Resistance and Victimhood

"The acquisition of a condition lends significance to one's existence. An illness, a cross to bear... Some people go from condition to condition; they cure one, and another pops up to take its place. The condition becomes a work of art in itself, a shadow version of the real creative act the victim is avoiding by expending so much care cultivating his condition. A victim act is a form of passive aggression. It seeks to achieve gratification not by honest work or a contribution made out of one's experience or insight or love, but by the manipulation of others through silent (and not-so-silent) threat. The victim compels others to come to his rescue or to behave as he wishes by holding them hostage to the prospect of his own further illness/meltdown/mental dissolution, or simply by threatening to make their lives so miserable that they do what he wants."

- Steven Pressfield, The War of Art page 27

Jimmy on Rollins Quote

Jimmy chimed in on the Peter Rollins quote from last week with this beauty on my facebook account.

"The general idea of resurrection for 2nd Temple Jewish culture was centered around vindication--that God will stand behind the lives of those who have been defeated by the world, yet have stood faithfully for God. Specifically, belief concerning resurrection for the righteous martyrs in Jewish history, for example, was that their persecutors were not ultimately the victors, but that YHWH and his faithful would win-out.

Jesus' resurrection is also vindication. In the resurrection God backed-up the words and life of Jesus. He _is_ the Son of God, Messiah and Lord. It shows that Rome, power, and death did not win. That the values of the kingdom are ultimately true: that the meek, the downtrodden, truly will inherit the land; that he first _will_ be last; that the kingdom _is_ at hand. If I act contrary to these words of Jesus, even if I think Jesus walked out of the tomb after his death, I think I do deny the essence of the resurrection."

This is Jimmy at his best.

Rob Merola Quote

My friend Rob lives in Northern Virginia, just outside Washington D.C. A really nice part of the country to live in. Rob can also put a few words together as you see below.
This is the kind of thing that seems to pop up in my conversations with friends recently. He just says it better.

"Sometimes, even right here in some of the nicest places in America, there are people suffering such anguish that it is a very real question of whether or not they will survive.

It’s not something I think any of us expect in our civilized world where most people’s lives look so neat and well kept. Maybe it didn’t seem so foreign in past generations when people faced death on a regular basis. Maybe it doesn’t seem so foreign today in those places where life is lived out in the midst of war. I really don’t know. I only know I feel a distinct incongruity between the insulation and comfort of modern life and the knowledge that a person not unlike you or me might not make it to see another day.

It happens more frequently than you might think. Eating disorders, addictions, and depression are all some of the things that can bring a person who on the outside seems to have everything to the place where inside they have nothing left. Sometimes, despite love and prayers, they do not make it through.

Our ability to affirm goodness in life is such a great gift; seeing it absent in the life of another makes us realize anew how fortunate we are, and what a mistake it is to take that fortune for granted without being deeply grateful for it."

-Rob Merola


You might consider reading Rob's blog. Link

I Deny the Resurrection

"Without equivocation or hesitation I fully and completely admit that I deny the resurrection of Christ. This is something that anyone who knows me could tell you, and I am not afraid to say it publicly, no matter what some people may think…

I deny the resurrection of Christ every time I do not serve at the feet of the oppressed, each day that I turn my back on the poor; I deny the resurrection of Christ when I close my ears to the cries of the downtrodden and lend my support to an unjust and corrupt system.

However there are moments when I affirm that resurrection, few and far between as they are. I affirm it when I stand up for those who are forced to live on their knees, when I speak for those who have had their tongues torn out, when I cry for those who have no more tears left to shed." - Peter Rollins

Link

Fun Quote

I heard this quote last week, or I read it. So forgive me for not knowing.

"I'm not a universalist. But I hope God is."

The Quote that won't go away (in a good way)

A quote I wrote in May of 2001 popped up again on Christianity Today's Out of Ur. Here's what I said.

"Conversion in the U.S. seems to mean we've exchanged some of our shopping at Wal-Mart, Blockbuster, and Borders for the Christian Bookstore down the street. We've taken our lack of purchasing control to God's store, where we buy our office supplies in Jesus' name."

Here's the original post. Give me some grace, it was 2001.. yes and parts that talk about authority make me cringe. I don't think I've actually said that again since 2001, but maybe I should.

Thanks to Skye to hanging on to that little quote for so long. Skye if you read this, we're both speaking at the NPC in San Diego in Feb. let's have a conversation. I'm interested to read Skye's book that he's writing on consumerism.

Eikon, a quote and the voices in my head

As a person leading a local community hoping to live I have a lot of voices (from the outside) telling me to do things differently than I am. It seems to me, that leadership has something to do with distinguishing between the right and wrong voices echoing with my grey matter and what to do with them.

A couple of the voices I hear from my past.
"You have to reach 200 people in the first 2-3 years or you'll never reach more people."
"You have to act like you have it all together."
"Change should happen faster than this."

Then I'm reminded of what I hope eikon will become, who we are and the power our community holds, and is only beginning to explore together. Eikon is becoming a radically hopeful expression of church. More every day.

Then I read this quote from Peter Block.
"Something shifts on a large scale only after a long period of small steps, organized around small groups patient enough to learn and experiment and learn again. Speed and scale are the arguments against what the individual and communal transformation require. They are a hallmark of the corporate mindset. When we demand more speed and scale, we are making a coded argument against anything important being any different."

Eikon is becoming something beautiful, not because of we are getting big fast, but because something important is happen in our lives as a community, and in our lives individually.

I'm thankful for what God is doing amongst us.

Quote for the day

More and more, it feels like I'm doing a really bad impersonation of myself.
- Chuck Palahnik

Quote for the day

Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.
-Cornell West

Quote for the day

It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.
- Mark Twain

Quote for the day

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.
- Henri Nouwen

Quote

Chris Folmsbee mentioned Thomas Merton today in his facebook status and it reminded me of this Merton quote.

A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.
Thomas Merton

People are starting to catch on

Something I've been saying for years, and something I hope our eikon embodies.
Link

I suppose they are catching on at least a little. After reading further the "Don't go to church ,be the church" thing appears as just another program to go to church by going to church and serving instead consuming.

A step in the right direction. but falls way short of such a good slogan.

Don't go to church, be the church.

maybe i should have trademarked that puppy 8 years ago when I started using it.

hmmm

Another Quote for the day

Bill Easum:

Small churches are usually small because of their small, petty attitude. That attitude can be negative, it can be elitist, it can be mean-spirited, or it can be just plain content with the status quo. But I have never found a small church that has been small for many years to be a healthy environment. (I’m afraid I just made some institutional folks unhappy.) My experience has been if the church is faithful to the Gospel it grows—period. I could say the same thing about a house church or small group. I base this on the Book of Acts—it is about the growth of Christianity and suggests to me that God wants the church to grow and spread. Read the story—it goes progressively from addition, to multitudes, to myriads of growth.

What do you think?

Read it in context here.

Quote for the day

Those at the edge, ironically, always hold the secret for the conversion of every age and culture. They always hold the projected and denied parts of our soul.

Only as the People of God receive the stranger and the leper, those who don’t play our game, do we discover not only the hidden and hated parts of our own souls, but the Lord Jesus himself.

In letting go, we make room for the Other. The Church is always converted when the outcasts are reinvited into the temple.

—Richard Rohr, Radical Grace

(thanks to Zach)

Celebrity and position

Zach is quoting Andrew who is quoting Mark DeMoss.

Here’s an interesting excerpt from a post from Steven Waldman, the editor-in-chief of Belief.net:

Mark DeMoss, former chief of staff to Jerry Falwell and now a leading Christian public relations executive, is hoping that Palin turns out well but has been shocked and worried by the reflexive Christian embrace of her.

“Too many evangelicals and religious conservative are too preoccupied with values and faith and pay no attention to competence. We don’t apply this approach to anything else in life, including choosing a pastor.” Imagine, he said, if a church was searching for a pastor and the leadership was brought a candidate with great values but little experience. “They’ve been a pastor for two years at a church with 150 people but he shares our values, so we hired him to be pastor of our 5,000 person church? It wouldn’t happen! We don’t say, ‘He shares our values, so let’s hire him.’ That’s absurd. Yet we apply that to choosing presidents. It blows my mind.”

Does anyone else remember Promise Keepers full on embrace and ordination of this guy at several of their stadium events?

Quote: Chesterton

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land."
-G.K. Chesterton

Quote passed on by Daniel King

"A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down."
- Edna St. Vincent Millay

thanks Daniel!

Quote for the Day: justin Dillon/Tremolo

"Is art entertainment?
Art teaches about who we are.
Entertainment tells us who to be.
Art is a public service.
Entertainment is a private product.
Art opens our minds.
Entertainment thinks for you.
Art is publicaly offered.
Entertainment is publicaly traded.
Art is the words we wish to say, but lack the language to say it."

Link

Quote for the Day: Pete Rollins

"There are countless people who betray Christianity, individuals who turn their backs on its message because they no longer believe in it or because it asks too much of them. But there are a few who betray Christianity, not because they no longer believe in it, but because they believe in it so deeply, because they understand that unless the seed of our Christianity falls to the ground and dies it will remain a single seed, but if it is allowed to die it will produce many seeds…

The cost of Christianity, for so many, is thought to lie in the demand that we die to ourselves for the sake of our Christianity. The cross we are called to carry is thus one upon which we are to be put to death. But what if this cross we bear had another meaning? What if the cross that we are called to carry is not for us at all but rather, like the cross that Simon of Cyrene labored beneath, is really for another-a cross for us to crucify what we love? Is it possible that the cross we labor beneath must be used to crucify our Christianity? How many of us can truly understand this question? How many of us can really know what it is like to destroy what we love for the sake of what we love-to be the most faithful of betrayers? Yet perhaps it is precisely this that we are being called to: engaging in that most difficult task of putting our religion to death so that a religion without religion can spring forth"