'I must be an acrobat, to talk like this and act like that...' -Actung Baby,U2
I am Jacob Bailey. I have been writing here for a while now. I am 27 years old, on the brink of moving to Spain. I love my wife and two beautiful children. Glad you stopped by - please let me know you were here by posting a comment.
leading with QUESTIONS
Monday, December 20, 2004
listening in
This is the link into the conversation that Walter Bruegemann had with Emergent.
I am listening in right now...discussion on certitude vs. fidelity...ummhhmmm...good stuff for me. Brueg is lifting fidelity for us to consider over the predominate notion that certitude is the goal. I with the F guys having lost my C.
Thursday, December 16, 2004
Enjoying Walter Brueggemann
Awe...hope today...in the form of helpful thoughts by Walter Brueggemann. He says about Genesis' proclamation: "The news is that God and God's creation are bound in a relation that is assured but at the same time is delicate and precarious." Oh...that's spacious...and realistic...and at the same time optimistic.
I feel better. That may sound strange, but it is true. WB moves in new directions for me that help me recover my Bible. There is a desire deep within me to know God through the sacred text, but so often that desire is dispelled by layers of gridlines that I have attempted to build my understanding with. These so often fail me today...and leave me hanging, confused, cynical, and at worst uninterested in opening my bible. These layers have been informed over the years by my evangelical community only - and therein might lie the problem? No matter- the metaphor of a dark pathway through a dense forest in the middle of the night comes in handy. And then I see a dim light...and it offers hope and for a moment calls me forward to take a few steps further...and farther down the road of knowing God. Not that I haven't been moving along...for that is happening through thick blackness, but the light, ever so barely there, it there...and for a moment I trust in his goodness.
Monday, December 13, 2004
on backwards
By about 3:28pm I finally had had enough. What was it. Something must have gotten stuck in my sweater during the wash. It itched at the bottom of my neck right in front.
It couldn't be...that would be stupid. Did I actually have it on backwards? Yep. Dunce. Why didn't they tell me? That's a dumb question. Maybe they didn't know. Oh, well. All I have to do is turn it around. There that's much better...
I can't believe I didn't think of this earlier.
Is this like my faith right now? It's not that I need to change my sweater...it just isn't fitting how it is supposed to. Do I just have to turn it around? If only it was that simple.
lost in the vertical world
Sometimes I find myself totally lost in the "Emergent" conversation or matrix of different thoughts. Sometimes I don't care much...cause it is all so confusing...where does the "common Jon Doe Christian" find their place? What is essential? What info do we act on? Where do we draw lines? Where do we erase some? Who do we stay connected to? Who do we leave behind? How do we chose one author over the next? How do we find our way? Who determines the whole? Who affirms it? Who's important? Who isn't? Who cares? Who can we trust? Who decides? How many thesis's must sythesis? How many times before the whole is lost? Who are you? Who am i? Who are we? Why? Who knows? How do we know it?
All of this locates me somewhere mid flight. Like a drop of water gently flowing down the pleasant steam - I had know idea where I was headed until...the plane of reality shifted from horizontal to vertical.
Until I found myself shot out in the void much like the water is thrown off a sheer cliff in yosemite only to end up sailing downward into the space below. Depending on the weather in that particular moment some drops change entirely and evaporated in flight while others blown out of rivers boundaries completely only to absorbed by some nearby vegetation. Still others somehow survive this falls and find there way back again to the clam currents of a river moving more horizonatally than vertically.
24-7 in Ibiza
This article was supposed to go through Rolling Stone, but lost out to something else and ended up here.
So I have sent words back and forth to Jonah for a while...he's is one of the dudes mentioned. I can appreciate what these folks are attempting for God...actually back in 99' Tania and I were part of a team from our college that spent a week in Cancun doing something similiar. But the short term stuff is too airy. There just isn't enough relationtional space to be Jesus if one is only there a week or two. It's those who live there and do that thing incarnationationally that excite me. It seems to me, that would be more risky and radical, but also more authentic and promising in terms of sharing Jesus with others...
24-7 prayer deserves props for moving in these places...sure it's messy...and sure they're aren't perfect...but is what I do clean? and am I perfect? Absolutlely as the vodka no!
May the Light be seen as it shines in deeper and deeper darkness. May you, oh Lord protect your loved ones who bear your torch in such places as these...
...and may people see you and know you, and begin to live for you and in unfolding discovery of your great mystery of the ages.
Thursday, December 09, 2004
who do you hate?
This is the commercial that is stirring alot of pots right now.
So what do I think? Well...it's good. I don't know about the values of the CCC...or recent beliefs...but I like the commercial. I think it's funny that it couldnt be aired. But you know I would never fight that fact. I am reminded by a recent article in Sojo magazine, by David Batstone I am not called to join the culture war but somehow by a Christ link and agent of peace or something.
It's just a commercial. the real task is being the church that daily has a plank in it's eye. The real work begins when we realize where we are at...and who we hate (intrincially). Then repentance should come...and then learning to live in love toward others as Jesus did (I think we can assume that) and as he might do(I think we can assume this too).
I hate people. I mean not openly, but deep in my dark heart-closet I hate. It is just easier to do that. I am not content to hate, but want to be honest about my hatred. Right now it is just easier to love anyone outside of the church (not matter who they are) and much easier to hate those within it. It's with the "faithful" and with the "church people" that my temptation lies. I could justify my hatred so easily with so many examples or I could love instead...
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
I apppologize I couldn't restrain myself...I told you I was freaking out...no I swear it isn't a demon it is just a digital camera trick...
community as a means of death
If this went away I would not have given it attention. But here it is again. BBC is shedding light on how young Japanese people are finding community a source of strength to end it all. See the article called Japan's internet 'suicide clubs'
Sometimes we speak of "community" as if we in the church created the word, or as if it is a "Biblical" word that comes from scripture...and yet in this case community is a tool of death. Is it anything more than a social system that gives people permission to do what they cannot do on their own (be it good or bad)? That serves the church well when it means that we follow Christ better and young Japanese men and women well when it means thay can follow through on plans for suicide.
The whole thing is troubling to me. Some might argue "But Jacob, suicide is part of the Japanese culture...this makes it not necessarily a bad thing." But that just sits strangely to me...I mean are people valuable...is one life of any less value than another...should a culture continue to label suicide as honorable...and in fact in one sense "give permission" to people to act it out - to end there life early and at their own hand?
Somehow...I grieve for this kind of thing...their is no beauty in it. Why? Is life that empty, that painful, that heavy...? To some these young Japanese folks it must be...and community of a few others helps them end it...this is the world we live in.
What would the incarnate Christ do, pray, live out among these hopeless people? Who will live Christ in such a place? Who wouuld love the Japanese people this way?
Monday, December 06, 2004
I am reading a book this morning called For the Beauty of the Earth...below the auther quotes a stimulating piece from Sierra,
"Having created God in man's own image, Western religion has adopted an anthropocentric mythology that separtates God from Creation, soul from body, and man from Earth. It is this dualism that prevents us from relating not only to the natural world, but to ourselves."
The author asks in Chapter 3 "Is Christianity to Blame?" (for much of the ecological crisis we find ourselves in...chapter 2 is pretty much a sobering summary of this crisis...it kind of haunts me...) I think the answer will not be that we are entirely to blame, but indeed we have played a significant, if not the most significant role in our pending destruction...
That is if it isn't "all gonna burn in the end anyway." That was the mantra I was raised on...and yet it is also one I can no longer live by. Systems fueled by odd dualistic polarities are for me, more and more lending themselves more to hatred than to love.
Can we think long enough and deep enough about our participation in these sinful systems? And, further, then can we actually to chose to live outside of these systems, in willful obedience obedience to the Christ who loves this world we make our home in?
I better keep reading...
