Things I read in the Bible today that I swear to God were not in there before Eugene Peterson learned how to type:

“I can’t stand your religious meetings.
I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions.
I want nothing to do with your religion projects,
your pretntious slogans and goals.
I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes,
your public relations and image making.
I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.
When was the last time you sang to me?
Do you know what I want?
I want justice — oceans of it.
I want fairness — rivers of it.
That’s what I want. That’s all I want. ” Amos 5

Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about.

“Religion is the most dangerous energy source known to humankind. The moment a … {read more…}

We went to Hawaii recently. While we were there we drove three hours to see Kilauea, one of three active volcanoes on the island and the only one that is currently busy spewing lava through a vent in her side. Dusk found us huddled with other visitors at a spot where there road dead ended because lava had flowed over it on its relentless path to the sea. A portable shelter was there, which had been moved many times in 2000 when the lava flow kept spreading southward. We stood there gnawing sandwiches, binoculars glued to our eyes as the sun fell and the glow rose on the side of the mountain, revealing three red pots overflowing and spilling down the slope high above us on the left flank of Pu ‘u ‘O ‘o. This ecological image was especially moving coming off of Lent – I couldn’t help but spin artistic analogies between this creator-god volcano bleeding from her side and my creator-God bleeding from his. When we had had our fill of wonder, we walked home like New Age pilgrims returning from some late night revelry at Stonehenge, swinging darkened flashlights from our wrists. You see, the stars lay so thickly across the sky and spread across the horizons curve all the way to the water’s distant edge. The moon’s thin crescent glowed from the bottom of her curved form. Flashlights were redundant. We were connected with something there. A truth many cultures have struggled to name. A power. A beauty. We felt it together, and no one wrestled to win a contest of names.

The volcano is pretty quiet right now, but for years the big crater was a boiling sea of lava that caused writers like Mark Twain to write moving paragraphs about gazing down into the depths of hell. Well-healed tourists would actually climb down into the crater and spend six or eight hours just watching liquefied pre-formed earth churn, spout, and spatter around them. The locals who wrote our tour book went on quiet poetically about how amazing it is to see the lava flow when it is slipping off the side of the mountain and into the sea. (Something Pele wasn’t offering to us when we were there.) They talked about how viewers would stand along the uneven turf and whisper to their children that they were watching the earth be born. Watching the creative power of God. Genesis continued.

I feel like that is happening in me these days – in emerging church, in my missional community (language fails here). I feel like my mind/spirit/ being is a crater full of lava. …
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I do a lot of centering prayer with my girls. The way we do it is we sit down, hold hands, close our eyes, take a deep breath in and a deep breath out, and ask God to show us what he is doing. (Or to show us what he looks like, or something similar.) Here are a couple of things Eden (age 5) and Cate (age 3) have seen lately.

In the center of the labyrinth on Good Friday:

“I see God filling up little white packets with love and the the packets turn into stars and they sprinkle love on people (to get more love) in the night sky.”

Cate followed this up with:

“I see Jesus dripping love.” … {read more…}

Bono, as always, rocks the house in Berlin.

“Tonight I’d like to talk about getting on the right side of history. Not just me but all of us…..

Every age has its defining struggle; and the last one, in large part, was waged and won here in Berlin - the fight against fascism and Sovietism. People braver than me won that one.

But our generation has its own defining struggle, and it’s the fight against AIDS and the extreme poverty that fuels its spread and against our own indifference. That’s our struggle. And unlike before, Berlin’s not the frontline, although there are definitely battles to be fought here.

No, the frontline is Africa. I know that’s … {read more…}