Perceiving Grace

Pregnant woman bicycles to the hospital

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 17:42:40 -0500

Being Blog: The God Who Fits Our Agenda: 9/11 Then and Now

Sat, 10 Sep 2011 07:33:06 -0500

Being Blog: The God Who Fits Our Agenda: 9/11 Then and Now:

by Debra Dean Murphy, special contributor

Photo by Aftab Uzzaman/Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0

September 11, 2001 was a Tuesday. Most of us remember that day and what we were doing around nine o’clock that morning. (I was at the veterinarian’s office; we had just gotten a puppy the…

Setting Their Hair on Fire

Fri, 09 Sep 2011 07:42:45 -0500

Setting Their Hair on Fire:

kateoplis:

Paul Krugman | NYT

O.K., about the Obama plan: It calls for about $200 billion in new spending — much of it on things we need in any case, like school repair, transportation networks, and avoiding teacher layoffs — and $240 billion in tax cuts. That may sound like a lot, but it actually isn’t. The lingering effects of the housing bust and the overhang of household debt from the bubble years are creating a roughly $1 trillion per year hole in the U.S. economy, and this plan — which wouldn’t deliver all its benefits in the first year — would fill only part of that hole. And it’s unclear, in particular, how effective the tax cuts would be at boosting spending.

Still, the plan would be a lot better than nothing, and some of its measures, which are specifically aimed at providing incentives for hiring, might produce relatively a large employment bang for the buck. As I said, it’s much bolder and better than I expected. President Obama’s hair may not be on fire, but it’s definitely smoking; clearly and gratifyingly, he does grasp how desperate the jobs situation is.

But his plan isn’t likely to become law, thanks to Republican opposition. And it’s worth noting just how much that opposition has hardened over time, even as the plight of the unemployed has worsened. […]

So, at this point, leading Republicans are basically against anything that might help the unemployed. Yes, Mr. Romney has issued a glossy, well-produced “jobs plan,” but it might best be described as 59 bullet points with nothing there — and certainly nothing to justify his assertion, bordering on megalomania, that he would create no fewer than 11 million jobs in four years.

The good news in all this is that by going bigger and bolder than expected, Mr. Obama may finally have set the stage for a political debate about job creation. For, in the end, nothing will be done until the American people demand action.

The US has roughly the same number of jobs today as it had in 2000, but the population is well over 30,000,000 larger. To get to a civilian employment-to-population ratio equal to that in 2000, we would have to gain some 18 MILLION jobs.

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 06:27:48 -0500

The US has roughly the same number of jobs today as it had in 2000, but the population is well over 30,000,000 larger. To get to a civilian employment-to-population ratio equal to that in 2000, we would have to gain some 18 MILLION jobs.

"[Right after September 11] the government relied on contractors to do the work … [because] Congress..."

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 14:35:02 -0500

“[Right after September 11] the government relied on contractors to do the work … [because] Congress and the White House didn’t want it to appear like they were growing government while they were asking the government to do much more.”

- Dana Priest, on the huge ‘terrorism industrial complex’ created after September 11. (via nprfreshair)

"Popular culture, on average, has been growing more cognitively challenging over the past thirty..."

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 11:05:02 -0500

“Popular culture, on average, has been growing more cognitively challenging over the past thirty years, not less. Despite everything you hear about declining standards and dumbing-down, you have to do more intellectual work to make sense of today’s television or games — much less the internet — than you did a few decades ago.”

- Steven Johnson in Follow For Now, a time-capsule of insight from some of today’s greatest thinkers (via curiositycounts)

Jittery

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 16:46:00 -0500

I’m really trying to work hard and live life in more grateful and humble fashion than I have in the past. I’m feeling quite jittery and am easily annoyed today. I’m quite tired, work was challenging this week, and the children are so happy and noisy. It’s all a bit more than I can take right now. Please….ssshhhh. Mmmmm…..tired…… I’d love to rest, but the children have a friend over and are playing quite nicely. Guests from out-of-town whom I did not know were coming are coming to visit in a couple of hours.

All that being said, today was quite nice. My wife and I had a nice date day hanging out at the library and an inexpensive lunch at an Indian buffet. Life feels a bit challenging right now, but we’re standing on the cusp of some lovely circumstances. My wife also told me that she thought that I should start writing down my experiences of growing up as a Pentecostal pastor’s son. She also told me that the hard part would be to stop editing myself and just write my story.

Neven Mrgan's tumbl: The Apple Logo

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 20:57:41 -0500

Neven Mrgan's tumbl: The Apple Logo:

mrgan:

The logo of Apple Inc. is among the best-known and best-designed in the world. It has lasted thirty-four years, and we have little reason to think it’ll be replaced any time soon.

It wasn’t designed by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Paul Rand, or Jonathan Ive. It was designed by an advertising…

beingblog: Classical Flash Mob Stuns Commuters Jesper Nordin...

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 08:08:10 -0500

beingblog:

Classical Flash Mob Stuns Commuters

Jesper Nordin conducts the Sjællands Symfoniorkester (Copenhagen Philharmonic) in a flash mob at Copenhagen Central Station playing Ravel’s Boléro. This kind of performance art reminds us that, when you least expect it, you can become submerged in beauty within moments: anywhere, by anyone (in street clothes, hauling a bassoon), and it can disappear just as quickly.

kateoplis: “This was a very typical time. I was single. All you...

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 20:37:25 -0500

kateoplis:

“This was a very typical time. I was single. All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and that’s what I had.”

—Steve Jobs in 1982 by Diana Walker (via: jedsundwall)

"To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community: I have always said if there ever came a..."

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 20:37:08 -0500

“

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

”

- Steve Jobs announced his third medical leave in the past decade in January. Our story from January here.

Reblog:

Text of resignation letter by former Apple CEO STEVE JOBS.

(via the Wall Street Journal)

Zombies

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 12:38:01 -0500

I’m really enjoying an anthology of zombie stories entitled The New Dead. It’s been a while since I really read for pleasure, and I find myself compulsively reading for the first time in a long time. It makes me happy. Sometimes, I feel quite sad and empty inside; perhaps, rather zombie like in my own way. However, many of the stories are stories of hope and strength, not infrequently demonstrated by the zombies themselves. The stories stimulate my imagination on spiritual and ethical musings. I’m not really aware of zombie history.

As far as I know, zombies sprung fully formed from the forehead of George Romero. I only knew of zombie movies, but not zombie books. I was curious about how the transition from film to text would work, but I find the stories to be quite good.

Whether through some catharsis, weird identification with zombies, or just macabre taste, the zombie stories are really helping me to feel better.

Gratitude

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 08:09:36 -0500

I struggle with bad vibes. Perhaps melancholy, grief, depression, or poor self-esteem would be more familiar terms but they’re not quite what I’m looking for. When I was pentecostal, I might have attributed my feelings to the work of the devil, but I think that humans do enough work to torture ourselves that, if there is a devil, he can just sit back and enjoy the suffering. We humans seem to find it so much easier to focus on what’s wrong in life rather than on what’s going well.

I’ve had two jarring experiences in my life which have helped me to realize that my feelings are not accurate interpretations of reality. The first was reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. The opening chapter recounts the making of the cosmos through music. It’s a beautiful myth of creation, and what makes it most beautiful is the manner in which the God character includes the dissonance and competing themes (evil if you will) into his music of creation, so that with the introduction of each dissonant theme the original theme becomes more complex and beautiful and satisfying. There is nothing which the Satan character can do which is not subsumed into God’s plan to make it more wild and beautiful. I like this particular creation myth because it implies that creation is an ongoing, evolutionary process rather than the once for all and we’re done phenomenon. The passage also reminds me that whatever dissonance, confusion, and turmoil I may be feeling (which is often) it can be used to make my life fuller, richer, and more interesting. Hopefully, I’ll become a better man as well.

The second jarring experience was listening to a homily of my friend Rev. Dennis Langdon. I must admit that I don’t remember the particular passage in the gospel, but it was one of those WTF does Jesus mean by that!? passages. Rev. Langdon began his homily by saying that the word “gospel” means good news and used his homily to try to figure out what the good news was. It was almost as if he had whispered into my ear, “hey, dumbass, you’re completely missing the point. Here’s what God’s trying to say, and what God says is good.” I’m almost never strong enough to practice the powerful and difficult lesson I learned that Sunday morning, but when I become too despondent I try to think of Dennis’ homily and look for the “good news” when I’m feeling like WTF has happened in my life.

In today’s gospel passage, Jesus sternly says the same thing. He castigates the Pharisees and hypocrites for implying that the gold is more holy than the sanctuary or that the offering is more holy than the altar. Jesus goes on to say that no matter what one swears by that eventually you get to God. The implication is that God is in creation and all creation is made holy. Jesus seems upset that the when the Pharisees and hypocrites were making converts that they were setting up distinctions between holy and not holy. I believe that the good news is that when Jesus stepped into human space-time that all creation was made holy because God, in the person of Jesus, stepped into creation and God’s very presence makes everything holy.

So, I guess I should stop being a dumbass and enjoy the gifts of God.

Rethinking education

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 22:07:00 -0500

Rethinking education:

We should stop handwringing about the poor state of education and realize that our world is changing, and we should be preparing future generations to thrive. I believe that we can do that by teaching flexibility of thought and creativity. If we provided more arts, humanities, and physical exercise problems teaching maths and science would be alleviated. I think that the reason the United States trails other countries in math and science is that there’s no real world application given. Maths and sciences are taught in the vacuum of the classroom, and if students were given more experience of the real world and maths and science were taught as descriptions of that world, then American students would quickly catch up if not surpass students in other countries in maths and sciences and not write run-on sentences ;-)

beingblog: How Do We Live and Honor Each Other Despite Our...

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 06:10:39 -0500

beingblog:

How Do We Live and Honor Each Other Despite Our Differences?

by Krista Tippett, host

This show with Richard Mouw was as hard as any in my memory to produce, edit, script — and even to justify, as news unfolded while we were creating it.

I have known Richard Mouw for 15 years and interviewed him on this program in its early days. Other Evangelical Christian leaders have been more visible in American political and media life: Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Ted Haggard, James Dobson, Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, and on the more progressive side Jim Wallis and Richard Cizik. I have followed them, but I have also always kept my ear and eye on quieter figures like Richard Mouw. As president of Fuller Theological Seminary, with more than 4,000 students from 70 countries and over 100 denominations, he is training generations of Evangelical and Pentecostal pastors and global leaders.

A book he first wrote in 1992, Uncommon Decency, has recently been released in a revised version with the subtitle, “Christian Civility in an Uncivil World.” Mouw has long been a kind of bridge person — theologically conservative on some issues and more progressive on others — but he most fervently insists that the way people are treated is a greater measure of Christian virtue than the positions one takes. I’ve wondered rhetorically how our political life would have evolved differently if the Christian re-emergence into politics in the late 20th century had modeled a practical love of enemies.

My own deepest despair at present is not about the vitriol and division per se — as alarming as they are. It is about the fact that we seem to be losing any connective tissue for engaging at all, on a human level, across ruptures of disagreement. Across the political spectrum, many increasingly turn to journalism not for knowledge but to confirm individual pre-existing points of view. What we once called the red state, blue state divide is now more like two parallel universes where understandings of plain fact are no longer remotely aligned. This leads to a diminishing sense of the humanity of those who think and live differently than we do. And that is the ultimate moral slippery slope, for everyone on it and for the fabric of our civic life.

Richard Mouw lays out the imperative to all kinds of Christians for gentleness, reverence, humanity, and “honor” of the different other at the heart of the Bible and the life of Jesus. But this is not a feel-good plea for harmony. Even as he calls for civility and gentleness, Mouw reasserts his public and private opposition to gay marriage and civil unions. The civility he calls for would not minimize difference, at least at the outset, but would create a different space for discussing and navigating it — indeed for bringing differences into public life with virtue and vitality of expression. Picking up on a phrase coined by Christian historian Martin Marty, Richard Mouw builds upon this idea of “convicted civility.”

We had impassioned and difficult discussions on our production team about his ideas, and the complications and contradictions they present. When he says that, as a Christian, he sees other human beings as “works of divine art,” can that genuinely apply to a person whose sexual identity he defines as fundamentally wrong?

This all drives towards a question I pursue in so many of my conversations: How does social change happen? We will not all be “on the same page,” as Americans like to be, on sexuality or many other issues for generations to come. The 21st century has opened up questions Western civilization thought it had put to rest. Some of them are intimate and raw, terrifying in every life at some point and therefore all the more unsettling when we are forced to ponder them out in the open together. Same-sex marriage is but the tip of an iceberg of human redefinition: What is relationship? What is marriage? What is friendship? What constitutes a family? In this messy moment, we retain our rights and responsibilities as human beings and citizens to discern our truths and live by them. But we have no choice, at the same time, if we want this to end well, to search for new ways to discern our multiple truths while living together.

Richard Mouw suggests that we need to start some of our conversations again from the beginning, certainly the conversation about sexuality. He believes that only by naming our hopes and our fears, articulating them among ourselves, revealing them to each other, can we begin to recreate something called a common life, which can contain, and not be destroyed by, our differences. I want to believe him, to believe that this is one answer to the question of how social change happens. If I didn’t believe that a new kind of conversation can also be a starting point for walking forwards together — living together, differently — I would not do what I do.

And yet, maybe another reality we have to live with is that these critical new conversations will start small, in many places, compelling us to connect dots for awhile in lieu of convening the sweeping dialogue we might hope for. We’ve posted a piece we admire by fellow journalist Sasha Aslanian titled “Sex, Death, and Secrets” — featuring an interview with two lesbian pastors who’ve experienced a roller coaster ride of discernment within their own denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Please add your thoughts, stories, and pictures — your dots, if you will — to this difficult, dispersed, essential conversation.

chicagopubliclibrary: The mystery has been solved. The...

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 15:58:47 -0500

chicagopubliclibrary:

The mystery has been solved.

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow is this fall’s One Book, One Chicago selection. Join Chicagoans in reading and discussing this classic Chicago novel. For a full listing of events taking place this September and October, go to onebookonechicago.org.

One Book, One Chicago: Protecting the Mockingbirds from Harm

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 14:52:03 -0500

One Book, One Chicago: Protecting the Mockingbirds from Harm:

onebookonechicago:

In To Kill a Mockingbird Atticus and Miss Maudie work together to make sure Scout knows that it is a sin to kill a mockingbird, because they are utterly harmless, living only to make music we enjoy. Boo Radley never harms a fly, and leaves treasures to share with Scout and her brother Jem. Tom…

"Well, look, maybe blogging and tweeting have degraded my ability to think so dramatically that I..."

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 07:39:44 -0500

“Well, look, maybe blogging and tweeting have degraded my ability to think so dramatically that I just can’t see Gabler’s point even though it’s staring me in the face. But does he really think that high school sophomores use Twitter and Facebook as replacements for the deep thoughts and sophisticated conversations they used to have? That they used to sit around debating Niebuhr and Friedan but don’t anymore because they’re too busy with their Tumblr pages? Maybe that’s how things were at Gabler’s high school, but they sure weren’t at mine.”

- Kevin Drum at Mother Jones responding to Neal Gabler’s NYT piece in which he claims that social media is degrading the way we think and generate ideas. (via thepoliticalnotebook)

Two days later, our post about Michele Bachmann — you know the one — is drawing significant amounts of debate on Google+.

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 12:52:45 -0500

Two days later, our post about Michele Bachmann — you know the one — is drawing significant amounts of debate on Google+.:

thepoliticalnotebook:

shortformblog:

Warning: There is profanity in it (so careful hopping in), but there are also good points being made about the photo in question. Our personal take: It’s funny, but it’s funny in that “I can’t believe they actually took that photo” sort of way. Ultimately, as a culture we need to have a debate about whether we should necessarily use an unflattering photo just because we can. Or whether we should hold our politicians to the same standard Perez Hilton holds celebrities. Look, people on the left dislike Michele Bachmann, but there are far better ways to prove your point than by taking photos of her eating corn dogs in an unintentionally risqué way.

I think the problem is that people find it appropriate in general to ridicule a female politician for things like this, to reduce the discussion of her campaign to an unfortunate photograph with a corn dog or her “crazy eyes.” There’s a culture of acceptance around sexualizing the women that are in the public eye and around reducing them to objects of ridicule for how they look. We have a number of reasons to invalidate Michele Bachmann: every single one of those reasons comes from her horrible politics and the uninformed things that come out of her mouth. None of them come from how she looks, or how she dresses, or how she photographs. Instead of deconstructing her lack of understanding about the debt ceiling, pointing out her stances on gay marriage and taxing corporations, or discussing her political influences, we find it acceptable, actually preferable even, to use an offensive photo as our primary tool against her. The reductionist, gendered lens through which we view female politicians is indicative of the seriousness with which we take the notion of a female candidate. This is the kind of atmosphere that bullies women out of formal politics and the kind of atmosphere that prevents us from having actual discussions of political issues. Like SFB rightly says, “there are far better ways.”

8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 21:01:34 -0500

8 Reasons Young Americans Don't Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance:

kateoplis:

How exactly has American society subdued young Americans?

Student-Loan Debt. Large debt—and the fear it creates—is a pacifying force. […] Public universities continue to be free in the Arab world and are either free or with very low fees in many countries throughout the world. The millions of young Iranians who risked getting shot to protest their disputed 2009 presidential election, the millions of young Egyptians who risked their lives earlier this year to eliminate Mubarak, and the millions of young Americans who demonstrated against the Vietnam War all had in common the absence of pacifying huge student-loan debt. […]

Psychopathologizing and Medicating Noncompliance. In 1955, Erich Fromm, the then widely respected anti-authoritarian leftist psychoanalyst, wrote, “Today the function of psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis threatens to become the tool in the manipulation of man.” Fromm died in 1980, the same year that an increasingly authoritarian America elected Ronald Reagan president, and an increasingly authoritarian American Psychiatric Association added to their diagnostic bible (then the DSM-III) disruptive mental disorders for children and teenagers such as the increasingly popular “oppositional defiant disorder” (ODD). The official symptoms of ODD include “often actively defies or refuses to comply with adult requests or rules,” “often argues with adults,” and “often deliberately does things to annoy other people.” […]

Read on. (via)