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.