bigots. None do it. But Irish Americans insist on acting like the clowns at their own circus.

And what about Mr. St. Patrick himself? Patrick was born in 5th century Roman Brittania. He was kidnapped at 16 by pagan raiders and sold into slavery in Ireland. A few years afterward Patrick escaped and returned to his family in Britannia. He later sailed back to Ireland after becoming a cleric, and was eventually ordained bishop.

Though not much is known of the historical St. Patrick, the St. Patrick of Irish lore was said to have rid Ireland of its snakes. Scientists now agree that Ireland's watery isolation makes it near certain that snakes never inhabited the island, though many ascribe their absence to Patrick. Ditching the snakes was Pat's contribution to his nation? Snakes. Big deal. The story I would've hoped for would be for Patrick to come along ten centuries later and used his holy powers to rid Ireland of the British. Where was the old boy during the troubles?

So, you'll not see this Stieger joining the parades this coming St. Patrick's Day. He will, however, raise a glass in remembrance of the great Irish writers -- Swift, Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, O'Connor and Shaw, among others. And, if asked, yes, I will gladly kiss their Shamrocks.


More Photos - St. Paddy's Day Parade, New York City, NY



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Everything You Know About
St. Patrick's Day Is Wrong
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/14/brutally-honest-st-patricks-day-facts_n_4957861.html

 | by  Christine Dalton

Posted: Updated:

St. Patrick's Day is almost upon us! Typically, we associate the holiday with drinking, drinking, and drinking. Oh, and being Irish.

But there's a lot more to St. Patrick's Day than most people know. Truthfully, you've probably been living a lie. When you learn all the facts, this holiday actually kind of... sucks.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but here are 10 brutally honest facts about St. Patrick's Day....

10 - St. Patrick wasn't Irish. Historians believe he was born in what is now England, Scotland or Wales.

9 - St. Patrick's color is blue. We've been living a lie! You might want to hold off on the green face paint this year.

8 - St. Patrick's Day as we know it was invented in America. Really?! Catholic University's Irish American expert, Timothy Meagher, explains that St. Patrick's Day celebrations began in the 18th century in American cities with large Irish immigrant populations."It becomes a way to honor the saint but also to confirm ethnic identity and to create bonds of solidarity," Meagher explained. Really.


7 - March 17th is the day St. Patrick died. So you're celebrating his death.

6 - St. Patrick didn't drive all the snakes from Ireland. Probably because there's no evidence that snakes have EVER existed in Ireland. The climate is much too chilly for them.


5 - The shamrock isn't the symbol of Ireland. Sure, you can find shamrocks all over the Emerald Isle, but the real symbol is the harp.

4 - St. Patrick's Day used to be a dry holiday. Today's booze-bags look to the holiday as a great excuse to start drinking Guinness at 9 AM. Until 1970, however, all pubs in Ireland were closed in observance of the religious feast day.

3 - Corned beef and cabbage isn't a traditional Irish dish.It's just about as Irish as spaghetti and meatballs. You're better off sticking to Guinness.


2 - There are more Irish people living in the U.S. than Ireland. The population of Ireland is about 4.2. million. In contrast, there are around 34 MILLION people of Irish descent living in America.


1 - Your odds of finding a four-leaf clover are slim to none. 1 in 10,000 to be exact. Ouch.


But let's end on a happy note. At least these two guys are Irish.



Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone!



Sunday, March 16, 2014

Sex Trafficking in America & Helping to Break the Cycle

Helping women escape 'the life'

By Kathleen Toner, CNN
updated 1:37 PM EDT, Fri March 14, 2014

CNN Hero: Vednita Carter

CNN Hero: Vednita Carter

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • Vednita Carter founded Breaking Free to support women who wish to escape prostitution
  • She believes the women her nonprofit helps are victims of sex trafficking and not criminals
  • Breaking Free provides food, clothing, housing, counseling, job skills training and more
  • Do you know a hero? Nominations are open for 2014 CNN Heroes

St. Paul, Minnesota (CNN) -- As darkness falls, Joy Friedman hits the streets -- the same ones she used to troll for customers while working as a prostitute.

"My last trick was turned behind that storefront," she said, gesturing to a nearby building.

Now the survivor of sex trafficking cruises these neighborhoods with a different purpose. She's looking for women and girls who are caught up in this lifestyle so she can offer them free condoms and hygiene products.
She is also delivering a message: There is help for them if they want it.

Friedman works for Breaking Free, a nonprofit that helps women escape prostitution. It's where she got help 13 years ago.

"(Prostitution) has been happening forever. And forever, women have just been the victims of it," said Vednita Carter, the organization's founder. "They deserve better."

CNN Report: 95% of the women Vednita Carter helps struggle
with addiction,  abuse, trauma, financial instability and shame.

Since 1996, Carter says she has helped more than 6,000 women get the support they need. In the process, she's built an army of survivors who have joined her crusade to end sex trafficking.

Lured into 'the life'

Carter personally knows about this world. At 18, she was hoping to make money for college when she responded to an advertisement for "dancers." At first, she danced fully clothed, but her bosses and then-boyfriend soon pressured her into stripping and, eventually, prostitution.

It was more than a year before Carter called a friend who helped her get back on her feet. Later, she realized how lucky she had been.

"The majority of women don't have anyone to call. There is nowhere for them to turn," said Carter, now 60. "That's why I do this work."

CNN Heroes: A tour of the sex underworld

For many of the women Carter helps, "the life" is all they've known. Studies show that the average age of entry into child prostitution is 12 to 14, and many of the girls have been sexually abused or were runaways.
Carter works to educate the public and law enforcement to see these women as victims of sex trafficking rather than as criminals.

"Prostitution and sex trafficking really are the same thing. It's about buying and selling a human being," she said.

Leaving 'the life' behind

Carter says 95% of the women she helps struggle with addiction as well as physical abuse, mental trauma, financial instability and shame.

"It's a process. If (they've) been in it forever, it's all they know," she said. "They think it's their destiny."

Carter's drop-in center provides food, clothing and emotional support to any woman coming off the street, no strings attached.

For many women, the first significant step is to participate in a 14-week class called Sisters of Survival. Graduates are honored in a ceremony, marking the start of their new lives.

Prostitution and sex trafficking really are the same thing.
It's about buying and selling a human being. - Vednita Carter


"They learn that they do have other choices that (they) can make," Carter said.

The group also provides permanent and temporary housing, addiction counseling, job skills training and legal assistance.

Most of the staffers who work at Breaking Free are survivors of prostitution, making it one of just a few organizations like it in the United States.

"I have a purpose now," Friedman said. "I'm a fighter, and I'm going to fight 'til I die for each and every person involved in sexual exploitation."

Fighting the demand

Carter believes that sex trafficking won't end until men stop purchasing sexual favors. She established one of the country's first "John Schools" that educates men arrested for solicitation about the impact of their actions.
"I'm not here to make you feel like a piece of sh*t, but you've got to feel something," Doris Johnson, a survivor, told a group back in 2012. "That's somebody's daughter."

According to Carter's group, only 2% of the men who complete the course reoffend.

Carter is considered by many to be a pioneer in the anti-sex trafficking movement, and she is determined to keep fighting as long as she can.

"We are really raising an army here. And this is a battle," she said. "It's not OK to buy and sell us. We are not for sale."

---

Want to get involved? Check out the Breaking Free website at www.breakingfree.net and see how to help.



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Inside the underground sex economy
By Jeanne Sahadi @CNNMoney March 12, 2014: 10:27 AM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Until now there hasn't been a lot of data to help law enforcement and policymakers better understand the economics of the illegal sex trade and trafficking.

But a study released Wednesday by the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center analyzes the size and structure of the underground commercial sex economies in eight major cities: San Diego, Seattle, Dallas, Denver, Washington, D.C., Miami, Atlanta and Kansas City, Missouri.

The three-year effort, which began in 2010, was funded by a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, which supports research that can aid in the prevention, detection and prosecution of human trafficking.

Researchers interviewed pimps, traffickers, sex workers and child pornography offenders, as well as local and federal law enforcement officers.

Of the eight cities studied, Atlanta had the largest cash-based underground sex economy at $290 million a year and Denver the smallest at $40 million, based on 2007 data. (There was insufficient data available for Kansas City, so it was dropped from the estimation analysis.)

The way in: Often pimps and prostitutes get into the business because they had a relative who worked in it or a friend who encouraged them. Neighborhood influence, poor job prospects and childhood trauma also played a role.

Coercion: It's often assumed that sex workers are physically coerced to work for and stay with a pimp. But researchers found that psychological manipulation played a major role, too -- whether it was the promise of attention from the pimp or more tangible incentives.

Likewise coercion through psychological or emotional abuse was used as a form of punishment to keep employees in line.

The report recommends that states should include coercion -- not just physical but also the more subtle, non-physical forms -- in their definition of sex trafficking.

Gang involvement: Gangs are increasingly involved in prostitution and sex trafficking, especially in San Diego.

Often rival gangs will temporarily put aside their differences to work cooperatively to maximize their profits -- for instance, by sharing the same hotel out of which their prostitutes work.

Pimp circuits: Some pimps form networks across cities and regions, operating more as a brotherhood than as rivals. When transporting their sex workers to another city, their networks keep them apprised of law enforcement activities and offer advice on finding clients.

Pimps 'friend' victims on Facebook

Pimps interviewed also indicated that they thought pimping was a less risky crime than others, such as drug trafficking.

And many felt that "no one actually gets locked up for pimping," according to the report.

Role of the Internet: The cash-based sex trade has traditionally been street-based. But now the street is just one part of the trade, which has been greatly expanded by the online sex market. Participants told researchers they perceived the Internet to be less risky in terms of detection by law enforcement and it let them vet potential clients more easily.

Family, friends and legal businesses as facilitators: The underground sex economy is aided by above-board businesses. For example, a hotel's employees may look the other way when a pimp does business out of that hotel, and may even accept payment for doing so.

Meanwhile a pimp's friends or family may serve as drivers or security detail for his prostitutes.

No profit in child porn: Researchers found that there's an increasing amount of child pornography being produced in the United States, and it's increasingly graphic and violent.

But it's often available for free and offenders interviewed said they were part of online child pornography communities.

"Why pay?" one respondent told researchers. "I guess I just assumed that anyone asking for money was a sting."

Those incarcerated for non-contact child porn offenses -- such as possession and distribution -- said they consider it a victimless crime since they weren't producing the pornography.

Offenders did, however, indicate that they want treatment but said there are few options for it in prison.

Among the report's recommendations: Laws should hold criminally responsible anyone who facilitates or hosts online child pornography content and communities.

First Published: March 12, 2014: 12:19 AM ET



Interview with Vednita Carter of Breaking Free on Sex Trafficking
Part 1





Interview with Vednita Carter of Breaking Free on Sex Trafficking
Part 2







Saturday, March 15, 2014

Revisualizing the Church as Fellowship and Community

SHE’S NOT A MEGACHURCH. SHE’S MY SISTER.

http://shaunaniequist.com/shes-megachurch-shes-sister/By Posted in - General on March 11th, 2014
When I was three, we lived so close we could walk to the church my parents started. When the first building was being built, we’d walk over every evening to watch the construction. We had little hard hats, my brother and I, and we’d check every day what had been done, what new beams or walls, what new electrical or plumbing.
I know that my church’s name is shorthand for all manner of things—seeker movement, megachurch, modern evangelicalism, whatever.  But those words don’t tell you who she is.
She’s my sister. She’s less than a year older than me. Here in Chicago, we call that Irish twins. She was my playground, my safest place, my home more than the house I grew up in. I’ve worked there, cried there, stood in weddings there, witnessed funerals there. I fell in love there, working alongside the man who became my husband.
People ask what it’s like to be a pastor’s kid. I don’t know the difference. What’s it like to be anyone else’s kid?
What I know is that the church is my family every bit as much as my aunts and uncles are. What I know is that the very best parts of who I am today were nurtured along by that incredible community—by Sunday school teachers and junior high small group leaders and mentors and friends who walk with me still.
I know it’s a thing. I know people write about it, rage against it, have strong opinions about it. But I’m not talking about all that. I’m talking about who she is.
If I could reach through the computer and take you by the hand, I’d walk you through the hallways and tell you stories of confession and redemption. I’d show you where I learned to read God’s word, where I learned to listen for his Spirit, where I gave my life to him and to his purposes here on earth.
I’d show you where I got a concussion in junior high, and where I was standing when a boy reached to hold my hand for the first time. I’d show you where I was baptized, where I was when I watched the Twin Towers fall on September 11th, where I sat trembling just before I preached there for the first time, scared out of my mind.
I’d introduce you to Casey, who I met in 6th grade, who is one of my dearest friends to this day. I’d sit you down to talk with Dr Bilezekian, my Dad’s mentor, a man who’s been like a grandfather to me. I’d introduce you to men and women who’ve been volunteering there for more than thirty years, holding babies or packing up groceries in the care center or sweeping up, long after the services are over.
My church isn’t perfect. Sisters, of course, know each other’s faults better than anyone else. But being a sister also means you get a front row seat to the good, the beautiful, the fiercely loving and thoroughly grace-soaked best parts of it all. The view from here is breathtaking.
For a long time, I didn’t write much about my church. I needed, for a long time, to talk and write about other things, to make a way and a voice for myself that wasn’t only defined by the pastor’s daughter part of my life.
But this church of mine, this sister: it’s not only the church of my childhood. It’s the place where I pray, sing, confess, take communion now. It’s the community that shapes me, walks with me, instructs me, holds me now.
I’m not little anymore, and neither is she. But she’s still my sister.
You learn all sorts of things growing up the way I did. And one of them is this: the labels never suffice. The articles and blogs and books and outside opinions never will capture the real thing. They’ll reduce it to policy, numbers, data.
They fail to capture what a church actually is: real live actual humans, showing up day after day, year after year, building something durable and lovely over time, together, with prayer and forgiveness and love.
They forget that it isn’t an institution. It’s a family. She’s my sister.

Confessions of an Ex-Apologist: "In Defense of Why I Left My Calling"




On Being an Ex-Apologist
(Hardman, part 1 of 3)
  • Why is it that so many apologists are so consumed with the discipline that it seems to be what they eat, drink, and sleep?
  • Why is it that so many insist on “defending the faith” in the classroom, no matter what sort of insult, interruption or shame that brings the professor and class?
  • Why is it that so many are threatened when popular boundaries are brought into question by none other than fellow Christians?
  • Why is it, as I have seen personally, so many apologists turn out to be jerks, little different in rhetoric and spirit than the New Atheists they so fervently wish to counter?
Can the Devil not find his way into the apologetics camp too?

- Randy


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The Exodus of Inerrancy and Entrance Into Authenticity
(Hardman, part 2 of 3)
- Randy