Fences & footprints

Accusations
-You’re outside the fence!
But who erected it in the first place?
Jesus says
-Come to me
And the invitation to leave aside all that holds us back

Yet Phari-sees
We add to the weight of the oppressed
-Be like us or he won’t accept you

When he is we
And his acceptance is based on faith in a person
Not interpretation of a proposition

We reduce conversation to catechism
And faith to assent
When we are called to radical living that engenders faith

-The word of God says
Becomes a weapon of exclusion
And insomuch we deny our very Lord who says
-Come
For those who come
find that we have locked the door
To protect ourselves
When the message of hope and life has no bounds
And true religion is to break the bondage of the oppressed

Can’t you see that in unlocking the door we are freeing ourselves to truly live
To put flesh on God amongst those to need to see him most

Ghosts and Halloween are evil we say
But the real evil is that millions are dying of starvation while we just
Booty, God, booty

Since when has
-live justly
meant
-Be pious when others can see you
We forget that in a global world
buying a pair cheap pair of shoes is a Moral choice
That our footprint on the earth leaves an imprint
In us
In others

That the boundaries we draw
Form over meaning
Are the fence that keeps those God is drawing
OUT
And that ain’t no justice

I am left speechless, except to ask
-How long?

24 But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!

Man Cave

What's a Man Cave?

man cave n. A dedicated area of a house, such as a basement, workshop, or garage, where a man can be alone or socialize with his friends.

Purpose

A man cave is loosely a male-only space to retreat to, watch sports matches, or play video games. According to psychiatrist and author Scott Haltzman, it is important for a man to have a place to call his own, referring to a male area to retreat to. Some psychologists claim that a man cave can provide refuge from stressful surroundings and be beneficial to marriage.

Some men have a workshop, some a shed, others a music room or shed. It's a place to hang out, a real my-space. Today I suggested to my family I might convert the garage into a man cave just for the summer. Let's just say that no-one was enthusiastic.

Men: do you have a man cave? What do you do there? Why do you hang out there? What rules do you have?
Women: what do you think about man caves?

A feast of your presence

The clock ticks on
A sense of time passing
I am in the moment
Each moment part of a great spread of moments
Laid out over time & space
To fill my life
With a feast of your presence
Pain is on the table
And joy
But the greatest joy
Is that I share this table with you
Or rather
That you share it with me

Exclusion & Embrace 1

Haven't blogged for a while. Thought I would share with you my engagement with the book
Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation by Miroslav Volf.
I preached recently from Matthew 8: 1-4 where Jesus healed the leper. (some notes here, ppt here). After asking who are the marginalized in our community, I refered to Volf who says

Exclusion has become the primary sin, skewing our perceptions of reality & causing us to react out of fear and anger to all those who are not within our (ever narrowing) circle…

& challenges us to

… take the costly step of opening ourselves to the other, of enfolding him or her in the same embrace with which we have been enfolded by God.

In looking at the central place of Jesus on the cross Moltman suggests that : the sufferings of Jesus on the cross are not just his sufferings they are the “sufferings of the poor & weak, which Jesus shares in his own body & in his own soul, in solidarity with them.”

As followers of Jesus this is a model for us: to have compassion and show solidarity with the marginalised in our society & around the world. But how do we do that when the marginalized are often the ones we are most scared of falling victim to?

Jesus’ death on the cross is also an act of atonement: to make the sinner at one with God. (Volf) “… Like solidarity with the victims, the atonement for the perpetrators issues forth from the heart of the triune God, whose very being is love… God does not abandon the godless to their own evil but gives the divine self for them in order to receive them into divine communion through atonement, so also should we – whoever our enemies”

Who is God calling us to embrace today?

Moment of Surrender

I love this song. especially the last lines:

I was speeding on the subway
Through the stations of the cross
Every eye looking every other way
Counting down ’til the train would stop

At the moment of surrender
Of vision of over visibility
I did not notice the passers-by
And they did not notice me

All Lyrics

Very spiritual, very realistic, very deep: quintessential U2

& you call this democracy?

I don't politipost too often, but I am extremely frustrated with our current government's actions.

On the one hand, the initial bill to make changes to out largest metropolitan area making it a supercity has been passed under urgency (read: with no select committee process, read: we the inhabitants don't get to give our opinion). Labour has used a process of filibustering to slow down the passage of the bill but it still went through.

On the other hand, the Wanganui District council is holding a referendum on whether there should be an 'h' in Wanganui, thus making it Whanganui (like the name of the river).

The first issue affects the lives of over 1/2 NZ population, the second issue is one of linguistics that is easily solved by seeing that the regional dialect of the Whanganui tribes uses the wh sound & not the w' sound, so a correction should be made in consultation with the Tangata Whenua of the area.

Bringing these 2 extremes of "democracy" together is the fact that the Auckland Ubercity bill was renamed as Local Government (Tamaki Makaurau Reorganisation) Act, which one commentator says "asks the Tangata Whenua to define it" because the name Tamaki Makaurau predates the arrival of the European to NZ. Bet they don't ask!

Also see:

Nactional calls filibuster bluff - Über City enabling law runs past midnight
Wanganui voters out in force on 'h' issue
Whanganui Iwi
tahi reich, tahi tangata, tahi Hide

Hug-a-ginga day

So what r u waiting 4? http://tinyurl.com/c5skyt