Jason Birchfield did an internship with Veritas last summer. He done went and got that dang Kingdom virus we been talking about cause he ain't stopped since. For a night in the life of a Veritasian Kingdom emissary check out his latest post. It does my heart warm.

Have I longed for the illusion for so long that I don't even know how much I've been formed by it? I am seeing now that as a child, I longed for something that would never be. Now as a child in this makeshift adult constume I look back and wonder what was real. There were things in my family that were rotten. And there were few times when it was good....really good. I know those times were few in comparison but my immature mind and ill-forming identity encapsulated those life snapshots into a falsely positive light because I longed for them in the darkness, interpreting them into it. And that is all that I focus on now, (i.e., the "good times") and it clouds those past bleaker realities of hoping/wishing/pretending for something that I could never have and was never going to happen.

I feel pitifully disjointed because of this. I have daily reminders.....the gnawing emptiness as the illusion erodes away........a growing awareness of personal limitations, pride and selfishness in my own present family.........a mother whose whereabouts I do not know..........too little contact with my known immediate family members....my own recalcitrance and "past-be-damned" attitude. I am a product of my past, like it or not. Therefore, I can never be ignorant of the divine pregnancy of the fleeting present.

I used to wonder in more halcyon, infantile days of what kind of life I would have. Now that I have nowhere near the life that I could never have hoped to imagine, I wonder what kind of life I really had. Who am I in between?

I am convinced that by the time we are 18, we are almost as completely scarred and wounded as we could ever hope to be. And this from our families of origin (even if such a concept is a contrivance or a theorem). Continuing into adulthood with these wounds does not multiply them but only convolutes them, with our sin of choice heaping in over and under to assuage the pain. Strange how in so many ways- despite being surrounded by so many who love me- I still feel like the vagabond, searching for the family that was never mine. Just a passing fragrance wafting out of the way to what might have been.

Collegiate Christian Consumerism

Part 3

BIG EVENTISM

We're still propelled by the big event. The massive buildup to a main-themed, on campus penetration into the larger campus community comes in the form of various outreaches, public films, forums, concerts, etc. On-campus "big-eventism" is the evangelical currency of choice, mainly because that is what is still esteemed by the campus ministry fathers who came before these young adults. I do not contend that the big event does not produce fruit at all......it does. Yet, as far as relational investment and consistency, it is the cheapest fare. Come up with a week and an emphasis and you have it. With the big event, you get to do what is most immediately and visibly gratifying, where evangelistic action is concerned. Dangle the carrot, gather the masses, proclaim the message and hopefully gather the harvest.

Herein is the problem with our approach to evangelism.....we major on proclamation and harvesting but neglect cultivation. Our idea of cultivation is to invite pre-Christians to a few events and then drop the Jesus bomb on them. Cultivating is the dirty, unglamorous, ugly red-headed step-child of evangelism. There is much relational investment with pre-Christians that MUST be devoid of a "what-can-I-or-my-church/campus-ministry-get-out-of-it?" mentality. Granted, this mentality is not as spoken as it is behaviorally implied. We still value a "come-see" approach and pagans are not coming to the big shows, no matter how many ultra-cool, rocking and glitzy post-modern sci-fi films after which we can name our campus ministry. They still wonder if we Christians actually care enough about them to not pander our shtick to them. So they hurl their complaints and we say they aren't ready for Jesus yet. Maybe we're just giving Jesus-by-products. Why can't we stage a production that never ends that is neither staged nor produced....one that blossoms behind-the-scenes and one that won't "get at" people? What about something with no stars and no big names who neither know us nor stay around long enough to want to? What about something truly mundane, simple and reeking of "common?" Where are our homegrown theologians, missionaries and our next generations' great thinkers? I'll tell you where they are.....they're not even Christ followers yet.

MISHUNS, MITIONS, MISSHINS, MISSIONS

Mission is still seen as "out there" in Meh-hee-koh or Botswana or Uzbekistan or Panama City. I know they need Jesus too. I know they need sewers dug and church houses built.

I know too that in the last 50 years of the 20th century, evangelicals in USA failed to gain even 2% of the American population. In other words, we're not even reaching our children. Only India and China have more lost people. In fact, China now boasts more Christian believers than the USA. I know that my lost young adult friends are living together with their boyfriends and girlfriends, go to the bars and Steak and Shake for ultimate meaning and purpose with their like-minded network of friends. They ask the tough questions, enjoy being lost and flaunt it at times. They are brutally honest and tell you what they think. They are not even as presumptuous as many Christians I know. And they will listen to us if we go to them. Not just once, mind you. But to stay, listen and love.

You don't have to go overseas to find this. This is in our own backyard. In Oxford, Ohio......the stepping stone and preparatory place for the leaders of the world's tomorrows. So why one week mission trips? Why the resource hungry buildup to honor these monoliths when the need here is so great? What about 52-week missional living in the garden where we are planted, whether 1,2,3,4 or 10 years? Why is mission "out there," miles away from our here-ness? I suspect one-week mission-mindedness is attractive because we can return to the obscurity of whatever it was we were doing before. And it's sexier to have the exotic one-week mission for a conversation piece. And there are no long term investments to bind. Besides, if you're always on your way to something better, somewhere else, then you can't ever have too much asked of you. There are also the promises of an enticing tourist attraction in the "foreign" mission, as if the calling to go and serve selflessly weren't enough. Why the "fun" hook to missions? Why weren't we taught that joy in serving was enough? Perhaps we just don't know what to do with a wandering people we see, know and shun on a weekly basis. Maybe our familiarity has bred a barrier of contempt amongst our own people in our own community.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't have fun. We should. I'm not implying that all who participate in the typical- (if there are such)- campus ministry one-week mission trips are thusly shallow-minded and have hidden agendas. I'm not saying they should be abandoned. I am saying the philosophical approach to mission is skewed long before we hit the road or the plane. And I am saying that we need to seriously revisit Kingdom-living on our campuses with a second naivete, if that's even possible. And do we really have time for that?

I don't know if I want to even see a "movement" (whatever that means). It seems on the front end if you start out with that in mind you end up running it and expending too much energy to maintain something altogether different. I don't think we need anything to "emerge" either. For that which God has intended (the establishment of his Kingdom), the resources are already at our disposal. Isn't it really the Gospel plus NOTHING- no gimmicks, no catches, no agendas? But when you only have some people maybe for four years at the most, you are hard-pressed to come up with something unique and memorable.

So with that, do we teeter, tending toward being anti-thetical to a grounded, Kingdom-minded community? And what does that really look like- devoid of the agendized, hypo-relational machine wherein the cogs are immovable and fixed?Where are the young adults who will claim their present and former campuses as their own parishes, effectively loving them into the Kingdom of God and pastoring and persisting with them for the duration? Where is our burden to live amongst a wayward and transient people as a prophetic roadblock to the slave syndrome under which our nowherely mobile peers live?

Collegiate Christian Consumerism

Part 2


The university system treats the student like hybrid adults on a mule team driven by a force unseen, much larger and imposing its will from the outside. That's why I love these young adults. I am called to them. You see, I abide in the glamorous transportation industry as a mass transit professional (read, bus driver) to these 16,000 Miami University students. I deliberately chose this job so that I could be around them in a unique way. I see them throw up their alcohol on my bus, after a night of having paid homage to Budweiser, the patron god of Oxford/Miami. I hear their conversations about their one-night stands. They race me half-naked on the street, ON FOOT. I have them arrested when they pass out on my bus for 2 ½ rounds and they won’t respond to me. I watch as their BMW’s and Hummers cut me off at the corner when I have the right of way and I get the finger. I watch the sorority girls’ dads try to pick up their girlfriends in local bars on parent’s weekend. I shudder at the skimpiness of the girls’ clothing choices in 50 degree weather when there have been over a dozen reported sexual assaults so far this year. I see and hear them cry alone in their cars, hunkered down in their seats in the back of the bus, hoping I don’t see. But I do. I see them fall on the ice and bust their tails. I see them rain-soaked to the bone waiting for my 36,000 pound behemoth of warmth. They love me then but hate me when I am pulling away from a stop hoping for a space in front of them.

I revel in the incredible politeness of their “thank-you’s” and “have a good day's.” They are bright, eager, motivated, energetic and just trying to find their place in the grand scheme of things. Their identities are relatively unformed, their experiences limited and their potential unleavened. They are who they are and that’s why I love them.
But as I look in their eyes, there is a vacuous hollow there. It seems to me that few of them are really “here.” In other words, they are on the way to something else, somewhere else. I wonder how many are towing the line of gaining the collegiate experience and the sheepskin it’s wrapped in and then off to the next experience. These moments in their lives seem like so many stones in a creek as they skip across them just to get to the other side, avoiding the stream of life altogether. We are told to acquire, amass, to “get” and we don’t know how to just “be” because no one is in any one place for very long. They are on their way to the next big stage. This by-product is betrayed by how we talk about this life stage.

“Just wait till you get in the ‘real world,’” we joke. What is it about this world at any point for these young adults that IS NOT real?

Unfortunately, this philosophy is reinforced by some churches and campus ministries. As a whole, we aren’t making disciples who are qualitatively and scandalously (Rom. 9:33; Gal. 5:11; 1 Pet. 2:8) counter-cultural enough, communally-connected enough and peculiarly-approachable enough. We’re just too peculiar to approach for all the wrong reasons (from a lost person’s perspective). We’ve become bottom-line feeding, marketing savvy Gospel-pushers on the ready to close the deal. We are sensation-seeking connoisseurs in the collegiate religious experience economy. Relationally, we are spread too thin, vagabonds floating from faith community to faith community in the name of seeing what’s right “for me” while masking a relational insecurity and a self-imposed, tenuous Kingdom-mindedness that ultimately benefits no one.

Some of us have become junkies on the campus ministry circuit without a tribe to truly call our own. Some would hail our tendency toward multiple communities as a truly postmodern goodness, allowing one to partake in all the best the people of God have to offer and even in the name of Christian unity. I think it’s heresy. Churches (“mine” included) are partly to blame because of implicit jealousy at the overt numerical success of some campus ministries. Campus ministries are partly to blame because they essentially function as churches but they're more inclined to deny it. Nevertheless, campus ministries/parachurch organizations have obviously stepped in to fill the void that the mainline church has ignored. But I feel we’re still amiss.

Okay…..over the next few days, and being that I live amongst and share life and home with collegiate young adults, I shall offer a treatise on the weaknesses of campus Christianity as it relates to community building and missional penetration into the lives of pagans. If I had publishing prowess and the wherewithal, this would be a pamphlet. I’ve always wanted my progeny to say of me that I wrote several important pamphlets.

Anyway, what I have to say is much so it is broken down for your digestion should you swaller.

Collegiate Christian Consumerism

Part 1

I was once a college student. I remember campus ministry at East Tennessee State University. I remember being invited and going to an event and not really connecting to the scene as a first timer. Maybe it was one of my more anti-social nights.

After almost four years in and amongst the Christian scene at Miami University here in Oxford, I faintly detect the same taste in my mouth.

I have had these sentiments for some time now and in some form or another. They have never been haughty and intent on battering or attacking specific campus ministries or the people in them. I just have questions fueled by a perspective that could be totally off base. They are questions nonetheless.

What I want to say could be taken offensively by those involved in various campus ministries (granted, 99.99999999999998 % of these won’t read this post). This is not my intent. There are those in my faith community who participate in them and whom I love and respect very deeply and I would never seek to hurt them. I am not blindly railing against campus ministries per se. Many effectively carry out good works and I applaud that. I am not saying those within them are bad or misled or less of a person. In general, there is an unstated or accidental philosophical approach undergirding many of the campus ministries I’ve seen that run counterproductive to what they purport to be about.

In qualifying that last statement, I should say I am not intimately aware of all the inner workings of every individual within every campus ministry that falls under one vision or another. Some of my questions stem from what I see on the large scale of things, or rather, on events carried out publicly in the name of one campus ministry or another. I also see the disconnect in the masses. Perhaps my musings err in trying to understand and ultimately siding with these on the peripheral fringes…...those in whom the campus ministry organizations are failing to reach.

CAME CLOSE

There was a time a few years back when I was seriously considering and being considered to serve as the campus minister for our local denominational association on the campus of Miami University. Turns out, the direction of Veritas would have been in danger of being absorbed by the campus ministry if I had assumed the position. Additionally, I was more of a pariah amongst the established pastors around our association than me or my director of missions EVER dreamed I could have been. Simply put, I am told some of my pastoral “brothers” in Christ detest me and they have never even met me. There is a camp that is adamantly opposed to our presence here and they have been from day one. Even if I had wanted to go that direction, it would have never happened in such an environment. These misgivings I have stand irrespective to my views that I will continue to outline regarding campus ministry philosophies.

WHO’S TO BLAME?

The Western version of the university education has been hijacked by free-market consumerism, breeding such a consumerist approach from the onset of the college experience. The promising and alluring equation is: a degree= worth+maturity+success. The university itself no longer caters to the formation of the soul -(as opposed to the university’s prime directive of the acquisition of information/experience, as it is now)- but it reluctantly contracts it out to a hodge-podge of suitors of every type. The public demands the choice and the university must be all things to all people. The student and his/her family are expertly sized up and marketed an academic, social, cultural and religious experience- the best their money will buy (or so they’re told). One need only choose the brand and the experience involved and pay up.

Eventually, we herd the new masses like calves before a new gate and parade them before our information tables with table-top ministry commercials. The spectacle may not be as subtly lost on the percipients as we might suspect…..perhaps they intuitively sense the pressure we rarely admit to being operative behind such a scene…..namely, the burden to prove why “we’re” so much better to be a part of than the campus ministry two tables down. Maybe the incoming frosh aren’t cognizant of as much and in as many words, but for the campus ministry, it’s all in the name of recruitment, which you have to do to stay afloat on the sea of significance. (More Tomorrow)

Uhmmm.......prally didn't see this one coming, huh?

Just some pics of my recent Fite Klubb campout.......

Here's a worthy manifesto for a X follower.........checkitout, namely the Wednesday, March 24 entry........(thanks to CMarsh!)

Now that I got my Fotopages site up, you can go and actually verify that we are doing church stuff here in Oxford.

Matter of fact, go there now and partake in a few pics of our community on Hester Road.

So I'm back from Tenny, and my NCAA brax sukk. Badly. Everyone I chose to win lost. Everyone that lost, I chose to win. This is freekin' luscious.

Good thing I chose Talawanda High School to take it all baybeeee!!!

In the See of Tenny as I key these characters.........anxiously awaiting the routing that the East Tennessee State Buccaneers- my alma tomater- will unleash upon the wee Sincinnasty KittenCubs.

Now, in the spyuhrt of St. Alantious Creechosporous, the Lexingtonian, I shall offer one thing I'd bet you don't know about me:

While at ETSU in a pickup basketball game, I blocked the shot (actually slung it in the parking lot) of a future guard for the Golden State Warriors.

As a fellow servant, my heart aches for/with my brothers and sisters at the demonically-infused man's inhumanity to man.

Aha!!! The Kimsterino be bloggin' now.........(you couldn't hide from me forever)......now we gots 3/4's of the Birchfield clan bloggin'......one more to go.

REMEMBER 3-11?

"Someone" is having fun with numbers. In what has been called "the worst attack in western Europe since WWII," and Spain's "September 11th," close to 200 people have died and around 1500 were injured last Thursday when bombs gutted passenger trains in Spain. According to the above article, apparently someone knew something before it went down, not unlike our government's prior knowledge of the carnage of September 11, 2001.

It has been reported that 3/11 happened 911 days after 9/11. Clearly, 11 was a signature of sorts for "someone" on that fateful day in 2001. Consider this for your numerological curiosities:



-Attacks took place on September 11th.....or 9/11.....where 9+1+1=11.

-Number of days left in the year 2001 AFTER September 11th: 111.

-September 11th was the 254th day of the year in 2001......2+5+4=11.

-The first plane to hit WTC 1 was American Airlines Flight 11.

-Flight 11 had 11 crew on board.

-Take the flight numbers of each of the fated planes.......Flight 11 remains the base, numerologically.........Flight 93 becomes 12 (9+3=12)......Flight 175 becomes 13 (1+7+5=13).....Flight 77 becomes 14 (7+7=14).

-On September 11th, 1609, Henry Hudson sails into NY harber and "discovers" Manhattan Island

-"New York City" has 11 letters.

-New York was the 11th state of the union.

-The 1972 Munich Olympic games ended on September 11th in a terrorist attack where 11 Israeli athletes were killed. There were 121 (11x11) countries participating. Exactly 29 (2+9=11) years later came the horrors of 9/11/01.

-The American Airlines flight had 92 people on board.....9+2=11.

-"Trade Center" has 11 letters.

-The WTC standing side by side visually formed the number 11.

-Both WTC towers were 110 stories high.

-The North WTC collapsed at 10:28 a.m.......1+0+2+8=11.

-The first group of NYC firefighters to reach the area was Unit 1. They lost 11 of their men.

-When both towers collapsed, a height of 11 stories remained.

-After 99 days of fires in and around "Ground Zero," NYC declares all fires extinguished (9x11=99).

-On the British documentary "How the Twin Towers Collapsed," a fire expert was interviewed on the fires and explosions in the structures......a small demonstration was formed depicting fire burning up different kinds of materials inside a special warehouse.....the building had a sign on it by the door reading "11."

-"The Pentagon" has 11 letters.

-Ground was broken for construction on the Pentagon on September 11th, 1941.

-Flight 77, which supposedly hit the Pentagon (no plane wreckage has been produced from the site)- had 65 people on board......6+5=11......77 is also achieved by 11x7.

-Revenge attacks begin in Afghanistan to fight terrorism. "Afghanistan"=11 letters

-56 (5+6=11)minutes after WTC 2 collapsed, WTC 1 collapsed.

-"[The war in Iraq] is a rare opportunity to move toward an historic period of cooperation. Out of these troubled times.....a new world order can emerge...."- George H.W. Bush, in a dramatic speech before a joint session to Congress about the Kuwait crisis on September 11th, 1990, exactly 11 years ago to the day from September 11th, 2001.

-During the crisis on Tuesday, kids in the area of the Twin Towers were moved to a "safe school" on 11th Street.

-The only operating ferry was Number 11, on 33rd street (11x3)

-President Bush, on September 11th orders US flags to be flown at half-staff until September 22nd (11x2). This is a total for 11 days.

-In March 2002, there were twin beams of light lit at "Ground Zero." These were kept on for exactly 11 days.



In the greatest terror attack since 9/11, it turns out that, due to this being a leap year, 3/11 happened not 911 days after but 912. But hey, if you do 9/11 one better, then what do you have?

Can you say, "Tater Gun?" I knew you could.

Yeah, it was definitely a dude show, replete with requisite goofiness and remarkably delectable victuals served up by Chef Boy-Al-Creech. Times were fun, deep and consummately suspended in a time of rare fellowship. From raucous irreverence to humble ventures into our stories to a trek up a mountain beholding impeccable geography- it was a slice of life served in the stock of a generous helping of "one-another." It's really amazing how getting away to do not much of anything elucidates every past endeavor and every present aspiration. And now, I again bask in a glow of radiant Kingdom brotherhood, surrounded by this cloud of witnesses. Not only do I know their names, but I have come to know and grow to love them even more.

Well, we offered on one of the houses we looked at and now we are handling the counter-offer, which we are going to counter the counter-offer. Or something like that.

Really learning as we go here. But I like new things. I would prefer things that didn't deal with so many Benjamins.

The sellers didn't really come down much from their price......I think they are anticipating their open-house this weekend and tabling us with some other possible offers so as to get the best one. Don't they know we're trying to get a good deal? What are they trying to do......make money?

Maybe they aren't letting on yet how much they're willing to go down. We will counter again today by 12 noon and see where that goes.

I like doing things that are both scary and fun at the same time. Makes you feel alive. Or very poor (to be felt soon).

Most of you know we're plunking around for our first home to buy. Most of you know too that we are incorporating and envisioning as a priority what we feel God is calling us to do in ministry into our search for a house. We have looked. And, later on this day, we may offer. Pray to God for a deepened sense of calling and guidance.

TOWARDS FUNCTIONAL USELESSNESS

No new aim....just a thought from this week's Aidan readings which birthed a spark.

And so I opine......with so much of my identity tethered to "doing," how free am I to realize the unbearable lightness of my being in Him? I'm not when in "get-it-done" mode. Where did I miss that He calls me first to be His son, His "man of God?"

This issuance of fruit from that existential realm promises both danger and opportunity heretofore unseen.

BTW, check out Mark Palmer's refreshing post on Lent and, incidentally, The Passion debacle. DO check the comments also.

My blog has been very BLAHg of late.......such is the fruit of sifting through the days, trying to ascertain whether or not I have anything of import to say.

Just saw The Passion with my Fitte Klubbe bros tonight. Don't really know what I can say at this point. I am in digestion mode. Overall....initial reaction....intense, grotesque, "poetic" (a la CMarsh).....I was deeply uprooted out of my bosom. I can't form much in the way of words at present. One of the few movies in which you enter knowing it's not the "feel good movie of the year" and you leave speechless for all the right reasons.

Talk about a tale of two worlds.........

I spent this past Sunday morn at a partner church "preachin".........nice peeps, but reminiscent of the days of yore when I was mired in a stifling traditionalism that took precedence over vibrant Xanity. Not a rap on these bros and sisses in Christ, just an observation.

Contrast that with the Hester community.....where spontaneous communion can break out at any time sans adjacent broken loaf on the counter and found juice in frijj. Vega-dogg got a piece of the action as well.

We started our gathering last night with a focused communion with Sx's, the loaf and the wine. I did not realize till my conversation with a first-time guest to our community (after the gathering was over) that neither she nor I took communion (I was playing the git-tar during it). When she brought it up, asking if she could take part in it- I thought "Why not?" I found the left over loaf tucked amongst the dishes and various and sundry foodstuffs....made my way throught he conversations in the kitchen and fetched the drink. I asked her if she wanted to find a Sx to read- she did and right there in the middle of the activity, we took communion, three hours later. I thought that rocked.....focused communion on demand.

Vega took communion too for the first time......Cathy said she accosted the broken loaf and scarffed it down, much to everyone's delight.

Today she (Vega) spent the day pooting and doing her business. I think she hasn't totally written this Christianity thing off, even if the elements didn't agree with her.

In America now, "evangelical" is just another political wing buying or being bought. What a bunch of tripe.

AN OFFERING TO ISHTAR

The Super Bowl and Goddess Worship

How about this.........how about there being something more to this Janet Jackson SuperBoob fiasco than just a publicity stunt or a cunning advertisement? What's left after we expend our reserves of energy and inquiry into whether or not CBS knew about it (when they admit they didn't) and whether or not the MTV-produced Jackson/Timberlake duo were setting it up ahead of time (which they admittedly were). What if the "Who Knew-We Sure Didn't" tack is just a diversion anyway to subtly layer a more esoteric meaning to the night?

I know for some of you, this might be a registered absurdity on your radar screen, but bear with me.

It should go without persuasive effort on my behalf that the hyper-sexualized environs surrounding the Super Bowl extravaganza took center stage, upending the game itself in attention and focus. Take for example the "Will It Or Won't It Air" hype attending the much-bally-hooed Lingerie Bowl in the weeks preceding the game. Super Bowl fans (or their unwitting families) would be inundated -willingly or by proxy- by the unending tirade of one sexual image/innuendo after another in an attempt to sell a product. THEN, we got to behold various vixens and nubile ninnies grope for their crotches and grind and call that music and dancing.

With that backdrop comes the halftime bomb set........Justin Timberlake singing the lyric, "Going to have you naked by the end of this song." and then reaching and tearing off what was obviously a ready-to-rip part of Jackson's garment covering her right breast.

There is great intention in this moment of exposure and it is layered in many contextual meanings that delve deeper than is currently being bantered about. In the pictures of the incident that are now surfacing on the 'Net, Matt Drudge shows a close up that reveals, in my opinion, the esoteric dynamics of this scenario. To further understand my thesis, I encourage you to now go to Drudge's report here. BE FOREWARNED......IT CONTAINS JANET JACKSON'S NUDE BREAST. But 800,000,000+ saw it without being warned and we have a greater purpose here.

If you notice in the close-up, Jackson has taken the pain and time to adorn her nipple with a piercing. This piercing is not just an arbitrary selection of jewelry either. The piece is a sunburst, with eight points or rays radiating outward. Not surprisingly enough, the ancient Babylonians preceded Ms. Jackson in their meaning behind the symbol, though their occult (hidden) meaning is cogently applied and tied into the present.

In Mesopotamia, the eight-pointed rosette and star would become the symbol for the fertility goddess Ishtar/Isis/Ashtarte/Inanna and her star, Venus. (She's also known as the Babylonian Great Goddess, Star, Light of the World, Righteous Judge, Lawgiver, Bestower of Strength, Lady of Victory, Forgiver of Sins, Mother of Harlots, Compassionate Prostitute, Framer of All Decrees, Mother of the Fruitful Breast). It's curious that Ishtar/Isis is often depicted in a breast-offering pose.

In one myth surrounding her, Ishtar goes on a journey to the underworld where she goes through a ritual and is killed by her sister who was the queen of the underworld. She supposedly goes to look for her husband Tammuz. After smashing through the gates, she has to go through the ritual of being slowly stripped naked before she is allowed to go.

Ishtar was the most important goddess of the Near East and Asia. Women would prostitute themselves at her temple for her, not unlike the many young female artists who prostitute themselves today at the temple of fame and fortune for the gods of Sony, Dreamworks and Columbia as they cavort about in the videodrome in the attire becoming of such. Of course such worship of Ishtar/Astarte was an abomination to the LORD as outlined in 1 and 2 Kings.

I suppose we the sheeple are to continue suckling at the breast of a deity condemned and dead, consuming ad infinitum as we are pushed into the abyss of hedonism and endless consumerism. This really is the Matrix, and, well, I wanna be weaned.

SUPER BOOB XXXVIII

Can you imagine all the church Super Bowl parties who didn't have a little Bible-study-thingy at halftime? While we were talking about what the world values by virtue of observing its behavior during the mega-spectacle of the Stupor Bowl, Jan-Michael Jackson was busy poppin' a boob for close to 800,000,000 worldwide viewers. As if we needed to say anything at all.

An accident? Harrumph! TIVO reported it's highest EVER spike in live instant replay/rewind. I guess now we know whose commercial stole the proverbial show this year. Additionally, the song, "Rock Your Body," has as its final lyric this deeply meaningful and noble intention: "Going to have you naked by the end of this song."

You know it's cold when you can inhale deeply through yo' noze holes and all molecular motion stops therein. -9 degrees here in O-town early this a.m.

Oh, the pleasant, numbing lull of obscurity
Waxing eloquent in the lesser man's minutia
A chamber pianist on a Casiotone
A legend in my own mind

5 inches.........a bowl of fresh, new snow cream.....life can get good like that.

Nice to have a legitimate winter storm on our hands for once. Won't be too bad though.....couple inches of snow, then some freezing rain. I'll take what I can get.

Wooo-hooooo.........the doggone Spen Doktor is bloggin' his 'fro off!

Hester House be so pregnant......dang we gotta give birth again.

Funny thing is, I started the night out with this sense of just "blah."

25 peeps there (and we were missing 5)......pandemonium........lotsa run-down folks coming in drooped over.....wild and crazy day for some of us.........4 kidlets (an extreme rarity for Veritas) from a rough family situation (but God used them to bless another hurting person there that we prayed for- one toddler who had never met the woman jumped up to hug her after we prayed for God to show her whatever he wanted to about her situation).......a first time visitor who got to see us on a night of chaos........God stirs up a guy through our worship station we set up (same one from Mayhem).......community member prays with him upstairs............MASSIVE HEALING UPSTAIRS........impromptu prayer times breaking out all over the house after we disbanded for the night........got done with the God-stuff (at least for now) at 2am, about 8 hours after the gathering started.

That would just about dang get me fired for holding church that long.

Good thing I fired myself.

My God is a good God. My God is doing mighty things. Sometimes I just sit back and laugh because I get to be on this ride.

Well, I suppose I’ll chime in on the Mayhemic women/ministry/emerging church issue, regardless of how tinny it may sound.

As a non-female, I want to acknowledge the pain and diminishment many women and girls have suffered at the hands of some male-dominated hierarchical power structures in the Church. Coming from a large denominational tradition where this war (women in ministry, etc.) has raged, I have seen the ill effects firsthand. My seminary career (92-96) was rife with such examples as I came into the final throes of a politically-charged takeover/transition of leadership from "moderate" to "conservative."

The women in ministry issue was but one of the powder kegs where the flags where planted. I saw people lose livelihoods, degree programs, families and friends. I witnessed the ostracization of female friends in ministry who were marginalized to the periphery for no reason at all. I had friends who not only dropped out of seminary, but they dropped out of the race in the Kingdom of God (KOG) altogether. All the sit-ins and protests could not assuage what was akin to a military takeover. I saw the 6 O’Clock TV crews feast on the goings-on while the world shook its head and looked on in amazement. I saw what should have been a powerfully arrayed and equipped segment of the Church crumble and shoot itself in the foot. And let it be said of those days that no matter who was right or wrong, neither side was without fault and both sinned one against the other rather opportunistically. My naivete was minced into the sobering reality of our fallenness as I had to come to grips with my anger over our bickering and the constant pull to one side or the other. I concluded to stand not for agendas/positions, but for the Kingdom of God and for people.

Yes, we (the church) have some issues to address wherein the male-dominated, hierarchical leadership structure in the church minimizes and marginalizes women. I think in any raw movement of God, there are moments in its life that offer us the possibility of clarity of vision in the process of our becoming. These moments present at the same time both danger and opportunity- a danger to further minimization/marginalization and the opportunity to move through, binding past hurts and promoting Christ-minded reception to the woman.

This being said, our current conversation is necessary. The pain is valid, the issues are valid and the discomfort anyone might feel, though unintended, is a necessity to realize where we are if we are to begin move beyond it proactively.

Mayhem was a snapshot. In my estimation, it accomplished what it set out to do……that is, to proclaim in several ways that you/we are not alone in "this." We just wanted to echo Jesus’ truth that He will never leave us or forsake us (Hebrews 13:15 and Matthew 28:20). It would follow then that FEELING left alone or forsaken does not make this untrue (more on this in a moment).

Even as monumental as Mayhem was (or as limited, depending on who you are) it is not a final commentary on all we are or ever will be. The lens through which our gaze passes is beginning to resolve into this blurry, pixellated image of the female (and the male), not unlike the prophetic image given to Beth Keck en route to Mayhem. Good thing is, there is no denominational hierarchy, agenda, finances and ego to uphold. This gathering was about a people on a journey together, not an indelible etching of a perfect scenario. Mayhem, the gathering, cometh and it goeth.

Must this issue of sexual polarity degenerate into vitriolic and destructive battles for supremacy? Are we doomed to fall into the patterns of stereotyping along the lines of dominance versus submission, superiority versus inferiority? It doesn’t have to and I don’t think those eager to rightly handle the conversation are going that route. What I am seeing thus far is a move toward reciprocal respect, love and empathy.

But that doesn’t mean we are immune to falling into our own ego plans to engineer a desired outcome based on painful past. It doesn’t mean we aren’t incapable of employing as the solution the very attitude we have defined as the problem (as Ann Belford Ulanov outlines in her book Receiving Woman). She asserts that we do so by criticizing the domination of masculine imagery (esp. linguistically) and caricaturing its worst expressions in a “quick fix mentality to make present what is absent” (p. 50).

How do we usually wind up talking past one another and betraying our sentiments and ground of meaning? I think we do so when we conceptually couch leadership in terms of who gets the “limelight,” etc. Where leadership in the KOG is concerned, aspiration to “visibility” and “center stage” is the deadly third rail, emerging church or otherwise. Top billing based on gender, economic status, race, etc., is a non-starter in the KOG where it involves paving the way into an inclusive future no matter how rocky roads past have been.

Regarding leadership, we MUST needs be talking about calling, heart, integrity, sincerity, humility, authenticity, sevvanthood and character as prerequisites to leadership shortly before we raise the question of gender. I realize that this statement will not be received in a vacuum devoid of painful emotions on this matter. I am not intending to negate anyone’s past experiences, but rather to acknowledge them. I am not saying that structures don't need flattening or changed either.

Pure, integral leadership is best ensured when it issues forth from a simple willingness to be hidden. There is much to be said in the effort to eradicate male buffoonery in the matter. However, we must avoid a reaction formation by establishing those to places of leadership visibility (be they men or women) just to balance an inequality. The fact that we have to envision leadership in ultimate terms of “position” or “place” reveals how little we understand it.

Therefore, it is not without cause that we also need to talk about gender issues in leadership. Our maleness or femaleness was God’s idea and we are blessed therein as we know and are known (by God and others) in that maleness or femaleness. It is the ultimate gifting.

We cannot navigate this terrain on the fumes of our woundedness and set our coordinates on the calibrations of our learned historical pain. There have been and are gross injustices enacted upon women. There is no freedom, no justice, no liberty as long as we tend toward blaming others for our present forms of emotional pain (this is applicable across the board, not just this topic). We must claim our baggage and finally say our stuff is our stuff. We are forever in bondage if we have to wait on the other party to straighten up, get it right or get healed. God holds out hope and healing and he knows I still need more.

The best leader is the one taking up the reigns of servanthood and humility and unity. I don’t care in what role or position and no matter how visible or invisible. If God calls, then by God, step up. I shall submit to such a woman anyday.

But, by the grace of God, I will retreat desert-ward, never to entertain an audience of more than myself again if we do not at least start here.

SHAMELESS PROMO AND SHOUTOUT

IF some pimple of a geek should ever (heaven forbid) take to egging your vehicular structure and ridding it of it's finish, you must take it to the guys at

Center City Collision

at 3759 Montgomery Road, Norwood, Ohio, 45212, 513.631.2406. They took my brand new Element, babied it and gave it to me better than when I brought it in.

Kevin Rains and the crew did it right. And the hospitality stuff he talks about spills into his profession too, as if you didn't know.

Gadzooks-a-mundo.........

In the midst of trying to prep for a sermon I have to deliver this Sunday to our sponsoring church! They are without a pastor and are needing someone to "supply"-the-pulpit/bring the message/preach-the-word/rightly-divide-the-word-of-truth..........okay, I'm just a fill in for the "big show" thing I guess. Been a while since I've been in the fray of the Sunday-to-Sunday gig.

Coming from a tradition where persuasive oratory is king, we'll see whether such foolishness issuing forth from my yammering skull-cave actually bears fruit, I 'spose. Lord, hep me.

Why wasn't there a roundtable at Mayhem titled, "What House Church Doesn't Teach You: How To Temporarily Re-Enter The Traditional Church And Not Come Across As A Weirdo To Your Mother Church?"

And I finally got to meet THE Eric Keck. To finally post a face to the myriad of stories haunting that guy (thanks to the likes of Rains, Marshall and Creech) was nice, Didn't get to field some of the stories directly from him like I wanted, but looking forward to the next opportunity. Doesn't feel like Idaho is as far away as it was before this weekend.

More Mayhembites.........

And what about the music? Stupendous in my estimation..........beth keck just took me to unexpected heights, letting her craft flow almost effortlessly from her God to us. What a raw and refreshing treat that was.

And the Landing Place guys did their thing again, nuancing an ethereal groove that hung in the rafters with the concrete angels. How sweet to have had my favorite type of music for a worship set.

Mayhem for me.............it was a vantage point in the journey....it was a place where I could reliably note from whence I have come, where I was now and where I wanted to be.

Mayhem is o'er. Very good times.

Still chewing on the experience and will regurgitate later.

The mark of a successful gathering is that you leave not just wanting more of the gathering but more of the God of the gathering who showed up just because we gathered.

It was all that.

Back in Awksford....Ahksfurd.......Ahxvurd......Oksvird.......Oggsfurt......Oxford.

What a ghost town without the stoodints. Just rolled in with our 9-year old niece who'll be padding down with us till next year. Should be cool times.

This year, Christmas was just downright wierded out. Nothing too much out of the ordinary I suppose....just the same ol' stuff. Didn't get to see mother......was fearing that.....I guess maybe later. But I did get to relish the time I did have with who I was with. Got to see friends whose families are families to me as well.

Bought two roof-top cargo carriers for the Smellement as well. That was a first. Sears pulled a big one by stating that the one cargo carrier that should fit our Honda should do so WITH its twenty dollar attachment hardware. Nuh- uh. Didn't find that out till hours before leaving. The only thing that will fit it (that I know of) is the Honda carrier (go figure). We needed one for the return trip back since we were bringing back our niece plus the doglet we already had with us. I called all over the known world and one dealership in Lexington had one (only one in this region that did, turns out). So we went and bought that one on our way to Tennessee. I thought I would be able to mount the carrier lickety-split at the dealership and be on my merry way, perhaps with just a wee bit of assistance from the quality service staff. Hah. Had to make an appointment. They wanted $150.00 too. (They said it'd take their trained staff about 2 hours to put it on.....lots of hardware and stuff. I guess they took me for less than able to read a schematic instruction sheet). I suddenly really wanted to find a way to pack that thing up and get on down the road and figure out how to put it on m'own bad sef when I got to Tennessee. But the steady rain that day dissuaded my intentions to mount the thing even in the parking lot.

But I had an idea. They did let me pull our vehicle into their bay, fold the other seat up and pack our stuff into the roof top carrier and put it into the Element on it's side.....alongside our German Shepherd dog as well. And it all fit too. That's the first time I ever rode with a loaded rooftop cargo carrier inside the vehicle with a dog to supervise it. And this is the only vehicle I know in which I could pull off such a fiasco. And so, I left them, bidding them adieu: the service manager, personnel manager and a sales tech all standing in a mild amazement at this feat of functionality. I think we all kind of learned something that day.

Here in the Gap de la Bull, in frosty Tehnuhcee on momma Grubb's computer. M'ladee fast sleeping behind me in the bed, m'dawg fast asleep on the bed in the next room (she gets her own now).

Tis the day of Christmas and in mere hours, I'll be heading to Knoxville to see some more family. There will be some people I probably won't see because of the level of relational fragmentation that continues.

I don't really mean to cast aspersions on our double-barrelled holiday season over the last two months, but things are a-changing in my life and in the family I thought I knew. Doggone it, MY friends are starting to talk about getting illnesses and fearing some hereditary health risks. Since when did coming home for Christmas become about our infirmities that we don't yet have?

Some mainstays in the remaining fam are aging and I am really coming to grips with the fact that these holiday times [in which I really only get to be with my family of origin (FOO)] are going to change abruptly, sooner rather than later.

We come home, barge in on our FOO's lives, and don't really know what's going on. But we all try to connect because we do have a history together.....mottled as it is. We are missing out on their lives, no doubt. And it is, no doubt, because of the fact we are serving God elsewhere. We know that, we knew that and we grow deeper contending with that. I know we're not the only ones, but it is no small sacrifice. It does cost. It costs time spent with your dad golfing and conversations missed.....it costs hanging out with your aging grandmother- the one most responsible for your coming to faith in Christ and who raised you from high school onward....it costs seeing the ballgames of your sports phenom 13 year old niece.......it costs seeing your friends kids grow up. It just costs. Jesus told me that somewhere.

This is not about wanting something somewhere else. This is about being vocal about my identity formation as it emerges in this Christ, who beckoned me from His Somewhere out of my nowhere. They are thoughts, perchance, on an ongoing assumption of this One's identity as a cloak or a mantle on my own nakedness and waywardness resulting from my first loving community that blew up in my face in 1977. Though it should have been in the context of me, mom, dad and sis that I was to have learned of the blessed acceptance of the love of Abba, it (my FOO) went belly-up. It may be tripe to some, but God knows how much of a relational mutt it has made me. And let me tell you, in so many ways, I still am discovering ways I suffer today from that damned mess back there.

No anger inside....no faces to blame.......I love the principals too much and see them too infrequently for that and God is doing something else in my heart. It's just that coming home causes you to see how easily you forget how deep the void in your heart is until His Light shines to the bottom.

Prally not what you want to know, but it's my crap, my "issues" and part of what makes me up. So this is Christmas.....perhaps another one without my mother, I dunno. I'll let you know later. Sometimes I find myself grieving over something I still long for.....(a mom and dad together with me and my sister)........ but know I'll never have that because I intuitively sensed its death long ago. Emotionally, it has been for me like a death unmournable with a body unviewable. Maybe a part of me died back then too. I am 34 and still coming to terms with the fact that mom and dad couldn't stand the sight of each other. This is divorce. This is half of my generation.

But my God has something to say......

Nice to have snow here in Oxford.....close to 3 inches worth. Tis a welcome change to the drab scenery of dormant winter vegetation.

We tend to think of snow in terms of it's "purity." Its white appearance no doubt lends to that. But if you ask a snowflake (and I have), it may be anything but pure.

We see snow as "white" not because of its purity, but quite the contrary. Snow is just frozen water droplets that are no longer light enough to be carried by the winds in the cloud. The size of the flake may depend upon the moisture content available in the atmosphere.

When a cloud forms, and subsequently, precipitation, it is because tiny water droplets coalesce, or fuse/join with microscopic particulate matter in the atmosphere called aerosols. Much of these aerosols can be free-floating pollutants. When enough moisture joins the aerosol, it can become too heavy to be suspended in the cloud and it falls to the ground as precipitation.

We see white because of the nature of the ice crystals' alignment. The snowflake crystal has multiple facets which bend pure light into a variety of directions so that we a wash of not one pure color, but many. In fact, we have misjudged the snowflake; it is not an entity of purity. We have just assigned that quality to it.

I'm not a subject of purity either. I suffer from a multiplicity of faces that cover for what's really underneath. As such, I bend, refract pure Light as well. I, too, become a product of pollutants to which I have been attracted. Thankfully, it is because of the worth assigned to me by Someone else that warrants an assumed purity that is not my own.

I have been moved to a level of cinematic appreciation in a theater unlike I have been in quite some time, after having viewed The Last Samurai. Though far from a "masterpiece" (what does that mean, really?)- there is much to glean in the way of honor, servanthood, friendship/loyalty, tradition vs. modernity, justice and redemption to boot. Prediction: nominations for......cinematography, musical score, costume, best supporting actor (Ken Watanabe) who actually overshadows Cruise in performance, though Cruise holds his own.

Though getting panned a bit in some reviews for predictability, character development issues and some cliche, I was refreshed by the above themes touched on throughout. Perhaps a Munkebyte on it later.

Nevertheless, I welcomed the opportunity to emerge from a theater satisfied and not guilty, shamed or having to explain myself for having seen the movie.

Life is so freekin' crazy around here. Working three jobs, trying to stay on the ball with our communities and just be available for when God wants to move. People who need you, people who bleed you and so much vying for attention.........the call to a more disciplined life still beckons and still eludes......

Did get to spend a very pleasant evening with Kimmy and Ryan, two Veritasians who graciously prepared a yummy dinner for m'ladee and myself. It was swell to hang with them, laugh, recount old times and get to know one another even more. It made my heart warm.

Okay, for allyall 5,654,454,234,534,786,865,456.456733 readers who think I'm still getting ready to head for Tenny in 24, well, I'm back. For what, I don't know.

Getting ready to head to Tenny in 24 hours to see moi famille for T-giving. Like most of yours, our families are so splattered about that, within the twenty four hours that is toikey day, we will have had to go to four different locations for four of the same dinners. Shew!

Oh, and, we're freaks down there too, although our friends and fam are a bit polite about it and just accept us as we are (we think). But we know they don't understand why we are up here doing this crazy church planting stuff way up "north" and why we aren't pumpin' out the yung-unz and settling in down in Big Orange country. Sometimes with where God has brought us, it's pretty hard to share about the inner healing, the maturational growth and the God-stuff going on all around us because there's no frame of reference for them to understand. And I'm not being narrow on this or condescending.....it's just that we're at different places and callings, I would suppose.

As you know, going back to your family system of origin is no easy thing. In fact, you come back just plain stressed out sometimes. I think that when God effects some healing in your life and you go back into the same stagnant, cyclical system of familial woundedness, you only stir them up and GET stirred up in return because you want to fix them. You want them to experience the same freedom you are in the process of receiving. But sometimes they only look at you like you got a third eye in your noggin. And you come back......and they stay, literally and figuratively, in the same habitual patterns of defeat.

Makes me wonder how- after seminary, etc.,- those in ministry are "called" back to where they grew up, to where mom and pop still abide. I'm not saying it's a bad thing or God doesn't call us back home, I just know Cathy and I have struggled in the past with the family "thing" and that every longing to go back home may not be a calling. We've had to sever some unhealthy family dependency issues at the bud. Had we not, we would have missed our calling and our present place. We just simply need to be willing to look at some of the unhealthy emotional bondage issues that we assign a more noble significance when they might be a sign of our instability. Seems Jesus had some stuff to say about family ties too, so I defer to Him.

We only harbor love for our family (or what's left of them). I don't know if it's that we're without honor in our own "country" (and it really is country), but I know we can't stay there for long. Here is where we live, move and have our being.

It's 1:52 a.m., and I know most of you-uns are snoozing, but I don't go to bed 'till 3 a.m. (cuz I don't work until 1pm).

Rain is starting to ping and patter the gutters, my wife sleeps after we've snuggled and prayed together and my dog is on MY side of the bed rattling the timbers with her snoring.

I love this time of the night.

Welcome to da Freakshow!

Good times on Hester tonight.......wildly unpredictable........consistently scrumptuous blackberry cobbler by Amanda......new friend to Hester house (Kelly)......an unbelievable amount of distractions tonight (even for Hester), but we are learning how to let Jesus show up and we took our rest in that.........Holy Spirit coming, ministering, refueling.

The freakiness freaks on, but the Christ knows our name.

You know, when I get zapped physically, emotionally and spiritually, God seems to come through in a nifty way to alleviate and bring some levity into my existence. Granted, I don't often take note, but I did early on Friday morning.

I just take myself too seriously sometimes. I bog down and spazz out over fringe technicalities of my self-important agenda and lose touch. A little after midnight on Friday I step out under inky, moon-less darkness with a star-sprinkled canopy of the heavens overhead. The night was warm, the sky was clear and the seeing was good. In the northern sky were the aurora borealis, indeed a surprise and a rarity for mid-latituders, especially given that we are a couple of years past the solar maximum (when such activity is more common). Blue-green shafts of light and shimmering curtains would form, undulate and reform on the horizon. This is my fourth encounter with the northern lights.....all since moving here to Oxford. The Leonidmeteor shower was still managing to hurl a few slow-movers toward the auroral light show as if to compete for my attention. For the first time in months, I set up my 6-inch reflector to take in the beauty of the universe around me and for the first time in months, I am immediately reconnected to the Creator of it all through the celsetial handiwork before me.

My infinitely wee place in the scheme of things became a reality washing over me as beautifully radiant as the aurora. Who can paint a night sky like the Almighty? Come over one night and let me show you.

I'm just tired, bored and feeling minimized and marginalized.......I don't know how much to tell the cyber-spaced-out blog-world about it because it all really kind of reeks of emotional voyeurism. And who really has the energy to care beyond a comment click? I don't know if many can understand the wasteland this is. (And this ain't about end-of-the-rope stuff , etc......I'm fine).

Right now, I'm tired of reading/talking emerging church paradigms and how good it's gonna look. When can we get past the ecclesial one-upsmanship and bartering for recognition and start talking about the hell of people's lives we have belly flopped into? Or are we just overlooking it? Isn't it about people after all? Screw my credentials, screw who knows me or who I wished knew about me- what is this really about?

The rapidity with which Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore was dispensed this Thursday by that state's Court of the Judiciary only hints at a more troublesome current, if we are cognizant enough to see it.

The outrage should not issue forth as a result of the obvious removal of the stone monument of the aforementioned 10 commandments. Nor should we be enraged by the apparency of the higher rulers to be removing God from courtrooms (and schools, incidentally) and debasing the law codes founded on the higher moral standards of the God of the Old Testament and ancient Israel.

Instead, we should be inflamed that we are being fooled into believing "they" are relieving us from something that we have never had. In truth, what has only been crumbling away is not the Christian foundation of this country, but only its facade, erected long ago, having rendered its now no-longer needed service to the true pagan underpinnings of at least some of our founders and current rulers.

In fact, many would decry these legal goings-on of the last 50 years as a slouching away from our Christian roots as a nation.

For that persuasion to hold presupposes the truth of the claim that this country was founded as or has been a "Christian" nation. Such a claim is arguable at best, though one cannot deny references and cursory inclusions in our documents, bills, etc. to "God." If, as "nation," we are referring to the populace at large as opposed to the governmental bodies assigned to represent us, then the common people have fared better historically at times in tenaciously adhering to the tenets of Christianity. Perhaps, to our demise, we have implicitly or directily imposed these same values/worldviews upon our own government. And, what if, perchance, elements of this governing body harbors an agenda diametrically opposed to the core constructs of Christianity according to Jesus?

Should we boldly dispense with the notion just as well? How is it that a nation "under God" could find Roy Moore guilty of "acknowledging God?" This is precisely what- (according to his recounting of his interaction with the courts)- Moore claims is principally at stake. (We should expect much more to be revealed that can elucidate the case given that the proceedings were private). How is it that Attorney General Bill Pryor can term Moore's defiance "utterly unrepentant behavior?" Isn't the AG conceding to a higher code of morality or prime source of truth when he uses the word, "unrepentant?" ANSWER: To whom Moore is expected to repent is certainly not to his God, according to the Court of the Judiciary. Law itself has become god.

One does not have to fall into the foray of the political siding and the one-upsmanship game. It's not about conservative/liberal, party lines, etc., though one is welcome to circumnavigate the dead-end loopholes in trying to logically define the behavior of some therein. The admirable thing about Moore- despite what you think of him and those who support him- is that he stood up to the system, stood only on his principles and in the end lost his livelihood. His refusal to acquiesce stands hardy enough as a testament to the fact that one's faith and God cannot be taken away, no matter how imposing or potentially tyrannical a state may be.

Suffice it to say that the Kingdom has not lost out. It just grows stronger, unimpeded even by the officialdom of the system of this world whose ruler posits a thin veneer of God-by products where needed.

I love my country (it's people), pray for my rulers (in obedience to God)..... but I am a citizen of the coming Kingdom of God which garners my total allegiance.

Hearings began in the case against Alabama Judge Roy Moore over the 10 Commandments monument.

Rant Alert in 3...............2..............1.................

Really, what point is there in displaying an icon that represents what most have already functionally and practically abandoned in their hearts to begin with (i.e., God's law)? Do we assume by proxy a kind of righteousness just because the monument is present, thereby making us feel a bit less guilty about our waywardness- without ever really doing anything about it? Notwithstanding our need to protest something, what are Christians really sacrificing by losing this monument? I doubt society gets any more evil than it already is. In fact, I presume things continue along the lines of the same incremental debauchery and decadence and the presence of a stone monument never had, nor will have had, the power to make a man or woman do something they do not want to do in the first place (like be a genuine Christ follower). I guess we need our Christian idols too.

Yeah.....Saturday was dandy......hanging out with some rokkin' fowlkes at CMarsh's.

I love going over there and huddling around that little concrete yard-hookah that incessantly spits out bullet-coals and emits floating, cellulose orbs of fiery death. All of this while watching a lunar eclipse wane in the frigid, crystal clear night. (Still can't feel my behind-o, Paul). And what a setting to try to fathom the richness of Mr. Canipe's knowledge of the feminine fashion world against the backdrop of, "I used to work in a department store." Let me see your references again, Chadwick.

I love all of these guys/gals and their kids. You see we are the only ones without kidlets. And being around all of that makes Cathy and I want.............to.......................

............see MORE of our friends' kids! They rok too. Kev and Tracy, how dare you take Zoe out of the house without her froggie galoshes on!

MATRIX:REVOLUTIONS.....INITIAL REACTION


It was a good movie.

Now let me qualify that.

Regardless of what "professional" movie critics have to say about any particular film, one can find a masterpiece underneath all the rotten 'maters hurled by the naysayers. Coming into the film's opening night, I was readily aware of the buzz of negative reviews concerning Revolutions. In my estimation on that night (as with previous movies), I was relatively open and unswayed by the ill press, somewhat captivated by Rave Theater's 50 foot screen (I still can't believe Laurence Fishburne's head was that big) and the recliner seats (no wonder Rains snoozed.....I think he took his seat home with him).

For me, what hurt Revolutions was not that it didn't deliver on the goods we have come to expect from the 'ski Bros. The fact that any sequel is judged by it's own predecessors may not be any fault of the movie's own either. It's just that the sheer, radicalized scope of the first installment is etched indellibly into our motion-picture connoisseurship, perhaps to be forever unrivaled, even by its successors. The four-year eager anticipation for Reloaded was a phenomenal leap in most respects, whetting the appetite for untried effects and furthering the intriguing storyline. And waiting that long paid dividends in the long run whereas waiting five months for Revolutions left something to be desired. It sure felt a lot different sitting in the theater after four years of Matrix DT's and to be infused with the bliss of the green-hued opening credits. After only five months, it felt a wee bit revisited. But still, it got me in the theater.

Sure enough, the effects were dazzling, but I was left wondering if there was to be any progression in the magnitude.....any new ground to be broken. Admittedly, my imagination was not as apprehended as it was in Reloaded, which may be my own issues. I was satisfied with the effects (mainly the battle for Zion) but left with wanting more than the conclusive fist fight. Perhaps on a second viewing, I might think differently as it's hard to take in a Matrix film in on one showing.

Some of the characters teetered on a bland predictability, often coming across as flat. Morpheus waned into the background, but perhaps out of necessity due to Neo's transformation. The Oracle wasn't as provocative as in Reloaded, fading into a tired reiteration of the primacy of "love" and choice- arguments we were well convinced of in number 2. Some of the emerging and somewhat more tantalizing characters (the Merovingian and Persephone) were left dangling and unresolved. Sometiimes the characters appeared somewhat self-absorbed, almost self-aware that they were "actors" in the Matrix film phenomenon (which was a trait in Reloaded, i.e., the way the camera would painstakingly catch the characters glancing knowingly at each other as if to compel us to go, "hmmm," -chin in hand).

I was half expecting the Oracle and the Freud-esque Architect to snuggle at the end, given the waxing propensity of the film toward lovey-doveyness (a sentiment shared by a few males in the theater that night as I heard a mumbled, "get a room!" during one of the many smooch-embraces in the film). Maybe this direction was in default to the feminine principle given attention here as opposed to the masculine, overt visual stimulation afforded the male movie-goer in number 2 (concurrent to a definite yin/yang-ness applied to the Oracle and subtly throughout the movie.........if you're not convinced, listen to the content of her conversation with Neo in the kitchen and then take note of her earrings).

Many good film genres employ type-scenes to tell their story. For instance, in Western stories, we all know the meaning of high noon, town square, blowing tumbleweed and ten-paces-then-shoot. That is the Western's way of resolving the protagonist/antagonist conflict. The Matrices offer us many new type-scenes that will be employed for generations to come even as they are being copycatted as we speak. The curious variable is that any and all type-scenes can occur simultaneously or detached, in layers and in multiple sequences on corresponding or unrelated planes/dimensions. That is the grandest contribution herein. The linear progression of the Western shootout by comparison is over-and-done-with....the viewer walks away with the finality of what has just transpired. In the Matrix, one walks away not with finality but with contradicting multiplicities that only converge paths, not resolve them. Fuel for the mystery and a wanton invitation to another sequel. Or not.

Now for my sappiness.............the best part of the whole evening was that I got to hang with my fellas.....my buds! That trumps any movie.

The film overall was an acheivement on many levels and it will garner its accolades from its most ardent supporters while lacking major critical acclaim. We can begin to fathom what an interesting ride this was, now that it's over. Or is it?

Lest we get too uppity on bad selves......

Clicketh

Meh-himm. Mey-hihm. Maih-hehm. May-ee-hemm.

Mayhem.

In fact, there's no such thing as lone-ranger Christ-followers or stand-alone churches. That's why by innocent proxy or in our arrogance we suffer in relative isolation.

As our world slides headlong toward oblivion while calling it progress, Jesus still walks our bleeding streets and hearts pointing out the crumpled human mess and refused lives laying in the gutters, imploring us to come on out with Him.....to see what He sees and to be instruments of His love and wholeness.

Some have jumped ship and are treading icy, shark-infested waters. We suspect God poked a hole in our dinghy somewhere when he said for us to go, but we're not for sure. But there are others out there and we're pulling together and mounting the debris for this final voyage because there's a storm ahead.

Mayhem. Called....commissioned.....together.

This past Saturday night was definitely sweet. Anytime you gots the impeccable Kopp Farm cabin, a thunderstorm popping bolts and thumping the atmosphere, Veritasians and Kevin and Tracy Rains, you gots a good time.

After we determined that the unending parade of wasps were not actually from the yawning pit of Gehenna and were not out to peg us, we were able to proceed with eatage, hang-outage, verbally blessing one another and listening to the Kev and Tracy impart some wisdom to our green souls on the timeliness of intentional simple churching and its significance in our particular setting.

Lots more to be said lata.

Music currently impressing upon my tympanic membranous receptors.......as if you care a bit.

INFINITE KEYS.....ester drang......its the drang, what else to say?

REGIONS.....jacobstone.....this album comes off initially as oddly disconnected when you ponder why there were only 4 songs with lyrics and the next 11 are a cacophonous collection of shackles, planes, spoken word, music and more. Then it makes sense when you understand the thrust behind the album is reconcilitation between competing communities in the war-ravaged Balkan region.......the more I listen, the more it haunts. More to check out here

Check out the newest sunspot 484 (directions here)- largest in several years and as big as Jupiter.

For all you chit-rens out there, DON'T-LOOK-DIRECTLY-AT-THE-SUN!

Post-Hester-Community-Gathering-Post.........

Just what I needed.......a little infusion of the sweet, yet fascinatingly convoluted life of our church in all of its wildness and unpredictability.

Lasagna......brownies out the wah-zoo.........Southern sweet tea that a freekin' northerner from Waldo, Ohio makes (northerner at least to a Tennessean) -who incidentally is getting good at it............conversations happening all over the household (including the loud one outside that continued through the open kitchen window from dinner THROUGH the still, quiet moment after the worship music subsided)..........a spontaneous drum circle and rhythm worship session erupting...........Joe blurting out his approvals and spontaneously welcoming Jesus to the living room on our behalf.........hearing the words "dragging" and "ass" used in the same sentence (a first for me) in reference to witnessing to/inviting a recalcitrant unchurched friend to our community........this by a very precious Veritasian, whose continued presence with us and growing trust in the God-stuff going on here continues to unfurl, amaze and warm me. I am thankful to God for the chance to show love right where this person is at. To hear this person talking about inviting a friend to what we are doing here has God written all over it.

And I would not have it any other way. Raw, uncut, uncensored, amorphous, unplanned- pure life on the cutting block. This is Veritas. Not neat, incessantly messy, not boxed, not cozy to yours or my sensibilities, not keen to imposing impractical piety and sometimes unapologetically irreverent to my puritanical persuasions. It is people where they are at spiritually, emotionally, physically- minus the false pretense. Certainly, it all does not surprise our God who never slumbers, though we be as perpetually wide-eyed and befuddled as a calf at a new gate.

Tonight, we dreamed a little bit together of what it is going to mean to go deeper as a community. We dreamed of being more intentional with communal housing as a natural outcropping of what's been happening, of an invitation to a journey to more effectively shepherding this city into relationship with Jesus and what that entails for us. What a joy it is to see and hear the coming-alongsidedness of our people.

And so, like the ditzy Molly Shannon Saturday Night Live character, I point my legs skyward, crying, "I luhvitt, I luhvitt, I luhvitt, I luhvitt- AH LUHVITT!!!

Just a teensy post prior to our gathering at Hester tonight..........

The Church just took in a deep breath of life this weekend and is in exhalation mode. The fall 2003 version of the Regional All Group is past, yet the Kingdom connections still infuse life-blood into our veins. For me, the faces of soul friends existing only neural synapse and bloggable cyberspace incarnate for too brief a time. But it is a time to be relished and an investment well worth the energy that, incidentally, seems to be Otherworldly.

Having been in North Carolina last week and missing my very own community of faith, I find myself curiously longing for their touches, both physical and spiritual. Regional All Groupings tend to make me especially fond of these Veritasians and puts me into dream mode. The big picture with other brothers and sisters on this train from around this nation puts the wind in my sails even though I sit marooned in the doldrums at times. It gives me license to dream again and that is the food from God that mobilizes.

I was reminded of- or rather, apprehended by- a feeling this weekend while in the Brownhouse. It was a feeling of belonging that I used to feel when I would visit my grandmother's house in Knoxville, Tennessee. Her house was the only place I would have to get to feel this way. I haven't had that feeling since I was a child and since my parents divorced when I was in first grade. It was a feeling that washed a warming acceptance over with a promise of "more to come." As a relational vagabond of sorts, it is a God-oriented innoculation toward my inward selfishness. It was more than a feeling, in truth. Better stated, it was the promise of a coming Kingdom that spoke to me through the language of the memory of a lost family, but in the context of a newer family in the making that'll never call it quits.

Sorry.....again........for not being up to snuff on my blogging (or lack thereof). I hope all 8 of you can forgive me........HAHHAHAHAHAHA! My dog has, so there.

Was in Winston-Salem speaking at a youth retreat last weekend........went great, with some decisions made to follow this Christ, of whom we talk, live, breathe and have our being. Cool stuff.

All Group this weekend and my man, Kevin Rains comes to Oxford next weekend to facilitate a conversation and bequeath upon our green-eared Veritasian souls the sage-like wisdom needed for a doing church like this. So there'll be more to come on these tidbits.

I'll see some of you goobers at da Brownhouse soon, so see you there.

Okay....been a lil' bit since I blogged. So watchee gonna do bout it?

Tell you what I'm gonna do about it.....I'm gonna blog.

I'm supposing at this juncture that we have a lot going on. The Hester community is talking about birthing another church, which is all-out sweet. Pretty much right now we're just trying to get our peeps in the package so when the "go" order is given, we're ready. We'll culminate the conversation amongst ourselves with an amazing friend and compadre and pioneer in the ministry on October 25th at the Kopp Farm just north of Oxford. Kevin Rains will make the trek from Norwood to spearhead this conversation with our young church as we reflect on what it means to dream big for God. Heck, just to get to hang out with the guy and whoever he brings is food enough.

ON THE BOMBARDMENT OF DATA UPON THE MIND IN THE TECH/INFO INSANITY ERA

In time we will all live, at least partially, inside a kind of network consciousness.....Our spells of unbroken subjective immersion will become rarer and rarer, and may even vanish altogether....it will certainly spell the further decline of the kind of inwardness necessary for serious reading...as we slip into the web of neural linkages..."

-Sven Birkerts, from The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age......former professor of reading at Harvard


.....and one might wonder about the additional decline upon the kind of inwardness necessary for depth and solitude apt for spiritual formation.

Not intending to blindly bash technology utilized appropriately here either (speaking as one presently availing myself of it to post this missive.....)

"Birkerts is part of a small but growing circle of adherents of technological recidivism (dubbed, 'Luddite' after the machine-breaking movement of the early 19th century England whose collective non-de-plume was romantically personified by the mythical figure of 'Ned Lud'), who have come to deeply question the modern world's obsessive and uncritical acceptance of technological metamorphosis; in the case at hand, the supplantation of book and print culture by the regime of TV-video-computer machinery." (Michael Hoffman, Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare, p. 138).

In the Kingdom of the Connected, are we hurtling toward being connoisseurs of bits and pieces of informational vomitus, rather than retainers and right dividers of the metanarrative, the bigger picture- unable to sustain inquiry long enough to discern our sense of self and "oughtness?"

heh, heh, heh, heh..............

just got a couple more hooked on Pocket Tanks tonight......

Dave and Erica, there's no lookin' back now............

Dang.....it's 3:30 ante meridiem.......just spent the last 4 hours buffing the fellowship hall in the Lutheran Church where I am the Maven of Custodial Arts. THAT was really fulfilling. Seriously! To see a dull floor emerge in all its radiant splendor. That's the one cool thing about being Janitor Johnson......you get to see IMMEDIATE results from your effort.

Nah.....really.....it IS cool......

You're right.......I'm hitting the sack.

How to make it all work...........I don't know if I can "make" it work. I wish I could just go somewhere into my brain's hard drive UTILITIES and do a big DEFRAG. Just to get things to run smooth enough to get to some original files 'cause I'd delete the code line suggesting that I try to find balance in my life, i.e., my awkward pursuit of the Kingdom, nurturing my church planting habit, my family, my friends, my 3 jobs, my relationships across the board, my dog, my recreational endeavors..........('nuff with the list already).

It's such a keen, psycho-socially correct term to banter around.........BALANCE. I ain't found it yet but I can sure talk and counsel others about the need to find it. But maybe no more. So much in this way of life seems like anything BUT balance.

There's a saying coined by a veteran Metro driver regarding driving the Red Route, the Metro's feistiest and most tiring route, with which it is IMPOSSIBLE to stay on time. I was lamenting last semester about being consistently behind schedule while on Red. My colleague chimed, "The faster I go, the behinder I get."

The more balance I seek, the more teetering I do. In chasing after this elusive balance, am I just chasing after the wind? The momentary sensations of "balance"......are they just illusory lapses in cognition before the next monumental load to be encountered on the path?

I'm not staging a complaint here. I am just saying I am more willing to betrothe myself to the idea that finding balance in my case is sometimes an attempt to avoid pain/conflict/discomfort/chaos. Into my cistern-stew of self-effort soup, I dip my ladel only to find the same raunchy froth that neither nourishes nor satisfies. I cannot tame the churning mass of chaos on the edges of my ordered world. Its fingers infringe, sometimes incurring damage but always fostering the potential for inner contemplation and restoration. That is why prior to the furnace, there is not an "IF/THEN-GOTO" line......IF you encounter difficulty of circumstance or affect, THEN GOTO your reaction mode and avoid discomfort.

I suppose God creatively ordains the allowance of imbalance to deepen my shallowness- to question my neurotic aversions to the imposition of another's agenda upon mine. That the majority of the impositions are perceived and not manifest is evidence to the fact that I need the untimely inversions of my will being subjected to Divine interruptions. These teach me that balance is not an end unto itself. It's not trying to get the bigger kid off the see-saw for a more spindly companion. Permanent equilibrium is not a realistic possibility when there is so much self to crucify and fleshy parts that try to wry free from its cross. Spiritual formation is not machined from a die-cast.....it is formed from a pulpy mass with raw roots exposed. There is, however the Spirit's call to discipline, to submission, to denying onesself, taking up your cross and to the fellowship of suffering. There is movement between the extremes and the real possibility of joy in the journey.

Two years ago, seven hours and fifty-two minutes from now, our world changed forever.

Emblazoned like a red-hot branding iron are the feelings and images of that day and all it would portend. We were on campus giving away free candy bars. I recall having noticed a change in the demeanor of the students passing by. I did not know why. My co-pastor at the time raised me on our two-way from in front of a TV in one of the student halls.

"A plane has hit the World Trade Center........have you heard yet?"

I whimsically pictured the scene unfolding in NYC, seeing a small commuter-type plane accidentally having hit the tower.

"......another plane just hit.................."

As I hurried towards his location, I ran into another church member on the way to joining our outreach and he filled me in on the latest.

Attack? Our Pentagon on fire? BOTH towers? Terrorists?

For the majority of the masses of the world, especially our Western world, time and life would be measured penultimately from one side or the other of 8:46 am, September 11th, 2001.

In what was to be a blinding-flash release of pent-up psycho-emotional energies, we would- on that clear Tuesday- forever be caught in a never-ending replay of those events as they were indellibly etched into our memories like no other day. Current generations shall never be able to ease nor erase them.

Naivete would come careening down with those towers that morning. Indeed a part of us died. Forever lost would be the illusion that we were safe within these borders. We were caught asleep at the foot of the god of "me"-ism and consumerism. Yet for some shining moments and in light of the sheer scope of the human tragedy and drama played before us, we seemed to "get" it. But only TOO briefly did we seek God. Only for TOO short a time did we endeavor to love our neighbors. We again are lost in the crowds of Wall Street, Madison Avenue and the crowded lines of the twenty-first century temple of the commoner, Wal-Mart.

It's no secret......we're being told our government "knew" of the attacks and indeed had leads many months before 9/11. The talking heads and mouthpieces have trumpeted such news since January 2002. Nothing, obviously, was ever sufficiently acted upon.

The world is a far more evil place than we ever imagined. Our kings and "protectors" at the highest levels may be more compromised than we are ready to accept. Is it possible we might be pawns in a game of those who have interests beyond our own? Why can we not sustain inquiry long enough to give ourselves a chance to see all the angles on what's unfolding before us? This is a battle for our minds and it's far from over.

"Hello- welcome to Wal-Mart."


We know that we are God's children, and that the whole world lies under the power of the evil one. -John, 1 John 5:19

Back from a night in Cincy area after milling about, perusing good art, absorbing good music and laughing with good friends at the Save Elizabeth benefit. I thought it did swimmingly well. There may well be redemption yet for those fallen angels, huh Kevin?

Cathy and I got to hang a little with Isaac Rains on the steps of St. E's tonight. What a bright and thoughtful kid. It was neat to see how he processed things while talking about vowel sounds, adding 1 billion + 2 billion, riding his bike in circles and wondering out loud about changing his riding habits lest he "bust his tire." Then Zoe bee-bops by in her lil' dress and bright green frog rain galoshes replete with bugged-out frog eyes on the bottom. Reminded us as we had been reminded in times past..........great kids those Rains' tots are. Kevin and Tracy, you guys are doing a swell job parenting them. Just wanted to say that.

Topped off the evening with a fantastic couple, Chrisand Nicki Marshall. M'ladee and I have a tremendous appreciation and admiration for these guys and relish their wisdom, perspective and camraderie. This, despite the fact that Chris can hob-nob with world leaders and pack away plate of Squash Medley (ick!). (I'm just jealous.)

I'm In The Land of Crazies and I'm The Land Manager

.....and I'm loving it I might add.

In fact, I'm indigenous to the colony.

After four years of being in church planting, I couldn't dream of a wilder ride than this. It has been predictably unpredictable on a quantum scale. I hasten to say that the only thing that has been predictable is the guarantee that church planting thrusts one right into the foray of rather dramatic human brokenness as well as celebrative victories. Okay, perhaps the other predictable tenet is that my old habitual pastoral patterns want to interfere (with greasy, manipulative gloves donned) wherever a raw work of God emerges.

The illusions of ministry past are the old haunts of the spirit of "Me." It's not that I intended it that way. It's not that in spite of myself that God could not and did not accomplish things because I see he did. I now have a greater clarity with which to see how so much of "ministry" was done under the pretenses of my own strength. Believe me, you can get a lot done under your own strength. And I "did" a lot....... and derived not only exhaustion, but great satisfaction. My pervasive busyness of the olden days were, however, a cover for something else.

My "something else" may very well be the same things with which we all struggle, no matter who we are or what we do. Suffice it to say that endeavoring to follow Christ with the singular totality of one's being for the sake of the Kingdom Come/Coming is enough to magnify the struggle on a cosmic scale.

My/our "something else" is our woundedness and we CANNOT minister out of it. Church planting places us right in the midst of a massive human pile up. It's downright messy. If there is a conceptual model for what we are doing, it might be that of the triage. We no longer wonder who's wounded.....who's hurt.......who's got baggage and issues.........we're just learning how to pull them from the wreckage. Some are walking and spout blood all over you, exclaiming, "hey.....you're bleeding......what's wrong with YOU?"Some are so dead and gangrenous that, in their rigor mortis,they castigate you for your returning patches of pink, healthy tissue (while forgetting you emerged from the same calamity). Yet we love them all.

We could choose the safe sterility of a nice hospital but most die before they even think about needing to get there. And a lot of hospitals have had their life-giving nutrition and meds closet raided by the healed who refused their discharge orders.

We should, however, choose these bombed-out netherlands where there's a human wasteland because God has given all of us the tools to proclaim life, liberty and release to these captives. Isn't that what church planting should be about? And why were we deifying and lauding church planting models when we should have been talking about: how to prayerfully encourage someone on the phone while they end a homosexual relationship and drug relationship with the person right in front of them? Or about how to befriend the pagan/Wiccan family two houses down? Or about how to disciple a newly baptized, former Wiccan? Or how about the demonized schizophrenic calling at 3 am in the morning and the ensuing months of minstering to someone who appointed themself your church's "new prophet?" Or how to handle investing a year and a half in the lives of people only to have them leave it all and leave it all in a relative state of shamble? Or how about how to handle the knowledge of higher level occultists in your community? Or how to handle two solid weeks of 2-3 hang up calls per day when you launch your church? Or how to minister to your church when, as a whole, at least 75% of them have had some encounter or experiences in the occult? Or even when the very ones who say they are your brothers and sisters in Christ, demean, gossip and speak all kinds of evil against you?

How do you train for what is really needed to intervene supernaturally in lives such as these? You don't. You can't really. For a real move of God to occur requires a real move of our will. Knowledge and skill are necessary accessories, but not if they sub for real Spirit work. And since God wants to do it through you and me, we can't give out pieces of bloody bandage from our gaping cuts and expect much to happen. That's why church planting is NOT primarily about what I/we can DO FOR God. It is first and foremost about Him and what he wants to do IN US to change our hearts all along the way.He wants our hearts as they are but dares not leave them that way. If he doesn't have the church planter's heart and soul in total, then he'll have nothing at all and we'll have all of nothing. He can use a BROKEN man or woman, but he can't a wounded person unwilling to acquiesce to the Gentle Healer.

For me, that has been the challenge, the joy and the incomprehensible mystery of church planting- that I am neither the same person I was starting out in this four years ago nor am I the perfected saint I once and for all will be. Bondages, strongholds, lies and the demonics that perpetuate them have been revealed for what they are and are being replaced with the One Who speaks Truth into those places. I am believing that God places us around messed up people to not only show us how messed up we are, but to lovingly and gracefully offer us the chance to see the possibility that, if we let Him, He can and will heal us from our brokenheartedness and our historical hurts.

When it boils down to it (and it will), this is really- and quite simply- all about people and what God's doing with them. The gift of God is that he grants us the choice of being Church rather than DOING it. So what if it's a freak show? Let's step right up.