What's your manifesto?

This week I read that Chris Dorner, the LA police officer who sought revenge by killing some people, had a manifesto. "Like the Unabomber," wrote the news reporter. Manifestos aren't only about destruction, you know, though they seem to get a bad rap. They can give us focus. They can speak our heart's lovely desires and our life's creative purposes.

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taxes and churches: time to talk?

The ministry center I run, UrbanSpirit, used to own a church building. A big, old church building, with, um, issues.

Not the least of the issues were the beasts that constantly set off the motion detectors -- spider webs, a rattling door. My cat Beckett, which is how I came to adopt him. The alarm system also warned of actual intruders. It was these the alarm was intended to guard against. The problem was there were way too many of the other things. In the beginning, the alarm company would call the police, and I would meet them there, sometimes deep into the wee hours, fearful of what we may find. Most times it was nothing, but sometimes it was something. Either way, I was awfully happy the police were willing to be the ones to figure it out.

Eventually, the police department began charging a fee for false alarms…

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In defense of knowledge.

Jon Stewart always makes me laugh when he chastises his audience for not connecting with a classic cultural reference (like the ending of Les Miserables). “Read a f***ing book!” he bellows in mock disgust (sometimes at me, since I don’t understand everything he says) and everyone laughs. But the larger truth isn’t really that funny.

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Coal to Newcastle

According to this morning's Associated Press report, gifts are pouring into Newtown, CT, from around the world. Money, toys, food, whatever. Two-point-eight million so far – that is $2,800,000. “On Saturday, all the town’s children were invited to the Edmond Town Hall in Newtown to choose from among hundreds of toys donated by individuals, organizations and toy stores.”

…

At the risk of seeming heartless and cynical, let me be clear: their heartache wasn’t caused by lack of money. And won’t be fixed by contributions. Money – even large amounts of money – can’t make up for the loss of children.

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Something big happened on Friday.

I knew a pastor long ago and far away who wrote his sermons 4-6 months in advance. I wrote mine at 3 am Sunday morning (I had to be in the shower by 6, or I’d miss worship). I “justified” my procrastination by saying I was waiting for the latest word from the Holy Spirit. He defended his by noting that he would drop in relevant cultural references when the time came.

What sort of sermon would have to have been written last August for the massacre of 6-year-olds to be merely a relevant cultural reference?

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lessons from our past

I knew generally about the dust bowl — about the poverty, how hard the depression hit the area. What I didn’t know was that it was a disaster made of human greed and over-reach. Plowing up millions of acres of grassy plains turned out to be a bad idea. It worked out ok as long as there was a wheat market, but when that crashed and the farmers quit planting, then the fields were unprotected. Unrooted. There was nothing to keep millions of acres of dirt from blowing away.

Like the dot.com boom, or the housing/mortgage boom. Or other highs in our nations’s history that were followed shortly by bust. As with most of those things, the most vulnerable, the ones feeling the most pain when it is done were the ones with the least control in making it happen.

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world on fire

So I’m probably not suggesting we actually torch anything. But it isn’t just metaphorical, either. I think we have to ask ourselves and one another: What kind of fire is required to shape our public life and move us to a new vision? Are we brave enough to set that kind of fire?

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