Pope John Paul II on Consumerism

It is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed towards 'having' rather than 'being,' and which wants to have more, not in order to be more but in order to spend life in enjoyment as an end in itself.  It is therefore necessary to create life-styles in which the quest for truth, beauty, goodness, and communion with others for the sake of common growth are the factors which determine consumer choices, savings, and investments. 

~from Centesimus annus

Sabbath (from Abraham Joshua Heschel)

“He who wants to enter the holiness of the day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil.  He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life.  He must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the world has already been created and will survive without the help of man.  Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul.  The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else.  Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self.”

“The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space.  Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time.  It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world.”

“Not only the hands of man celebrate the day, the tongue and soul keep the Sabbath.  One does not talk on it in the same manner in which one talks on weekdays.  Even thinking of business or labor should be avoided.”

“Labor is a craft, but perfect rest is an art.”

Uncle Jimmy w/ Brian & Meka

John Wesley on Spiritual Life (particularly of pastors)

Following Jesus may not be easy but it may very well be just this simple.  As trite as the daily "quiet time" might seem, there is absolutely nothing more vital for spiritual transformation than interaction/dialogue with God in prayer and the Bible every day.  Stop depending on other stuff to "feed you," feed yourself.  We don't live on bread alone, after all.

John Wesley, the eighteenth-century founder of the Methodists, wrote of his own spiritual disciplines and his daily time of solitude at 4:30 or 5:00 a.m.: "Here then I am, far from the busy ways of men. I sit down alone; only God is here, in his presence I open, I read his book; for this end, to find the way to heaven." In the letter he wrote to a pastor 250 years ago on August 7, 1760, Wesley clearly stated the importance of soul care for pastors: "[This is] what has exceedingly hurt you in times past, nay, and I fear, to this day ... Whether you like it or no, read and pray daily. It is for your life; there is no other way ... Do justice to your own soul; give it time and means to grow. Do not starve yourself any longer."  (From the article Soul Care & the Roots of Clergy Burnout by Anne Dilenschneider)

CLICK HERE to read the full article in the Huffington Post.  

Interesting thought re: Wesley's theology of the providence of God

"The coherence of Wesley's teaching on the omnipotence of God is questionable.  How God is the sole agent whose providence is responsible for everything except human sin is not clear.  Wesley protects human freedom, but even that is to be ascribed to God's grace.  One reason his thought is not very coherent here is that it is peripheral to his primary concern - God's saving grace.  It is God as loving parent he most wishes to describe, not God the agent whose existence explains causality in the physical world." 

| United Methodist Doctrine: The Extreme Center by Scott J. James

Baseball Radio

Baseball is made for the radio. But the radio is pretty irrelevant, so I learned that these Podcast things are pretty cool. Not surprisingly, my favorite one is about baseball. It's by the main prospect guy from that beloved/reviled Baseball Prospectus. If you like baseball/the Reds/Steve Albini start with this one from last week:

"Green Apple Is Not Cool"

Meka vs. Eden in "Movie Hockey"?

Meka: Eden pushed me in the hallway!
Eden: Meka, I'm just playing movie hockey!

Super Slow Mo Slaps from Mythbusters [VIDEO]

Ed Helms (aka. Andy Bernard) on Fresh Air

Fun stuff on Fresh Air today.  Ed Helms & his band, the Lonesome Trio, play music. And talk & stuff.

CLICK HERE to listen.

motown

a remnant of detroit's golden days. check out the whole slideshow of detroit's fall on the link below. beautiful ruins.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,739986,00.html

Amusing Customer Service from theGameShop.com

This was in the email regarding my order:

After months of hard work, our senior toy maker has finally finished making your games. All the game pieces have been carved by hand to your exact specifications. The board was painstakingly hand-painted to be a glorious work of art. Then the contents were inspected by a team of 30 highly trained employees to ensure that your games would be perfect for the upcoming game night with your family or friends. Your games were then given to our packing specialists who placed your games into the finest gold-lined mahogany box that money can buy. We all had a wonderful celebration when it was sealed, and the entire city of Philadelphia came out to wave "Bon Voyage!" to your package as it was loaded into our privately rented FedEx truck.

Grace E-Bike Proves Electric Transport Can Look Tough & Stylish (via @fastcodesign)

Love this description:

The ultralight Grace electric bicycle is greener than a car, less douchey than a Vespa, and looks amazing. 

How do you satisfy a bike snob, a sustainable urbanite, and a slightly lazy normal person at the same time? The Grace Pro E-motorbike, that's how. It's an ultralight commuter bicycle with a handmade aluminum frame and a lithium-ion battery to pick up the slack while climbing tough hills. But with killer styling from handlebar to taillight, the Grace Pro looks respectable enough to win over even a grizzled fixie-riding bike messenger.

See the whole post: http://bit.ly/fWg6ig

Social Media Venn Diagram (via Despair.com)

Cross to bear?

For quite some time I've been bothered by the way we folk often use the expression, "that's my cross to bear."  We say that to refer to our hangnails, difficulties at work, hard to handle children, or any number of life's miscellany that presents us with an inconvenience or challenge.  In the book From the Library of C.S. Lewis I came upon this passage from C.H. Dodd this morning.  He says what I've felt but been unable to articulate as well.

It has been taken to refer to habitual forms of self-sacrifice or self-denial.  The ascetic voluntarily undergoing austerities felt himself to be bearing his daily cross.  We shallower folk have often reduced it to a metaphor for casual unpleasantness which we have to bear.  A neuralgia or a defaulting servant is our "cross," and we make a virtue of necessity.  What Jesus actually said, according to our earliest evidence, was, quite bluntly, "Whoever wants to follow me must shoulder his gallows beam" - for such is perhaps the most significant rendering of the word for "cross."  It meant a beam which a condemned criminal carried to the place of execution, to which he was then nailed until he died.  Jesus was not using the term metaphorically.  Under Rome, crucifixion was the likeliest fate for those who defied the established powers.  Nor did those who heard understand that He was asking for "daily" habits of austerity.  He was enrolling volunteers for a desperate venture and He wished them to understand that joining it they must hold their lives forfeit.  To march behind Him on that journey was as good as to tie a halter around one's neck.  It was a saying for an emergency.  A similar emergency may arise for some Christians in any age.  In such a situation it is immediately applicable, in its original form and meaning.  For most of us, in normal situations, it is not so applicable.  But it is surely good for us to go back and understand that this is what Christ stood for in His day.  We shall then at least not suppose that we are meeting His demands in our day bearing a toothache bravely or fasting during Lent.

"Neil Young" (aka. Jimmy Fallon) & Bruce Springsteen perform "Whip My Hair." Brillian! [VIDEO]

Marcel The Shell With Shoes On [VIDEO]

MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON from Dean Fleischer-Camp on Vimeo.

Hauschka & his prepared piano via NPR [VIDEO]

On NPR's All Things Considered this evening there was a fantastic bit about an artist who goes by Hashka & puts a bunch of junk in the grand piano creating fascinating sounds. Amazing stuff. CLICK HERE for the whole story & other videos @ NPR.

Reading & what the world wide interwebs have done to it

I was recently given a Barnes & Noble Nook. It's raised a myriad of questions...

What constitutes a book? Who owns the "book" on my device? What's an eBook "worth"? Shouldn't there be some way for me to get the hard copy books I own onto my device? Will reading on a device have the positive effect on my kids that we know setting an example of reading codex forms of books do? Don't I have an obligation to the environment and to stewardship of the earth to give reading on a device a shot (after about a dozen books the eReader becomes greener, as long as you aren't upgrading devices every year)? And more...

At his blog Scott McKnight discusses the ideas from the book The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time. (I checked to see if it was available on the Nook. It is not). McKnight summarizes some of the books thoughts:

The distraction of the internet age is one that seduces us into thinking that we can, if we read more e-mails or more tweets, be in the know or more up-to-date. There is a genine anxiety about not keeping up. 15 years ago we didn’t try to keep up with most of what drives us.


The internet provides mostly information, endless and never-ending. Reading probes into wisdom through reflection. Internet reading is an emotional hit and run; reading a good book, undistracted, for hours at a time digs deeper. There is a difference between an informed brain and a literary brain.


Reading a book well means entering into a history of conversation into which that book fits. The internet is not a conversation but a buzz of information, disconnected and disconnecting.... 

Real reading generates memory because it leads us into the world of an author and a story and a book that is interconnected to other books. Why remember when you can look it up? ...

Internet reading is about being connected; real reading, book reading, means being disconnected and lost in the world of the book.

I certainly feel the anxiety when I am not "keeping up" with the stream of information, whether that's the daily articles in my email inbox or the blogs I read used to read or my twitter feed or the newspaper I try to read on my phone. Distraction. Yeah. That's pretty much the issu...woah...a video of a kitten...

Missionary Builds Flying Car. For Reals. [VIDEO]

Baby Quinn Learning to Walk [VIDEO]

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Forgive My Family | Sermon 10-24-10 [VIDEO]

Forgive My Family | 10-24-10 from Anderson Hills United Methodist on Vimeo.

Doggie Duathlon 2010, Cheryl & Dylan [VIDEO]

Rock Show? Worship? What's the difference these days. What's "good" worship?

 

On the twitter this week this picture was posted by a church-leadery-business-thinker-type-of-person I ended up following along the way somewhere. The caption said this: "Top picture is from the inside cover of my new #Rush DVD, bottom is #OneLife worship from tonight."

Now...I can't tell for certain but it sounds like that's a good thing to him.

Is it really a good thing (or is it a bad thing or doesn't it matter) that our worship services look like a Rush show (or any other rock concert for that matter)? Do our toes have to tingle & chests feel the thump of the bass & the chord progression have to be catchy like a rock show? Hmm...

The Rise of Text Messaging [INFOGRAPHIC] (via @mashable)