More snapshots from Duncan demonstration--local pastors

Let us have no imitation Christian love. Let us have a genuine break with evil and a real devotion to good. Let us have real warm affection for one another as between brothers, and a willingness to let the other man have the credit. Let us not allow slackness to spoil our work and let us keep the fires of the spirit burning, as we do our work for the Lord. Base your happiness on your hope in Christ. When trials come endure them patiently; steadfastly maintain the habit of prayer. Give freely to fellow Christians in want, never grudging a meal or a bed to those who need them. And as for those who try to make your life a misery, bless them. Don't curse, bless. Share the happiness of those who are happy, and the sorrow of those who are sad. Live in harmony with one another. Don't become snobbish but take a real interest in ordinary people. Don't become set in your own opinions. Don't pay back a bad turn by a bad turn, to anyone. See that your public behavior is above criticism. As far as your responsibility goes, live at peace with everyone. Never take vengeance into your own hands, my dear friends: stand back and let God punish if he will. For it is written:

Vengeance belongeth unto me: I will recompense.

And these are God's words:

If thine enemy hunger, feed him;
If he thirst, give him to drink:
For in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head.

Don't allow yourself to be overpowered by evil. Take the offensive--overpower evil with good!
--Romans 12:9-21 [J. B. Phillips' translation]

More snapshots from the May 17 Duncan Halliburton protest--before 8:30 am

As usual, click photos for larger versions.

But the spirit of the passages about the cities of refuge [Numbers 35:9-31; Joshua 20:1-9; and Deuteronomy 19:1-13] makes the prevention of harmdoing, the prevention of injustice, a requirement, a heavy obligation upon those who live as regular inhabitants of those cities. They must both refuse to do harm themselves and act to prevent others from doing harm, as if they were all being commanded to be the Good Samaritan of Luke 10:30-37, and as if this was what Jesus meant when he said, immediately before the Good Samaritan passage, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."
Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood be Shed, 1979, 110. [more to follow]

Footwashing

Today's devotional prayer at Sacred Space reflects on our freedom to serve each other:

Freedom--God is not foreign to my freedom.
Instead the Spirit breathes life into my most intimate desires,
gently nudging me towards all that is good.
I ask for the grace to let myself be enfolded by the Spirit.

Today's verse, to read slowly and meditate upon:
John 13:16-17

After Jesus had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, "Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord--and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.

Some thoughts on today's scripture:

Lord, you are teaching me here: it is not what you say that stays with me, so much as the sight of you doing a slave's job and loving it. As you kneel at our feet, you put all hierarchies into perspective. This is the ultimate ecumenism, the unity of those who serve with love. In that unity we are guided, not by rules or rituals, but by the needs of others.

Klein vs Ivins on US Torture

Naomi Klein [8 December 2005] has noticed that liberals, like Molly Ivins [13 November 2005], were echoing Senator McCain's talking point--that 'never before' has the United States government been involved in torture:

The principal propagator of this narrative (what Garry Wills termed "original sinlessness") is Senator John McCain. Writing recently in Newsweek on the need for a ban on torture, McCain says that when he was a prisoner of war in Hanoi, he held fast to the knowledge "that we were different from our enemies...that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or approving such mistreatment of them." It is a stunning historical distortion. By the time McCain was taken captive, the CIA had already launched the Phoenix program and, as [Alfred] McCoy writes [in A Question of Torture], "its agents were operating forty interrogation centers in South Vietnam that killed more than twenty thousand suspects and tortured thousands more," a claim he backs up with pages of quotes from press reports as well as Congressional and Senate probes.

Torture has been part of American foreign policy for at least five decades. Please read Ms. Klein's article for more details.

What's new is the openess with which torture is discussed and defended by the Bush administration. My prediction: as long as the United States pursues empire, the United States will continue to use torture--not because torture has any effectiveness as an interrogation technique, but because of its effectiveness as a terror technique. Only when the United States has an explicitly anti-imperialist foreign policy, will American support for torture stop.

The enslaving nature of sin is apparent in the powers of evil, which work through both individuals and groups and in the entire created order. These powers, principalities, and elemental spirits of the universe often hold people captive and work through political, economic, social, and even religious systems to turn people away from justice and righteousness. But thanks be to God, who has not allowed the powers to reign supreme over creation or left humanity without hope.
--from Article 7, Sin
Confesion of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective, 1995.

On Generation X

Although I was born at the end of the baby boom, I've always identified more with 'Generation X'--the children of television, divorce, and downward mobility.

Here are some notes from an old notebook. Alas, I did not record the source of these observations...

I don't buy things--especially if they're advertised.--Scott Lamorte

'It's the self-consciously minimalist lifestyle of the Lamorte brand of Xers, combined with the involuntary poverty of the rest, that has Madison Avenue biting its nails.

After tenderly ministering to every whim of the boomers' evolving buying frenzy--usually to the exclusion of everyone else--the marketing types are beginning to realize that their next target may not be such an easy sell. How do you appeal to a generation that sees the boomers' conspicuous consumption as one of the main roots of its own plight?'

Conformity to Christ necessarily implies nonconformity to the world. True faith in Christ means willingness to do the will of God, rather than willful pursuit of individual happiness. True faith means seeking first the reign of God in simplicity, rather than pursuing materialism. True faith means acting in peace and justice, rather than with violence or military means.
--From Article 17, Discipleship and the Christian Life
Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective, 1995

A Comparison

Found at the beginning of SisterChicks Down Under! by Robin Jones Gunn:

Mostly what God does is love you.
Keep company with him and learn a life of love.
Observe how Christ loved us.
His love was not cautious but extravagant.
He didn't love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us.
Love like that.
--Ephesians 5:2--The Message

I thought I'd compare this translation with a paraphrase from down under:

Children learn by imitating the parents they love. Take a tip from them and model yourself on what you've seen of God in Christ. Or in other words, live a life of love--love that doesn't stop at anything. Christ's love for us cost him everything, and there is no more pleasing gift anyone can give to God than a love that is willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of others.
--approximately Ephesians 5:2--Nathan Nettleton www.laughingbird.net

The idea that anyone has anything to give God is theologically incorrect...

Concepts

Evolution-Completion Idea
by Donald Burgy
December 1973

[a Ghost Town Orange reproduction of a work found in "Donald Burgy: Participating in the Universe,"
by Robert Joseph Horvitz in Artforum September 1974]

Click image for a larger view for readability; the swirly, crinkly background texture is my 'artsy' addition and not part of the original work, which was deliberately left unornamented so the viewer would not be distracted by the 'artifact' itself.

Here is Robert Horwitz's perception of Evolution-Completion Idea:

Many of Burgy's works are meant to be completed by the viewer in a more literal sense. Evolution-Completion Idea (December, 1973), for instance, is a quiz-like series of historical progressions whose next stages are left blank for each viewer to complete. As the last terms given are those of the present, one must extrapolate stages that have not yet occureed. By dividing the progressions into intervals of seemingly equal magnitude, Burgy makes the unnamed future seem only a step away, even though tremendous breakthroughs and centuries of "real time" may be required in taking that step; peculiarly enough, one almost feels that in formulating responses to this questionnaire one has added to the teleological pressure that will eventually create these epochal transformations.

Dear reader, spend some time thinking about how you would fill in the blanks.

The author of the article, Robert Horvitz, is also an artist. I am sure I have seen some of his art in the past because my ballpoint pen doodlings share some of the same fascinations with pattern and symmetry. According to a five-minute long interview available at Radio Prague [about this exhibit], he has been using the same drawing technique for over 30 years, using one type of pen stroke for all his work. He describes the motion as a 'flick' of the pen which leaves a comet-like mark on the paper. He repeats the same mark 1000s of times to produce his drawings, most of which take 3 to 5 days to complete.

At another website, you can find excerpts from the catalog for the exhibit 'Revelations': Drawings by Robert Horvitz, 1970-1999. I am intrigued by the vocabulary Mr. Horvitz has developed to describe the forms he draws:

I had also begun making drawings based on grids drawn in pencil. (Grids have more ambiguous time-orders than spirals.)... Very quickly I saw that grids could be replaced by more general structures - arrays of cells, polygon tilings and froths...Geometry not only could be but, according to modern science, MUST be elastic, topological, based on similarities rather than equalities. This opened my mind to more dynamic forms: flows, decays, rips, shards, close-packings, eruptions, etc. These were more richly allegorical than the Euclidean motifs I had been using...

Arrays and tilings were terms I have used when thinking about my doodles, but froths, flows, decays, rips, shards, packings, eruptions...! My doodling will be even more inventive with this new vocabulary to work with. Here are a couple of my favorites, although this is not a representative sampling of Mr. Horvitz's work. I wish I had higher resolution images of these to look at!


Personal Domain of Freedom and Ecstasy 6
by Robert Horwitz
1975



Personal Domain of Freedom and Ecstasy 2
by Robert Horwitz
1973

Docetism is the ancient heresy that Christ did not in fact have a real body at all but only seemed to have one. This thinking remains alive and well today in the hearts and minds of many who say he was human as well as divine but in fact do not believe and cannot even imagine that he had a full-fledged human body. They cannot do so because we tend to think of the body and its functions as only a hindrance to our spiritual calling, with no positive role in our redemption or in our participation in the government of God.
--Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives, 1988

Technical Difficulties

Technical difficulties over the weekend have delayed the 'Statue of Liberty on US Postage Stamps' post...

Also, I suddenly had a desire to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe on the big screen; a movie where Santa Claus cheerfully passes out gifts of weapons to the young heroes, with the admonition that they are 'tools, not toys.' Odd that spiritual warfare is reduced to physical battle where the good guys never really die.

The redemptive death of the lion Aslan and his magical resurrection seems to reduce Jesus' death on the cross and resurrection to a magic trick. Why did Aslan's mane grow back? Shouldn't he bear the scars of the horrible death he just suffered?

I enjoyed reading the book as a child; re-reading it with one of my sons left me feeling frustrated at the shallowness of the story. Where is the church--the community of faith--in Aslan's army? Why are four flawed children shown as the only representatives of humanity in Narnia?

Forgive us, Lord God, if we have placed fun before fulfillment;
if we have sought pleasure before purpose;
if we have sought to leave a legacy that does not include love;
if we have viewed all of life as a competition;
if we have placed ourselves before others.
Pardon us, we pray, and help us to set straight our priorities.

Hitmap changed location

...and doesn't recognize Ghost Town Orange, so the Hitmap has been removed from the template.

Fortunately, Sitemeter can show a map of the most recent visitors too.
The map is a fairly good representation of the English-speaking Web--prosperous parts of the world, with more access to the Internet.

Looking more closely at Sitemeter, I discovered that the post on the Statue of Liberty on Postage Stamps attracted visitors from Taiwan, the Netherlands, and Iran. It also was viewed by students in public schools in Illinois and Michigan, and by someone at usmc.mil! [Semper Fi!]

[A digression in honor of our Marine visitor: from what I've read [I hope it's not just propaganda] the Marines have done a much better job than the Army with winning hearts and minds in Iraq. I could be wrong, but have any Marines been implicated in torturing prisoners or shooting unarmed wounded enemies? This pacifist Christian thanks Marines [and all decent, human-rights observing American soldiers] for your service to our country--I condemn the misguided and evil civilian and military leaders [i.e. politicians and 'brass' at the Pentagon] who continue to put you in harm's way for no discernable purpose.]

In honor of this interest in the Statue of Liberty, Ghost Town Orange is preparing another big post about the Statue of Liberty on US postage stamps. I hope to post it on January 8 to commemorate the new rate change Statue of Liberty stamps.

A good thing about collecting the Statue of Liberty on US postage stamps is that most of these stamps are common, easy to find, and cheap. Everyone with an interest can have a 'complete collection' of them. The only exceptions are unused examples of the early 15 cent stamps. Ordinary letter postage was 2 cents--a 15 cent stamp would be the equivalent of a stamp costing $2.75 to $2.95 today. So not as many were used on mail; not as many were saved in unused condition. I'll have more to say about that Sunday afternoon.

In all our cares about worldly treasures, let us steadily bear in mind that riches possessed by children who do not truly serve God are likely to prove snares that more grieviously entangle them in that spirit of selfishness and exaltation which stands in opposition to real peace and happiness, and renders those who submit to the influence of it enemies to the cross of Christ.
--from the Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends, held at Philadelphia in September 1759, quoted in John Woolman's journal.

Twelfth Night

Tonight [or in some traditions, tomorrow night] is the 'Twelfth Night' of Christmas. In Shakespeare's day,

this holiday was celebrated as a festival in which everything was turned upside down--much like the upside-down, chaotic world of Illyria in the play.

More from Wikipedia on Twelfth Night:

In Tudor England, the Twelfth Night marked the end of a winter festival that started on All Hallows Eve--which some now celebrate as Halloween. A King or Lord of Misrule would be appointed to run the Christmas festivities, and the Twelfth Night was the end of his period of rule. The common theme was that the normal order of things was reversed. This Lord of Misrule tradition can be traced back to pre-Christian European festivals such as the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia.

Celebrate Twelfth Night by downloading a copy of the Shakespeare's play from Project Gutenberg--4 English versions available:

• First Folio [public domain, with old-style spelling]
• Collins edition [public domain]
• Hudson edition [public domain]
• World Library edition [copyrighted]

and 1 German:

• translation by Christoph Martin Wieland [public domain]

Tobacco, banjo playing, and dominoes do not figure in the Decalogue as recorded in the Book of Exodus. But particularly in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America, Christians have been adept, and remarkably inventive, at interpreting God's commandments to cover just about anything they don't approve of. The effect, of course, is to make the surpassingly large God of the scriptures into a petty Cosmic Patrolman. Addictions are not pretty, but for Christians, fretting over them as exclusively moral issues can be a convenient way of ignoring Jesus' admonition that it isn't what we ingest into our bodies that is at the root of our troubles, but what comes out of our hearts and minds.

--Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace, 1998

Perihelion

At this time of the year, earth is at perihelion. Follow the link to find out what that means

HINT: it is not the reason for earth's seasons.

O God! who giv'st the winter's cold,
As well as summer's joyous rays,
Us warmly in Thy love enfold,
And keep us through life's wintry days.

--Samuel Longfellow
[the Unitarian minister, not his brother Henry Wadsworth Longfellow the poet],
"'Tis Winter Now" from Hymns of the Spirit, 1864.

Resolution

Japanese New Year's Stamps for 2006
50 yen Akita dog postage stamp designed by Hoshiyama Ayaka
80 yen Sadowara clay doll 'dog' postage stamp designed by Kaifuchi Junko
I hereby resolve to update my blog frequently spend more time with my stamp collection in 2006.

A year ago, I purchased a nice lot of postally used stamps from Japan but I have not created an album for them yet. I print out pages from the CD-ROM disc I obtained from Stamp Albums Web. I'll be able to identify most of the stamps with the help of a used 1992 Scott catalog I recently found at a thrift store and the New Issues of Japan website for stamps after 1997. That may leave a big chunk of the 1990s a mystery unless I buy a more recent catalog.

Things to do at Ghost Town Orange:

• Summer vacation series needs to be continued for another 2 1/2 weeks worth of entries.
  
• Template needs to be tinkered with--why link to the NYT editorial writers who are behind the subscription wall?
  
• The archive needs to be tested for dead links, missing pictures, etc.
  

The soul in this body has two principal impediments.

First, it is drawn into many activities and much agitation, and its different activities weaken and obstruct each other, for it is very hard to apply the mind to different things at the same time.

Secondly, the soul is engaged in inferior activites much earlier, more attentively, and more often than in higher ones, not only because of the condition of its abysmal dwelling but also because of the corporeal service assigned to men for a time by God. . .

But whenever the actions of eating, accumulating, feeling, or imagining either entirely cease or are greatly reduced, then the vision of the mind will be correspondingly sharpened, so that whatever is observed by the mind is observed more clearly under the power of this light.

--Marsilio Ficino [1433-1499], from Meditations on the Soul: Selected Letters of Marsilio Ficino, translated by members of the Language Department of the School of Economic Science, London.

Vacation Day 6

What We Did on Our Summer Vacation--A Ghost Town Orange Mini-series. [Click on photos for a larger view; e-mail me to request higher-resolution versions for printing...]

Saturday June 4, 2005: a travel day.
During the first part of the drive we were passed by a large number [it may have been more than 30] of BMW sports cars. Many of them bore Texas plates; they were eager to drive fast on curvy mountain roads.

Church signs:

• "Kind words make good echoes."
• Don't wait for the hearse to take you to church."
• Forbidden fruit creates many jams.
• God is like scotch tape:
  you can't see him, but you know he's there.

We had hoped to camp at Blanchard Springs Caverns Campground [US Forest Service] but it was completely full. So we drove a few more miles to another Forest Service Campground, Gunner Pool. This campground was originally a Civilian Conservation Corps camp, Camp Hedges. Company 743 was active from 1933-1942. At any one time, about 170 enrollees and 10 'overhead' employees lived at this camp. Over its period of operation, about 2200 men served at the camp. [Source: placque at the campground.]

• A list of CCC companies in Arkansas. [cccalumni.org]
• Arkansas State Parks: The Legacy of the CCC

Gunner Pool campground is near Sylamore Creek. Today's photos:

At Gunner Pool Campground, Arkansas
June 4, 2005 

Water source at Gunner Pool Campground, Arkansas
June 4, 2005 

Tadpole, Gunner Pool Campground, Arkansas

June 4, 2005 
Tune in tomorrow for Day 7: Rocks, church, and an unspoiled cave.

"Hear, O my people, and I will speak,
O Israel, and I will testify against you:
I am God, your God.
I do not rebuke you for your sacrifices
or your burnt offerings, which are ever before me.
I have no need of a bull from your stall
or of goats from your pens,
for every animal of the forest is mine,
and the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know every bird in the mountains,
and the creatures of the field are mine.
If I were hungry I would not tell you,
for the world is mine, and all that is in it.
Do I eat the flesh of bulls
or drink the blood of goats?
Sacrifice thank offerings to God,
fulfill your voews to the Most High,
and call upon me in the day of trouble;
I will deliver you, and you will honor me."
--Psalm 50:7-15

Vacation Day 5

What We Did on Our Summer Vacation--A Ghost Town Orange Mini-series. [Click on photos for a larger view; e-mail me to request higher-resolution versions for printing...]

Friday June 3, 2005: Lake Ouachita and Hot Springs

A lazy morning -- the boys swam and got sunburn, and I painted this:
"Traffic Planning," June 3, 2005
Joe took these photos in the afternoon:
Woodpecker holes in the trunk of a tree
Lake Ouachita State Park, Arkansas
June 3, 2005

Here are pictures 2 and 4 from a panoramic set of 5:
Notice the charcoal -- scattered by racoons looking for food.
Late in the afternoon we went to town [Hot Springs] for some grocery shopping -- we planned to have a campfire, cook hobo dinners and roast marshmallows. Signs lured us to a rock shop that did not have the museum promised -- and then grouchily told us to not 'cherry pick' the by-the-pound tumbling mix. [Grumble, grumble -- there's not even a pound there and I am accused of cherry picking? Fine, I won't buy anything from this dump. Another lousy business not plugged by Ghost Town Orange.]

Tim had the camera when we went to the place where people go to fill up containers with the famous Hot Springs water. I wanted him to take of picture of people driving up with dozens of milk jugs, etc. to fill with the 'medicinal water,' but this is what he took a picture of:
Fountain in Hot Springs, Arkansas
June 3, 2005
We did have hobo dinners [meat, potatoes, and carrots wrapped in foil and cooked in the coals of a campfire] but Joe didn't like them. And then Tim didn't want to help clean up and was angry that we didn't eat marshmallows before dinner. OK, no co-operation, no marshmallows...

Tune in tomorrow for Day 6.

"What can I do with you, Ephraim?
What can I do with you, Judah?
Your love is like the morning mist,
like the early dew that disappears.
Therefore I cut you in pieces with my prophets,
I killed you with the words of my mouth;
my judgments flashed like lightning upon you.
For I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.
--Hosea 6:4-6 [NIV]

Vacation Day 4

What We Did on Our Summer Vacation--A Ghost Town Orange Mini-series. [Click on photos for a larger view; e-mail me to request higher-resolution versions for printing...]

Thursday June 2, 2005: Hot Springs, Arkansas

Drizzly morning:
Displaying my watercolor 'Cooking oatmeal in the rain'
Lake Ouachita State Park, Arkansas
June 2, 2005
We went into town to accomplish two things: find a laundry and find out more about the Hot Springs Music Festival -- tickets, addresses of venues, etc. So while the washing machines were running, Tim and I drove around town to find out where the day's rehearsals and concerts were being held. The most unique thing about the Hot Springs Music Festival is the informal atmosphere -- rehearsals are open to the public. So we finally located the Hot Springs Youth Center which is where the Festival Orchestra rehearsed and would hold the concert, got back to the laundromat to finish folding the clothes, and returned to camp for lunch.
Then to the rehearsal:
Hot Springs Music Festival Chamber Orchestra at rehearsal
Hot Springs Youth Center
June 2, 2005, 3:42 pm
We then went to dinner at a fancy hotel restaurant that served the blandest watery carrots I have ever eaten and other food I can't even remember. I will not identify the restaurant here; they must have been short-staffed that evening -- we were not having very good luck picking restaurants. Then we returned to the Hot Springs Youth Center to purchase tickets as soon as the box office was open, and also to be in time to listen to the pre-concert talk by conductor/artistic director Richard Rosenberg. [Meanwhile, the boys worried about a little bird -- see below] The spectators at the center back of this blurry photo in the yellow and blue shirts are Tim and Joe:

Hot Springs Music Festival Chamber Orchestra at concert intermission
Hot Springs Youth Center
June 2, 2005 9:17 pm

The Program:

• 'Concerto for two trumpets' by Antonio Vivaldi
  [Joe's favorite]
  
• 'L'Apprenti Sorcier' by Paul Dukas
  [Mickey Mouse vs. the brooms; Tim's favorite]
  
<>'Moses, cantata for bass and orchestra' by Nicola Scardicchio
[first American performance; uses Hebrew and Islamic scriptures for the text]
-------------Intermission-------------

• 'Yamekraw: A Negro Rhapsody' by James Price Johnson
  [This piece was orchestrated by William Grant Still; my favorite]
  
• 'An American in Paris' by George Gershwin
  [Joyce's favorite]
  

Outside the concert, this little bird had fallen out of its nest:

Young bird, Hot Springs, Arkansas,
June 2, 2005
Tune in tomorrow for Day 5.

The tempter came to him [Jesus] and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread."

Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.' "
--Matthew 4:3-4.
[NIV; Jesus quoted part of Deuteronomy 8:3.]

Early American Blogging, sort of

Food for thought about blogging:
Blogging in the Early Republic: Why bloggers belong in the history of reading by W. Caleb McDaniel [at common-place.org]

Henry Clarke Wright was an antebellum American reformer whose eclectic interests ranged from antislavery to radical pacifism to health reform and beyond. Born in 1797 and educated as a minister, he later abandoned institutional religion and became a prolific writer and speaker.

[snip]

As a writer with grand aspirations for shaking the world, Wright was also an inveterate journal keeper. For most of his adult life, he filled a steady stream of over one hundred diaries. In these, comments on world events and social reform jostle with reflections on the diarist’s loveless marriage and his struggle for faith. While private, the journals were also public. Wright mailed pages and even whole volumes to his friends or read them excerpts from the diaries, and many pages were later published in his numerous books. Thus, as his biographer Lewis Perry notes, in the case of Wright, "distinctions between private and public, between diaries and published writings, meant little."

Blogs are not merely a new form of political pamphleteering -- the impression you may get from some of the mainstream media coverage, since the most visible blogs are political. Blogs are too diverse to try to confine into that box -- but I'm not sure what the purpose they serve. For me, this blog is just a way to remember and possibly share some 'stuff' with like-minded folks.

God our security,
who alone can defend us
against the principalities and powers
that rule this present age;
may we trust in no weapons
except the whole armor of faith,
that in dying we may live,
and, having nothing, we may own the world,
through Jesus Christ. AMEN
--Janet Morley, All desires known, 1988

On Situational Libertarianism

As a long-time left-libertarian, I am amazed at how many right-wing libertarians are really statists at heart. For example, read Charles Krauthammer's recent article Situational libertarianism [at Townhall.com]

Call it situational libertarianism: Liberties should be as unlimited as possible -- unless and until there arises a real threat to the open society.

[Who determines the reality of the threat? The government, of course.]

Mr. Krauthammer goes on to praise British Prime Minister Tony Blair:

Britain is just now waking up, post-7/7. Well, at least its prime minister is. His dramatic announcement that Britain will curtail its pathological openness to those who would destroy it -- by outlawing the fostering of hatred and incitement of violence and expelling those engaged in such offenses -- was not universally welcomed.

His own wife had made a speech a week after the second London bombings loftily warning against restricting civil liberties. "It is all too easy to respond in a way that undermines commitment to our most deeply held values and convictions and cheapens our right to call ourselves a civilized nation,'' declared Cherie Blair. You need only read Tony Blair's 12-point program to appreciate how absurd was his wife's defense of Britain's pre-7/7 civil liberties status quo.

To which Lew Rockwell and/or Kurt Kober respond: [at LewRockwell.com Blog]

Hey Chuck, how about if I call it situational fascism?

Point 11 of Mr. Blair's plan:

Eleven, we will consult on a new power to order closure of a place of worship which is used as a centre for fomenting extremism, and will consult with Muslim leaders in respect of those clerics who are not British citizens to draw up a list of those not suitable to preach and who will be excluded from our country in future.

How would Christians feel if the American government gave itself a new power to close churches that foment extremism? How would we feel if churches were forced by the Federal Government to consult a list of those not suitable to preach before calling a pastor?

Situational freedom is not freedom at all.

But American right-wingers can rest easy. The Fred Phelps-style 'God-hates-fags' churches are safe; the historic peace churches and mainline churches that oppose 'wars of choice' are more likely targets of government bans. After all, those that criticize the 'war on terror' support terrorists, don't they?

God our security,
who alone can defend us
against the principalities and powers
that rule this present age;
may we trust in no weapons
except the whole armor of faith,
that in dying we may live,
and, having nothing, we may own the world,
through Jesus Christ. AMEN
--Janet Morley, All desires known, 1988

A Promise

What We Did on Summer Vacation--A Ghost Town Orange Mini-series will start soon.

Forgiving God,
you do not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.

For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so great is your steadfast love toward those who fear you;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far you remove our transgressions from us.

--from Psalm 103

Ideologies of Power

Ever alert to the intersection of religion and politics, Ghost Town Orange noticed the Pope's installation homily (Sunday, April 24):

The symbol of the lamb also has a deeper meaning. In the Ancient Near East, it was customary for kings to style themselves shepherds of their people. This was an image of their power, a cynical image: to them their subjects were like sheep, which the shepherd could dispose of as he wished. When the shepherd of all humanity, the living God, himself became a lamb, he stood on the side of the lambs, with those who are downtrodden and killed. This is how he reveals himself to be the true shepherd: "I am the Good Shepherd . . . I lay down my life for the sheep", Jesus says of himself (Jn 10:14f). It is not power, but love that redeems us! This is God's sign: he himself is love. How often we wish that God would make show himself stronger, that he would strike decisively, defeating evil and creating a better world. All ideologies of power justify themselves in exactly this way, they justify the destruction of whatever would stand in the way of progress and the liberation of humanity. We suffer on account of God's patience. And yet, we need his patience. God, who became a lamb, tells us that the world is saved by the Crucified One, not by those who crucified him. The world is redeemed by the patience of God. It is destroyed by the impatience of man.

Additional resource: The (unofficial) Pope Blog.

God our security,
who alone can defend us
against the principalities and powers
that rule this present age;
may we trust in no weapons
except the whole armor of faith,
that in dying we may live,
and, having nothing, we may own the world,
through Jesus Christ. AMEN
--Janet Morley, All desires known, 1988

Pope Benedict XVI

Johann Christoph Arnold of the Bruderhof knows the new pope, and has met with him several times.

On another encounter I was told that he was not well and would have only a few minutes for me; that he was tired and might seem inattentive due to his physical condition. We had come to Rome with a delegation from the United States and Germany to talk about the role of the Catholic Church in the persecution of Anabaptists four hundred years earlier. Much of this persecution had occurred right in the area of Munich, where Ratzinger comes from, and our delegation included people whose forefathers had been burned at the stake.

At first he did seem tired, but as our conversation progressed, he became more and more attentive, and I will never forget how by the end of the meeting, he had tears in his eyes, and how he encouraged us with words of love and reconciliation: "When hatred can be overcome and forgiveness be given, that is the work of the Holy Spirit. Then we know that we are in Christ."

It is just this message that the world needs today. With the many challenges that face him now--from poverty and AIDS in the developing world to sex scandals in the United States and the decline of faith in Europe and America, the church needs a man like Ratzinger. Clearly he is not popular in some circles: many prayed and hoped for someone more lenient, someone who would give in to their wishes and complaints. But in selecting Ratzinger the cardinals made a brave and bold choice, because the answers to the challenges and crises of our present age will not be found in compromise, but in returning to the simple and age-old truths of Jesus.

God our security,
who alone can defend us
against the principalities and powers
that rule this present age;
may we trust in no weapons
except the whole armor of faith,
that in dying we may live,
and, having nothing, we may own the world,
through Jesus Christ. AMEN
--Janet Morley, All desires known, 1988