Eat Like This

April 30, 2010 in deconstruction, family, jesus, kyla with 4 Comments

I have had many people comment on Facebook, via e-mail and in conversation about how much they like the posts from the “Teaching Little Kyla” series. I’ll be posting more of those even though I’ve debated renaming the series, “Learning from Little Kyla.” I’m also going to add some posts on family dynamics and parenting for those of you who are young parents like us or for those who may be parents soon. Sarah and I hope our experience can be useful.

You can also expect some upcoming posts on environmental sustainability. My thought pattern for adding posts on family/parenting and creation care centers on the idea of stewardship. We have many things that have been given. A few of those include our family members, our bodies, and the earth. Those things which we have been given must be cared for and nurtured as an active response of gratitude (worship) toward God.

I sent an update through Twitter yesterdag evening that said, “how to get your kid to eat like this: http://twitgoo.com/px6cg coming soon to http://www.subversiveREFORMATION.com.” The picture below was attached. So… here’s what worked for us:

1) No fast food.

Sarah and I disagree here a little bit. I’m for absolutely no fast food while Sarah suggests that moderation is the key (i.e. your kid won’t die by having a small order of fries once every two weeks but I wonder why I would ever want to give my child beef product extract and anti-foaming agent, both included in a certain company’s fries).

2) Model healthy eating.

Don’t expect your kid to be healthy if you are not. A frequent late night snack of mine is steamed broccoli.

3) Plant a garden.

We turned around and Kyla was chomping on a whole tomato. Tomatoes are her favorite food and she is now very excited about planting a garden and growing her own food again this year.

4) Start with Veggies.

When Kyla was progressing through the toothless stages of baby food, we made sure that before we introduced any fruits that she was eating every kind of vegetable that we could purchase or make.

5) Take your kid grocery shopping.

Let your little one pick out some things in the fresh fruit and vegetable section rather than the cookie aisle.

6) Stick to Cheerios.

Think of all the ways that sugar is introduced. One of those is by cereals. None of us really eat cereal other than whole grains. I love me some Lucky Charms and Frosted Flakes but I’ve been resisting the urge and doing Cheerios with Kyla.

7) Zero soda pop, no chocolate milk, and limit the juice.

Kyla is perfectly content with water, skim milk, and an occasional fruit juice (hopefully without high fructose corn syrup as the number 2 ingredient).

And… throw in a little flax seed and some lentils.

Give it a try. Your kids will love you for it — their lives will be better. It’s stewardship. It’s Christian.

How to Do Nothing.

April 25, 2010 in compassion, giving, missional, mvnu, Theology, worship with 6 Comments

“Anybody doing anything tonight?”

It’s a phrase we frequently use when we’re bored. Or maybe we’re just looking for something to do. Something to entertain us. Or we need some people to hang out with.

Why?

Why do we always have to be with someone? Why do we always have to be doing something? Well… I suppose by the nature of being human we are always doing something – eating, sleeping, sitting, playing. But we fail to recognize that “doing nothing” is actually doing something – for good or bad.

I walked into my home yesterday evening after a day of working with MVNU students doing some home repair work for a family in our community. There were well over 30 different people in and out of the home where we were working. Hammers were banging. Circular saws were screaming. Drills were… drilling. Though it was quite fulfilling to be actively engaged in serving a family who needed a little help, the silence I encountered upon arriving home was beautiful. I needed to sit and think. I needed to decompress. I needed to do nothing.

As I was installing some electrical wiring with a friend earlier that day we were talking about the home makeover project and the students who initiated it. In the midst of our discussion my friend stated, “It just makes sense. This is what the church should be doing.”  Simultaneously we looked at each other and said, “All the time.” I realized once I got home that the statement was a bit hyperbolic. I needed the silence. I needed solitude for meditation and prayer. I needed to rest in the presence of God – Alone. Quiet. Listening. Thinking.

We can default to either extreme – doing something all the time or doing nothing. Do you find yourself doing nothing? It could be that in the moments of doing nothing you really are doing nothing – nothing but sitting around hoping to be entertained or complaining about the church doing nothing. Or you could really be doing nothing as a healthy form of Sabbath and rest.

How do we go about doing something while still doing nothing? How do we avoid doing nothing in order to actually do something?

A Question You Don’t Want to Answer.

April 18, 2010 in issues, jesus, justice, questions with 4 Comments

I was speaking with a group of junior high and high school students this weekend about issues of marginalization and oppression. I specifically turned the conversation from acting on global issues to recognizing injustice within our local proximity. For them, it meant moving from a focus on hunger in the world to the often unjust or unloving treatment of peers in the classroom, at the lunch table, on the athletic field, and within social circles based on economic status. I asked the questions, “If Jesus showed up right here, right now, in this place, who are the people to whom he would be giving his attention? How would he be spending his time? How would he be listening to the voices of those who are often forgotten or ignored?”

An ever-so energetic, enthusiastic, and hormonal adolescent boy instantly shot his words from his reclining chair, “You mean like… what would Jesus do? Like the bracelets.” As I reverted back through the 1990s and the “WWJD?” movement, the phrase made my insides cringe and quiver while my mouth slowly opened and reluctantly uttered, “Yeah?”

I had to concede to my now junior high nemesis.

Essentially, I was hoping that these young minds would actually consider who the person of Jesus was and how he may enact love in our current context minus the popular Christian subculture catchphrase that makes the reality of the question so easy to dismiss.

“What Would Jesus Deconstruct? by John D. Caputo, Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Humanities and professor of philosophy at Syracuse University, begins, “In 1896, Charles Sheldon, a pastor in Topeka, Kansas, wrote a book titled In His Steps. The subtitle of Sheldon’s book, What Would Jesus Do? fueled the later ‘WWJD’ industry – the bumper stickers, T-shirts, and bracelets that boldly pose a question to which the Religious Right is sure to know the answer. My hypothesis is if our friends on the Right really mean to ask that question instead of using it as a stick to beat their enemies, they are in for a shock.”

I would agree with Caputo and therefore may create my own line of products to sell in a Parable or Lifeway Christian Bookstore near you (because that’s what Jesus would do). The products would read, “WWJD? You don’t want to know.” No. Really. You probably, really don’t want to know.

Something Different with Rob Bell.

April 6, 2010 in jesus, perspective, religion, Rob Bell, worship with 1 Comment

For a number of years many people have liked Rob Bell because he is different. He is passionate, engaging, energetic, insightful, and creative with refreshing language and perspective.

For a number of years many people have not liked Rob Bell because he is too different. He has been accused of embracing humanism and pluralism and paganism and many other -isms.

Just when people have (for better or worse) been getting used to Bell , his speaking tours, podcasts, NOOMA videos, and books named with stars, sex, and velvet, he produces something else that is, well… different. If you haven’t watched the Resurrection video you can view it below.

You may be distracted by the visual elements included in the production. However, that which the effects represent is something that we too often don’t even see. As products of modernism, we insist on a logical reasoning and scientific proofing while we close our eyes to the supernatural things all around us. We insist that the only things that are real are the things that our sensory perceptive capacity enables us to see or taste or touch or smell or hear. Like the biblical character Thomas who had to see the holes that wounded Jesus on the cross, we ignore the possibility that things are happening all around us that exceed our quite limited human comprehension. Hence, resurrection:

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=10639312&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1

Resurrection: Rob Bell from The Work of Rob Bell on Vimeo.

Rob Bell on Resurrection

April 4, 2010 in art, death, hope, jesus, love, Theology with 0 Comments

Press play then close your eyes for 4:00 minutes.

Press play again and listen and watch.

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=10639312&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=ffffff&fullscreen=1

Resurrection: Rob Bell from The Work of Rob Bell on Vimeo.

Lenten Lyrics: Beautiful Scandalous Night

April 2, 2010 in peace, religion, Theology, worship with 11 Comments

Go on up to the mountain of mercy
To the crimson perpetual tide
Kneel down on the shore
Be thirsty no more
Go under and be purified

Follow Christ to the holy mountain
Sinner sorry and wrecked by the fall
Cleanse your heart and your soul
In the fountain that flowed
For you and for me and for all

At the wonderful, tragic, mysterious tree
On that beautiful, scandalous night you and me
Were atoned by His blood and forever washed white
On that beautiful, scandalous night

On the hillside, you will be delivered
At the foot of the cross justified
And your spirit restored
By the river that poured
From our blessed Savior’s side

School of Athens by Raphael (not the turtle).

March 22, 2010 in jesus, Philosophy, Theology with 0 Comments

Leonardo, Michaelangelo, and Donatello, make up the group with one other fellow…

Raphael. The creator of the image above which depicts Plato and Aristotle and their differing philosophy of theology or theology of philosophy. I find myself trapped between the two yet find freedom in the person of Jesus. Sometimes I need freedom from my intellect.

From what do you need freedom?

LOST: More than 6 Seasons

March 16, 2010 in journey, television, Theology with 0 Comments

Do you ever find yourself thinking about how lost you are?

Maybe you recognize intellectually that there are some things we just can’t know. Maybe you hear someone talking about religious things and think to yourself… “Whaaaaat?” Maybe you feel like the things you do directly contradict your identity. Maybe you don’t know which way to turn next – if there is a right way, right?

For me, I recognize seasons in life when I stop just long enough to reflect on who I am and rediscover the real me – my identity. I realize that there are many things that are contributing to possessing a sense of being lost.

Sarah and I have been watching all the seasons of the television series LOST. I was hoping or am just now at least recognizing that I should have blogged as we watched. We have been so consumed by continuing to view more episodes that I have not had nearly adequate time to process all my thoughts in writing. I was able to predict relatively early in the show’s narrative that there is an element of shifting and moving through the quite fluid spacial and chronological dimensions of reality. The questions for the characters continue to be not only, “Where are we?” but also, “When are we?” and “Who are we?” I find myself empathizing with the characters’ understanding that being stranded on an island is not the greatest of problems compared to being internally lost and in need of searching to find ourselves. We are enslaved to realities that are that alter perception and skew a clear vision of self-discovery.

How can I avoid season after season after season of sensing a continuous state of being lost? How do I sift through all the competing voices that suggest how I should speak and act? How do I rediscover who I am?

A designer.
A mourner.
A creator.
A questioner.
A lover.
A thinker.
A writer.
A consumer.
A teacher.
A failure.
A mentor.
A peacemaker.

A human.
Intricately created to be who I am.

A final season of LOST may provide some plot and character closure but we, the viewer – the real subject of the narrative, continue struggling, season after season, to accept that we once were lost but may be found – by ourselves.

Found.
As is.
As me.

Are you lost?

In what ways is peace made?

March 15, 2010 in film, peace, relationship, Theology with 7 Comments

A dialogue from the 1995 film Braveheart:

Princess Isabelle: The king desires peace.
William Wallace: Longshanks desires peace?
Princess Isabelle: He declares it to me, I swear it. He proposes that you withdraw your attack. In return he grants you title, estates, and this chest of gold which I am to pay to you personally.
William Wallace: A lordship and titles. Gold. That I should become Judas?
Princess Isabelle: Peace is made in such ways.
William Wallace: Slaves are made in such ways. The last time Longshanks spoke of peace I was a boy. And many Scottish nobles, who would not be slaves, were lured by him under a flag of truce to a barn, where he had them hanged. I was very young, but I remember Longshank’s notion of peace.

In what ways is peace made?

Are you a contemplative?

March 2, 2010 in monasticism, prayer, Theology, thought with 1 Comment

There is a contemplative in all of us,
Almost strangled but still alive,
Who craves quiet enjoyment of the now,
And longs to touch the seamless garment of silence
Which makes whole.
-  Alan P. Tory

A portion of the morning mediation reading from the Daily Office provided by the Northumbria Community.

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