(A/Poem…

Quiet, subtle and queer, the man like Jesus.
He wore eyes like emerald in their sparkle-
Much like a warriors’ arms, disarming hostility.
Blessed are the peace makers.

Landscappy, abstacty, and smiling eyes.
Cheers

Jerky, quick, generous and genius.
The philosopher is. And always laughing.
He’ll speak in tongues when no one is looking,
Buckdaft, nice one, take the piss, bang on, and cheers.

Oh and she knows pain, she’s so creative with it, that, and those liquid Caucasians’ she’s an artist-princess and he has such cool hair, he’ll rouse the crew for a drink or two.

I feel hope; it emanates from the wall of this new expression. Roxie’s a dreaklock dog that aint dreading so well.

Oh well, he’ll ramble us through and explain it better than any of us, with fire.

Add tunes and she’ll capture our faces landscaped in a dream.

They are… iconic, apocalyptic, heretical, emerging, failing…

and they are friends.

How (Not) to speak of Pete Rollins

We spent the week with Pete Rollins, author of “How (Not) To Speak of God“, and a founder of ikon. What can I say except it was fun. Pete is a great guy and if you ever get the chance to hang out with him, do it. I say it is even better than reading his  book.

Church Beer!

I don’t know why I haven’t posted on this before, but our church, or rather one of the communities that I am a part of, is brewing it’s own beer. Yep, it’s true, in the ancient tradition of Christianity, mostly monks, and Martin Luther, who, at one point in his life was a monk, we are brewing beer as a community. This generally gets a lot of responses when we tell people, especially since a lot of us come out of an evangelical background. And the word travels fast. In fact, I was at a conference recently and was approached by a Welsh guy, one of the speakers, and his first question was “You’re from Arizona right? You’re the guy with the church that brews beer?” -And he flashed a big smile. We became friends quickly and planned a pilgrimage to Ireland.

Okay, so some questions on this:

Why? Lots of reasons. We can talk about those in the comments section if you’d like. For the most part it is to create something as a community. And to offer a great product to others.

What? Well right now we are experimenting with various brews, learning the process and trying to settle on an initial recipe that we like.

What’s it called? We’re not sure yet. We are still thinking of names, do you have any ideas for us?

Will it be made available to the public? We hope so, eventually. We would like to offer it as gift, as hospitality, to the world. And we would love for a portion of the proceeds to go into our works of Social Justice.

An interesting link: This is what I got when I googled church beer.

These sites are especially interesting: www.churchbrew.com, www.beerchurch.com, www.thechurchofbeer.com

Cheers!

ikon website

f’n brilliant, I think. Have you seen Ikon’s website lately, the one that is modeled after wikipedia? It really says something, when a community allows their web-presence to be edited by the masses. But should we expect anything less from this group of createalogians. (I made that word up, let me know if you like it.) It is from this group that we get the fantastic book How Not to Speak of God.

the soul friend/ Celtic Spirituality

I have been reading Anam Cara by John O’ Donohue these days. Actually I have been taking a class on Celtic Spirituality this semester and this book was a great surprise of a reading assignment. The class has actually been a good journey. If you ever find yourself at the University of Arizona wondering about Celtic Spirituality, I suggest Dr. Peter Foley’s class.

So, I just wanted to share a few quotes from the book Anam Cara with you. These are in no particular order, I hope they enrich you as they have me.

“To be holy is to be natural, to befriend the worlds that come together in you.”

“Friendship is a creative and subversive force. It claims that intimacy is the secret law of life and universe.”

“Behind the facade of image and distraction, each person is an artist in this primal and inescapable sense. Each one of us is doomed and privileged to be an inner artist who carries and shapes a unique world.”

“Love is our deepest nature, and consciously or unconsciously, each of us searches for love. We often choose such false ways to satisfy this deep hunger. An excessive concentration on work, achievements, or spiritual quest can actually lead us away from the presence of love. “

” The blade of nothingness cuts deeply. Others want to love, to give themselves, but they have no energy. They carry around in their hearts the corpses of past relationships and are addicted to hurt as confirmation of identity.”

“Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition.”

“You can never be fully visually present to yourself…Your Anam Cara [Gaelic for Soul Friend] is the truest mirror to reflect your soul.”

“The Celts had an intuitive spirituality informed by mindful and reverant attention to landscape.”

“One of the tasks of true friendship is to listen compassionately and creatively to the hidden silence.”

Cleveland!

Well folks I am off to Cleveland, Ohio for the weekend. Why? It rocks, okay sorry about that, I promised myself I wouldn’t say that, I did, my bad. In reality we are heading out there to visit my large exteneded family, most of whom I haven’t seen in ten years. It is amazing how fast time ticks by. Heidi, my wife hasn’t even met them.

Why else? The main reason is to visit my grandmother who is pretty ill, in every sense of the word, I mean she has cancer and is as cool as an underground hip-hop crew. When I was a child she was perhaps my favorite person, more so even than Spider-man. When I was knocking on heavens door, lying in a hospital bed at three years old, she was there for me. I guess it is only right to follow her example.

tucson has an irish pub!

Okay I am a big fan of Irish Pubs, and most things Irish for that matter. However I have spent most of my days in Tucson, Arizona which until recently was desolate in the way of Irish Pubs. My favorite Irish pub is Molly Malones in Helsinki. Helsinki is undoubtedly one of my favorite cities, only its so far away. Oh the dilemma, where to find authentic Irish fayre, atmosphere and a cold glass of Guinness.

Now for the gospel- we have an Irish Pub, and, oh and, it is within walking distance of my house! Oh God loves me! It is true The Auld Dubliner has at last arrived. The entire place was crafted in Ireland and shipped over, no kidding. The Food? Well they serve among the traditional Irish fayre, Leprechaun Balls! Leprechaun balls are flash fried little potatoes smothered in hot wing sauce and blue cheese crumbles, the true food of the little people. The Guinness? Ice cold and well poured. And if you have a tmobile account you can mooch wireless off of the Starbucks next-door. Need I say more?

this post was written and posted from the auld dubliner. hooray.

Roots, Rock and Reggae

I just returned form the Roots Rock and Reggae Festival. Wow, what a way to end the summer! The jams were flowing like wine at the banquet of Dionysus. The line up included, among others, Steve and Ziggy Marley. They remained true the reggae tradition of singing about love, freedom and power to the people. It was a great experience.

Brian McLaren at Mars Hill Bible Church

Yes folk, it’s a little like having the Christmas and Thanksgiving holidays all at once! I am of course referring Brian McLaren speaking at Mars Hill Bible Church recently. Just as Christmas and Thanksgiving are my two favorite holidays, when it comes to spirituality, Christianity and the emerging church, Brian and Mars Hill are up at the top for me.

Brian suggests that the picture on the box doesn’t match the puzzle pieces we have. That is when it comes to the predominant christian worldview (the picture on the box), versus what we actually discover in sacred scripture (the puzzle pieces). You can download the talk from the mars hill website here.

aREA 215

Hey check out the Area 215 Blog, were blogging again, at long last. It’s about time guys!

word.

So a friend of mine posted an entry on his blog called the gospel in tights (check it out). He is of course referring to superman, (of course). The idea is that maybe we as humans are all connected to some larger story,-a meta-narrative, if you will. The idea that in our stories, we are constantly expressing, at least in part, this one story that we are all connected to. More than being connected to, I might suggest that we are in. Think about it, all the great stories seem to deal with such universal themes, things like, good and evil, failure and redemption, hope and purpose. Have you ever stopped to ask why these things might be so important to us as people? Why they are, so, human? Could it be that we really are a whole lot more connected than we think we are? Could it be that that which bonds us, is a lot bigger than that which separates? Perhaps it is that we are all created equal and yearn to know what it means to be fully human. And that we are a part of a story that matters. That everything around us, and in us, and all over us tells the story?

Or maybe we just like to see flying men in tights?

What do you think?

St . Patrick

Happy St. Patrick’s day. St Patrick is one of my favorite Saints, no kidding. He was perhaps the first person to actually take the story of Jesus and His way of life to the ends of the known world, at his time, (early 5^th century). Ireland, at that time was actually beyond the reaches of the great Roman Empire, Patrick or Patricius was originally from Britain and ended up in Ireland as a slave. If you haven’t read How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill, you are missing out on a great telling of one of the most overlooked periods of history and yet one of the most important.

I was sent the following article in an email today; it speaks to some of the fascinating story of one of my hero’s, St. Patrick. Enjoy.

“If you ask people who Saint Patrick was, you’re likely to hear that he was an Irishman who chased the snakes out of Ireland.

It may surprise you to learn that the real Saint Patrick was not actually Irish—yet his robust faith changed the Emerald Isle forever.

Patrick was born in Roman Britain to a middle-class family in about A.D. 390. When Patrick was a teenager, marauding Irish raiders attacked his home. Patrick was captured, taken to Ireland, and sold to an Irish king, who put him to work as a shepherd.

In his excellent book, How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill describes the life Patrick lived. Cahill writes, “The work of such slave-shepherds was bitterly isolated, months at a time spent alone in the hills.”

Patrick had been raised in a Christian home, but he didn’t really believe in God. But now—hungry, lonely, frightened, and bitterly cold—Patrick began seeking out a relationship with his heavenly Father. As he wrote in his Confessions, “I would pray constantly during the daylight hours” and “the love of God . . . surrounded me more and more.”

Six years after his capture, God spoke to Patrick in a dream, saying, “Your hungers are rewarded. You are going home. Look—your ship is ready.”

What a startling command! If he obeyed, Patrick would become a fugitive slave, constantly in danger of capture and punishment. But he did obey—and God protected him. The young slave walked nearly two hundred miles to the Irish coast. There he boarded a waiting ship and traveled back to Britain and his family.

But, as you might expect, Patrick was a different person now, and the restless young man could not settle back into his old life. Eventually, Patrick recognized that God was calling him to enter a monastery. In time, he was ordained as a priest, then as a bishop.

Finally—thirty years after God had led Patrick away from Ireland—He called him back to the Emerald Isle as a missionary.

The Irish of the fifth century were a pagan, violent, and barbaric people. Human sacrifice was commonplace. Patrick understood the danger and wrote: “I am ready to be murdered, betrayed, enslaved—whatever may come my way.”

Cahill notes that Patrick’s love for the Irish “shines through his writings . . . He [worried] constantly for his people, not just for their spiritual but for their physical welfare.”

Through Patrick, God converted thousands. Cahill writes, “Only this former slave had the right instincts to impart to the Irish a New Story, one that made sense of all their old stories and brought them a peace they had never known before.” Because of Patrick, a warrior people “lay down the swords of battle, flung away the knives of sacrifice, and cast away the chains of slavery.” -From Break Point.