total one-up

or, instead of reading my post from yesterday, you could read diana butler bass's article, "beyond the stale rituals of abortion politics," on the God's politics blog today. she talks about hauerwas, which is always exciting, and has some interesting things to say about power. so just go ahead and read that.

on love?

stumbled across this while preparing for bible study:

Imagine this. What if there were a politician who could somehow speak of
love? What if there were a President who would not only talk of a kinder and
gentler nation but refuse to drop bombs upon a city like Baghdad? What if a
people's nobler hopes and dreams were addressed, their latent generosity and
fairness, their willingness to share with the unfortunate?

What if there were a liberal politician who could spare as much love for
human fetuses as he or she can muster for baby seals and trees? What if there
were a conservative politician who realized that words of love apply to
criminals and refugees as much as they do to unborn humans and middle-class
Christians? Such a politician would be a person whose professional life was
informed by a faith and love that necessarily yields justice.

It would not be easy. Jesus himself, after he announced the good news to
the poor, first amazed, then angered his audience. He was too ordinary and too
close to give such prophetic utterance. It cannot be real. He cannot be real.
Eventually they were filled with rage and wanted to cast him out. So it went
when he began his ministry.

How goes it with Christians today?

hey, john kavanaugh. i think that will be appropriate for today. what's our prophetic message? i don't think it's a mistake that next sunday's readings contain paul's famous discourse on love, jeremiah's "before i formed you in the womb," and the story about how people from jesus' hometown try to stone him when he preaches.

on the anniversary of roe v. wade, i'd just like to say that i don't think our current anti-abortion rhetoric is working. i'm tired of talking about how many babies are dying and how we need to vote for the people who will keep that from happening. it makes me really sad, for one, to hear more about death and violence and all this. it makes me wonder why we're still preaching to the choir on this issue. and then it frustrates me that it's not working and we're not looking at new options. there was a lot of talk last year about the pro-life movement and how we need to focus on reducing the number of abortions instead of using the "abortion is murder" tactic. one side yells murder, the other yells freedom, and we're still in the same place...

i don't know what the new options are. something about love. something rooted in prayer. something about realizing we're part of a community. something about a call that's higher than judgment and closer to taking care of others. something more personal, maybe. but i'm convinced that we're called to do more than what we're doing now.

fabulous. that's right.

this was sort of hazardous to my life, as i heard it in the car and liked it so much that i wasn't so much focused on my driving. [check out librivox to download audiobooks for free, because they're all in the public domain and recorded by volunteers.]

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.
- Thoreau, Walden

your candidates...

barry obama

hillary rodham

i don't know exactly what a prayer is

ahhh. where has this poem been all my life? [well, it's been quoted in several AIM profiles. but that doesn't count as much.]


I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver

ROBOT RAGE

the timing's bad, but this take on charlie weis is hi-larious.

woooo minimum wage increase!

predictably, my comment on this piece of legislation will be "about damn time."

Sen. Ted Kennedy, in a press conference before the vote, called the bill a matter of both "family values" and "civil rights," citing the large proportion of black and Hispanic workers the minimum wage affects.

well, that's interesting. hey, family values. apparently ted kennedy is also interested in ending the "monologue of the Religious Right."

[you've got to watch the religious right... always monologuing...]