Peace

"True peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want."

President Barack Obama when accepting the Nobel Peace Prize today.

Obvious to what

“… those of us who have the nerve to call ourselves Christians will do well to be extremely reticent on the subject. Indeed, it is almost the definition of a Christian that he is somebody who knows he isn’t one, either in faith or morals. Where faith is concerned, very few of us have the right to say more than—to vary a saying of Simone Weil’s—“I believe in a God who is like the True God in everything except that he does not exist, for I have not yet reached the point where God exists.” As for loving and forgiving our enemies, the less we say about that the better. Our lack of faith and love are facts we have to acknowledge, but we shall not improve either by a morbid and essentially narcissistic moaning over our deficiencies. Let us rather ask, with caution and humour—given our time and place and talents, what, if our faith and love were perfect, would we be glad to find it obvious to do?”

— W.H. Auden

Friday Chews

Who besides an imbecile would live a life that bears all things, that believes all things, that hopes all things, endures all things? It is completely unreasonable. It is completely stupid in its excessive irresponsibility. Only dysfunctional idiots endure all things.

Inhabitatio Dei

National politics is like the Roman circus in first century Rome. It is entertainment to keep us distracted from the real issues.

Stanley Hauerwas

A quick calculation yields this result: African pirates will have to kidnap one Westerner per hour for the next 1,431 years to equal the number of Africans kidnapped by Westerners between 1501-1866.

William Jelani Cobb

If you drink, don't drive. Don't even putt.

Dean Martin

Friday Chews

I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.

Rita Rudner

Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

Howard Aiken (1900 - 1973)

If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.

Jewish Proverb

Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets.

Unknown, Brigader Lethbridge-Stewart in "Dr. Who" – In remembrance of Diana

Friday Chews

Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.

Robert Orben

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.

Bob Thaves, "Frank and Ernest", 1982

Anything too stupid to be said is sung.

Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

You talk to God, you're religious. God talks to you, you're psychotic.

Doris Egan, House M.D., House vs. God, 2006

Easter's on its way

I will be taking an Easter break, and the blog will be quiet until Tuesday, April 14. Until then, an old friend sent me a fascinating quote, and somehow it resonated with Lent and Easter (and death and new life) for me - so I am sharing it.

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail. I try to increase the power God has given me to see the best in everything and every one, and make that Best a part of my life . . . No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit."

-Helen Keller

Don't look for the living among the dead. He has risen. He has risen indeed.

LOVE and GRACE to you.

Friday Chews

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Thomas A. Edison (1847 - 1931)

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)

Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.

Iris Murdoch (1919 - 1999)

This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person's failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.

John 3:16-18 The Message

Friday Chews

If not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.

P. G. Wodehouse (1881 - 1975)

Most turkeys taste better the day after; my mother's tasted better the day before.

Rita Rudner

As the poet said, 'Only God can make a tree' -- probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

Woody Allen (1935 - )

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.

John Wayne (1907 - 1979)

Friday Chews

No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.

Michel de Montaigne (1533 - 1592)

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.

Elizabeth Taylor (1932 - )

Assuming either the Left Wing or the Right Wing gained control of the country, it would probably fly around in circles.

Pat Paulsen

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

Click here for an article worth some discussion. More than discussion, really.

Friday Chews

Some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell, I wish to run a rescue mission within a yard of hell.

C.T. Studd

Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

Samuel Butler

I believe that professional wrestling is clean and everything else in the world is fixed.

Frank Deford

Click here for a story that will knock you off your cookies.

Friday Chews

I have enough money to last me the rest of my life, unless I buy something.

--Jackie Mason (1934 - )

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

--Niels Bohr (1885 - 1962)

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.

--Henry Kissinger (1923 - )

I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

--George Carlin (1937 - 2008) For Larry.

Click here and read what everyone is gabbing about this week. Any thoughts?

Friday Chews

Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.

- H. H. Williams

The easiest relationship kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one.

- Joan Baez

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

- Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Click here for the article of the week. Funny.

Neon and other naughtiness

Give this a read:

A.E. Stallings, Troilet on a Line Apocryphally Attributed to Martin Luther

Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night,
The swaying in darkness, the lovers like spoons?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes?
Does he hum them to while away sad afternoons
And the long, lonesome Sundays? Or sing them for spite?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night?

It is true that Martin Luther took pub songs (drinking ditties) and put sacred lyrics to them - the very songs we sing today and defend as God's very best - but don’t get too alarmed. “Apocryphally” essentially means falsely or inauthentically – so Martin Luther did not really say any part of this. The authorship is not what I'm really interested in though - it's the sentiment, the idea, it espouses. Fascinating, isn’t it, that we believe WRONG to be more fun than RIGHT?

Resist the temptation to look at specifics (i.e. is neon really evil?) and hear the thinking instead. Why do we believe the Devil gets all the good tunes?

Friday Chews

Click to contrast and compare this team with this team. How do we all really win?

We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.
--Francois de La Rochefoucauld (1613 - 1680)

Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.
--Jules Renard (1864 - 1910)

People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.
--E. B. White (1899 - 1985)

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right.
--Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)

Meet Keats

I discovered one of the most interesting quotes. Many of you who read this blog may not know it, but there is a lot of conversation in the church these days (and in the world) about the idea of post-modernity and what it means.

Post-modernity is hard to define, perhaps impossible really, so if you Google it after reading this, make sure you read a lot of opinion. Wikipedia (not the most reliable source) describes postmodernism/postmodernity this way:

These terms are used by philosophers, social scientists, and social critics to refer to aspects of contemporary culture, economics and society that are the result of the unique features of late 20th century and early 21st century life. These features include the fragmentation of authority, and the commoditization of knowledge. Postmodernity is a condition, or a state of being, or is concerned with changes to institutions and conditions - whereas postmodernism is an aesthetic, literary, political or social philosophy. In other words, postmodernism is the "cultural and intellectual phenomenon", especially since the 1920s' new movements in the arts, while postmodernity focuses on social and political outworkings and innovations globally, especially since the 1960s in the West.

Whether I always knew it or not (i.e. had it defined for me by Wikipedia), my thinking has always seemed congruent with postmodern thinking – something to do with being an artist perhaps – although I have a friend named Doug who always says, “If you use the term postmodern, you probably aren’t.” I happen to agree.

But back to the quote. The English poet John Keats (1795-1821), after watching a Shakespearean piece performed, said something that comes so close to describing how I see the world that I had to share it. He said:

“…the deepest truths are found in uncertainty and doubt and mystery and not in ‘the irritating reach for fact and reason.’” (Keats’ theory was termed Negative Capability).

Now, if you are a modern thinker, that statement warrants the dreaded label “relativism,” (and probably gives you the urge to wet your pants) but look closer. It’s far deeper than the idea that your facts and my facts are subjective, it is trying to say that once you have reached the pinnacle of irrefutable knowledge – so what? Knowledge is not understanding. Understanding requires getting dirty – rolling around in uncertainty and doubt and pain.

My apologies to those of you who are reading today’s post and thinking, “Huh? Where’s the neatly packaged story for today?” Truth be told, I have to work pretty hard to be that tidy every day.

I do believe there is Absolute Truth. I just disagree about how He’s revealed. In the midst of all that I do not know, He is there – but not with answers – but with Himself.

Christians sing songs like, “Jesus Is Still the Answer” or use phrases like, “I prayed and God gave me an answer…” Frankly, I do not believe that God always offers answers, but He offers Himself, and somehow in the midst of the ongoing uncertainly, it is understood that He is enough.

Friday Chews

When someone strips a man of his clothes, we call him a thief. And one who has the ability to clothe the naked and does not -- should not he be given the same name?

--Basil the Great

It's not the parts of the Bible I don't understand that scare me, but the parts I do understand.

--Mark Twain

92% of Americans believe in God. I guess that’s what happens when you don’t have health care.

-- Magnus Betner, Swedish comedian

compassion is snuggling up close next to pain and refusing to leave, waiting for something true to be revealed.

-- unknown

Thank you, Rev. King

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Friday Chews

If all the insects on earth disappeared, within 50 years all life on earth would disappear. If all humans disappeared, within 50 years all species would flourish as never before.

— Jonas Salk

I actually feel too close to this problem, a problem that symbolizes all problems. It’s true: I have friends in Gaza about whom I worry a great deal; I’ve seen many people killed in Gaza; I’ve served in the Israeli Army in Gaza; I’ve been kidnapped in Gaza; I’ve reported for years from Gaza; I hope my former army doesn’t kill the wrong people in Gaza; I hope Israeli soldiers all leave Gaza alive; I know they’ll be back in Gaza; I think this operation will work; and I have no actual hope that it will work for very long, because nothing works for very long in the Middle East. Gaza is where dreams of reconciliation go to die. Gaza is where the dream of Palestinian statehood goes to die; Gaza is where the Zionist dream might yet die. Or, more to the point, might be murdered.

— Jeffrey Goldberg

What do computers matter when millions are still unnecessarily dying of diarrhea?

— Bill Gates, quoted in Slavoj Zizek’s Enjoy Your Symptom

Friday Chews

Seemingly unconnected, yet undigested. Chew away.



The mature man lives quietly, does good privately, assumes personal responsibility for his actions, treats other with friendliness and courtesy, finds mischief boring and keeps out of it. Without this hidden conspiracy of good will, society would not endure an hour.

— Kenneth Rexroth

Well, you wonder why I always dress in black,
Why you never see bright colors on my back,
And why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone.
Well, there's a reason for the things that I have on.

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he's a victim of the times.

I wear the black for those who never read,
Or listened to the words that Jesus said,
About the road to happiness through love and charity,
Why, you'd think He's talking straight to you and me.

Well, we're doin' mighty fine, I do suppose,
In our streak of lightnin' cars and fancy clothes,
But just so we're reminded of the ones who are held back,
Up front there ought 'a be a Man In Black.

I wear it for the sick and lonely old,
For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold,
I wear the black in mournin' for the lives that could have been,
Each week we lose a hundred fine young men.

And, I wear it for the thousands who have died,
Believen' that the Lord was on their side,
I wear it for another hundred thousand who have died,
Believen' that we all were on their side.

Well, there's things that never will be right I know,
And things need changin' everywhere you go,
But 'til we start to make a move to make a few things right,
You'll never see me wear a suit of white.

Ah, I'd love to wear a rainbow every day,
And tell the world that everything's OK,
But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,
'Till things are brighter, I'm the Man In Black.

Johnny Cash, Man in Black

“I’m going to the fourth world. It’s sort of like heaven; only better, because there aren’t any Christians.”

Kate Winslet as Juliet Hulme in Heavenly Creatures

“I believe the world is telling Christians today, ‘I close my ears to your advice, but I open my eyes to your example.’ This young generation is crying out, ‘Show me, show me.’”

Brother Paul Holderfield in 1974

click here for a little something Advent extra.

Friday Chews

Our chew items this week come from a variety of sources and interesting people...Nietzsche, Placher, Planned Parenthood and, uh, Baltimore.

Enjoy. Feel free to tell me how you feel about any or all.

1. But what if pleasure and displeasure were so tied together that whoever wanted to have as much as possible of one must have as much as possible of the other — that whoever wanted to learn to “jubilate up to the heavens” would also have to be prepared for “depression unto death”?

Friedrich Nietzsche

2. A network of 93 sensors has been mounted on streetlights and buildings in the neighborhood and can distinguish gunshots from fireworks and car backfires and immediately give police precise locations where guns have been discharged.

Police Chief of Baltimore

3. Planned Parenthood is offering GIFT CERTIFICATES for purchase this Christmas. Here's the video from CNN.com.

4. We human persons are always failing to be fully personal. As persons, we are shaped by our relations with other persons. Yet we always deliberately raise barriers or cannot figure out how to overcome the barriers we confront. When those we most love come to die, or in the dementia of old age are no longer able understand what we may most want to say to them, we realize how much there was in our hearts that we never shared with them. When we best articulate our ideas, we cannot escape the feeling that there was something there we never quite captured. When we most rejoice in sharing with someone different from ourselves, difference nevertheless scares us. The doctrine of the Trinity, however, proclaims that true personhood, however impossible its character may be for us to imagine, involves acknowledging real difference in a way that causes not fear but joy.

William Placher, theologian, who recently died. RIP.