geez, that last post was a bummer.

but, of course, genuine. and that seems like a great goodness of blogging or any other kind of journaling -- leaving the rawness of down-ness out in public...

so today i've decided that while the arch-sin / root - sin / worst sin is still pride --

one of the most culturally pervasive expressions of it in the western evangelical world is --

forgetting to keep the SABBATH.

Rest.

i'm thinking today that the opposite of rest isn't motion -- its ambition.

And I need a break from my own crazy ambition. i'm exhausting myself with the subtle inexplicit hubris of --

1.) saying yes to everything.

2.) trying to make the institutions i participate in... the best or better.

3.) doing my best at my work all the time (which inevitably means screwing up my best in other contexts)...

the lie of the public relations era -- and / or the bad version of the sophists -- and / or "quality stamped all over it."

is that whatever we do has to look like (/be) the best.

and that's not really seeming very core to the beattitudes or the fruits of the spirit or sacrifice or even plain old incarnation when i think about it...

but today's felt much better than yesterday -- i think b/c i'm resting -- worked out at the Y. Got a haircut. went to the donut shop with the kids before jaelyn's school.

peace~

sometimes i feel like --

my formative years in fundamentalism give me the ability to be:

grace and truth and redemption and celebration

out here on the left fringes of this evangelical institution.

other times, i feel like i'm waking up in the middle of a bad dream --

where i'm locked inside of a christian bookstore or trapped as a character in a _Left Behind_ novel...

and um...i really want out.

sometimes...

ok, well, no, honestly --

alot...

when i first arrive at my computer i go to my blog to check and see if i wrote anything new.

too many years of being trained to roll over at the arrival-ding-of-incoming-email?

a yet-developing cognitive conception of bloggery?

so i just happened to be in the mens room washing up and i happened to notice that my

pseudo-punk, post-glam, euro-trash, rock star hair

looks the best its ever looked today.

how's that for new heights of vanity....

i've been feeling unnerved about blogging about my faith journey because of the ads that keep popping up above.

i just want to clarify. *i hate those things!*

so while i'm avoiding grading i ran into a blog written by Douglas Rushkoff -- if you know me, you've very likely heard me talk about him in the context of Generation X & Merchants of Cool.

But his ideas -- particularly his big idea -- that we can take religion as an answer or as a question -- really resonated with me. (and it resonates because i like his answer -- that religion functions better as a question than as an answer.)

I percieve this to be a parallel conversation with the whole redemptive movement thing that Webb articulates -- but in many ways I like Rushkoff's way of dealing with these questions better.

Webb, it seems to me, does a good job talking about some of the underlying issues in a way that committed modernists will *get* and enjoy -- but ultimately his method feels equally rigid to me. and -- of course -- i think that webb completely gets the homosexual questions wrong --

i do, just in case you care, dislike how Rushkoff is always featuring the discontinuity (ultimately) with Judaism / Religion. He uses the metaphor of dreaming and waking --

"It's time we wake up from the stories we've been telling ourselves and invent a new one."

and to me, these statement is fraught with a kind of platonic-cave-meets-the-manifest-destiny mythology.

and it misses all of the (much better) nuances implicit in the metaphor of "telling stories" -- specifically that stories are all rooted in structures, exploring and exploiting genres, reinforcing mythology...i could go on, but....

i really should ready myself for class...

i haven't traditionally been all about posting links up here -- but i ran across this one this morning -- and it uses different language and theory than i'm used to, but it gets at a whole group of issues i've been thinking about -- and in a way that is appealing to me.

"policemen & shepherds" deals with questions like "who is the church?" -- "who isn't the church?" -- and -- "what should the church's role in deciding who's in / who's out be?"

lynn and i are in a sunday school class going through the heidelberg catechism and this week we did sacraments --

the whole idea that the church -- any church -- should be about policing the sacraments -- deciding who does and doesn't partake, who can and can't, who should and shouldn't -- in general, seems abhorent to me....

did you see daniels' send up of my most recent posting? its funny.

- last night's dream -

- subtitle: very wierd post -

I was dreaming in concepts. I can’t really clearly describe what the concepts look like because it’s a little confusing – but if you can imagine that each argument was represented by movement to , into and away from embryonic / protozoic creatures roughly the size and shape of a fat round mushroom head but fluidly moving like in the sea, only my movement wasn’t represented by an actual visual presence – more like a point of view. The whole thing was mostly black and white – only not white – yellow.

So the concepts were the issues of – can a learning / teaching philosophy that is rooted in the students interest actually be a fruitful way to pursue extended learning.

(that’s my expressed belief before the dream, but in real life I’m constantly constrained by institutions and loyalties and (maybe more than all the rest) the sheer massness of the context I work in.)

During the dream, I’m watching these cell – type things float and hearing / having this conversation.

(I’ll characterize the two sides of the conversation roughly as id and ego – id being what I want teaching / learning to be – ego being what I’m told teaching must be given the way things are.)

ID: See so why couldn’t we, if a student wanted to, just look more and more carefully at those? Or one of those? Or inside of one of those.

Close up on bouncing floating organisms, gently crashing together.

EGO: Becuase the more you indulge the student's self interest, the more self interested they become.

ID: (feels this more than says this -- it feels like a longing) but that isn't really true is it? that's not a neccessary relationship.

EGO: Wouldn't it be better to teach them how the world IS?

ZOOM to WIDE ANGLE of millions of squirming bumping embryo movements. Charts and graphs overlaid point out trends in their movement distinguish the different types of embryo-type things.

ID: But just because we follow their interest doesn't mean that we have to become absorbed in the feelies or the bumblepuppies.

(seriously, i do remember using that Huxley term in my dream, in fact I even had some lucid dreaming awareness that such use of vocabulary was unnatural.)

EGO: But it makes it very likely. Watch.

And we ZOOM deep into one of the embryos. All motion stops. We're left just staring at a textural surface.

EGO: See. Just static. No movement. No learning. When students are left to study their interest, they study themselves. They stare at their own belly buttons.

ID: But that's only because you stopped. Just because you study self doesn't mean you stop and stare. You can still find out more.

We ZOOM toward the texture. The texture changes shape, admits of diverse shapes, and gradually gives way to more of the moving shapes.

EGO: But that's useless. It's completely disconnected from any observable, external phenomena. It's divorced from the ability to talk about anything shared.

ID: That's IT! That's where you're wrong. Because we SEE it. or see them. see these shapes, whatever they are -- they're not divorced from the world of talk. They're represented. As long as we have a study buddy that we can share our observations with and get feedback from -- we're still learning. It's only when we can't represent our quest any more that we've become too inward.

(I did, seriously, use the term "study buddy" a term that I find both ridiculous and unusable in my waking life.)

The ego didn't respond, though and I felt the shapes and the movement disappearing.

I tried to reformulate what i had said, say it again. But I couldn't. I couldn't say anything or stop the images from fading.

I suppose, eventually, I woke up.

Unless I'm still dreaming. In which case I'm definitely going to NOT grade my stack of papers.

OUCH. Pinch test confirms awakeness. I'm going to get some coffee.

It'll be a long week. Though I won't be writing. Thanks to all who have written. I'm thinking of you.

Peace ~