Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.... The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., from Sojourners, Verse & Voice
Back in August I wrote a blog post about this incredible little film, Once. In fact, I came straight home from the theater, bought the soundtrack and wrote this post.
Today my full review was published on Spectrum's new-fangled website. Here's an excerpt:
In spite of the soaring music and simple, lovable plot this story is
not naive. Many lesser films would move quickly to the two falling in
love and living “happily ever after.” But in Once, reality is always close at hand. Things are never as simple as they seem “in the movies.”
Rather than taking the well-worn path of resolving the tension of
the story in cliché ways that resemble cotton candy in your mouth –
tasty for a moment, gone the next – this film is patient. It takes time
for a good story to yield the treasure that lies beneath the surface.
What if there is something more than just a quick romance, a fling, or
the heat of passion?
This is a story that reminds us that deep and lasting relationships
are worth the trouble and that redemption is possible, even if not
easy. There are no guarantees, but love is worth the risk. It is a
story that tugs at your soul and not just your heart. It gives hope
without resorting to sentimental idealism.
Yesterday we adopted a dog from the Los Angeles Animal Shelter in Van Nuys. Elysabeth has been feverishly looking for a dog to adopt for the past 4-5 weeks. We were hoping it would be a surprise on Christmas morning. We discovered that it was harder to adopt an animal that it seems. Because we live in an apartment we knew we couldn't have a big dog and for some reason my wife doesn't want a pit bull or a rotweiller (can you believe it?), so that eliminates about 95% of the dogs that are in the 6 three shelters we visited. We looked on Craig's List...everything. Then, on Wednesday, Elysabeth went to look at this dog she saw on the Animal Shelter's website.
When she got there, the vet came out with the staff person (kinda unusual) to explain that the animal had suffered a trauma and she had to remove it's right eye. When Elysabeth told me the story the fact that this dog was "damaged good" somehow endeared her to us even more. So, we ended up adopted this one-eyed dog.
Now, I'm not a huge dog person. I grew up with cats and the two dogs I've had in my adult hears were both Cocker Spaniels. With apologies to my brother's family who just adopted a cocker spaniel (also, yesterday, oddly enough) and anyone else who owns a cocker spaniel, that particular breed will convert a non-dog person to being a dog person. I'll just leave it at that.
Anyway, border terriers are amazing. She is playful when we want to be playful and she sits on our lap when we just want to sit. It's amazing. And she is so smart! Last night was her first night in our apartment and so we weren't sure we'd get much sleep (like bringing a new baby home from the hospital). Elysabeth set a pillow on the floor next to her side of the bed. We had to tell her about a dozen times that the pillow was her sleeping spot, NOT our bed. And she finally got it and slept on that pillow the whole night!
Anyway, needless to say, the kids are thrilled. We all love our new Sizzles.
Yesterday I went on a day-long personal retreat. It was really great - renewing, refreshing! Exactly what I needed. I recently became aware of a retreat center that is literally walking distance from my apartment. It's run by the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. It's a sprawling mansion on the top of a hill adjacent to the intersection of Los Feliz and Griffith Park Blvds.
The basic outline of my day, which I did partly with my friend, JR Woodward, was this: 10:30 am - 12:30 pm - prayer in solitude and silence 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm - lunch with JR - sharing from our morning experience 2:00 - 3:00 pm - focus on ordering my life (my roles and priorities)
I wanted to quickly share a discovery I made while praying in the morning. I was using my usual prayer book called Rhythms of Life: Celtic Daily Prayer, by David Adam.
I was spending time in Psalm 86:1-7 - praying it over and over again. Crying out to God in the words of this ancient poetry. (This is not something I make time to do very often and so it took a lot of repetition to break through). One thing I often do to deepen my experience of scripture is transcribe it by hand. Something about putting the words down, slowly, one by one, helps deepen the impression on me.
Anyway, after about an hour of looking at this text I realized that a chiastic structure was emerging. I know, I know...only a geeky pastor with too much seminary training could possibly see a chiastic structure in a middle of an intense time of prayer, but I did - and the impact on me was powerful.
So, if you want, check it out...Psalm 86. See if you can find it. I'll give you a clue, after the jump...
A friend of mine, Christoph Silber, was a script consultant on a film that is just opening in Manhattan this week. It's called Arranged and you can check out the website here. They've already won a variety of festival awards and if it does well in New York it will like be in Los Angeles for limited run.
If you live in New York, please go see this movie and tell us all about it. Check out the trailer below.
This afternoon Elysabeth and I are going to Berkeley to attend the California Interfaith Power & Light "Energy Oscars" Award Ceremony. It seems I've been nominated to receive an award in the Public Policy category. I don't feel as though I've done that much work for CIPL, but apparently enough to get nominated. I flew to Sacramento a few months ago to lobby on behalf of some Global Warming bills that ended up becoming law, I'm happy to say. I also attended a meeting with some executives at Toyota here in Southern California to ask them to drop their lawsuit against California to block the Clean Car Law.
I'll let you know how it turns out. In the meantime,watch this short clip from CNN featuring Rev. Sally Bingham, the founder and President of Interfaith Power & Light.
If you are a pastor or a church leader you should seriously consider joining Interfaith Power & Light. Click here to see if your state has an Interfaith Power & Light program.
Last night I had the privilege of attending a conversation between Robert Greenwald (of Brave New Films) and Naomi Klein. Naomi has just recently published her latest book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. It is an impressive book in its scope and detailed research. I have begun to read this book and I'm currently on chapter 3. With only 75 pages of 576 down, I'll be at this a while. Plus, it's not a book to breeze through in the first place.
Last night she told us that the idea for this book originally came from her visit to Iraq in 2004 just after the US invasion. What she saw there, with "Shock and Awe" and then Paul Bremer's economic shock therapy gave her the seed idea. "I thought it was just about Iraq," she said to a sold out crowd last night. Her original thoughts appeared in Harper's Magazine in September 2004 in an article entitled, "Baghdad year zero: Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia." She spoke about how she had no idea that the book would take 4 years to write. It is an remarkable accomplishment.
For me, the most astounding moment last night came toward the end of the conversation. She was talking about 9/11 and how we experienced our "shock" and how the Bush Administration and the neocons took action immediately to shape the conversation in ways that we can now understand, having lived through the consequences. Then she said this...
"Shock" means we've lost our narrative! After 9/11 we were a people without a story, and there is nothing more vulnerable than a people without a story!
What amazing language to hear! She went on to say that when an massive event happens - some kind of disaster, like Katrina or 9/11 - there is a gap between the "Event" and the "Narrative" we develop about that event. That gap is "Shock." That's why, after 9/11 you saw people just standing around in a daze. People talked to each other on the subway (and I remember, because I was on those subways just 7 days after 9/11 - in fact, I was on the NJ Turnpike on my way to visit my friend, Samir, when the planes hit). People reached out for religion and family and anything that gave them a sense of groundedness.
Into that void, as people are reaching out for community and connectedness, Naomi reminded us, Bush told us to go shopping - "the most isolating thing you can do" (Naomi's words). So in this moment of being without a story the Bush Administration said there is no history - this was the counternarrative. This was their attempt to reboot history. This loss of narrative is possible, in part, because we are a people with a very short memory. We have lost our sense of history. "History," she said, "is our best 'shock absorber.'"
In closing, I'm including a short film, produced by Alfonso Cuaron, director of Children of Men. It's only 6:45, so enjoy and perhaps you'll be motivated to pick up the book. By the way, there's a ton more information at Naomi's website, www.shockdoctrine.com.
I'm going to continue to plow through the book myself. If you've read it or are currently reading it, feel free to add your thoughts in the "Comments" below.
About once a month I make a pilgrimage to the very top floor of the House of Blues building on Sunset Boulevard (near Sunset & Vine). That is where the Hollywood & Central office of the CRA/LA office is (CRA is California Redevelopment Agency). The Community Advisory Committee for the Gower St. Permanent Supportive Housing project meets there. Right now we're in the midst of reviewing architectural design schemes. We expect to be able to host a Design Open House sometime in January so the community can get a look at the design that is being proposed.
One perk of being in the CRA office is the amazing view of Hollywood one has from up there. So, below, enjoy the view from the 22nd floor. Click to enlarge the pictures.
You can see the Hollywood sign in the distance. The construction project in the foreground is the massive W Hotel project that will cover the entire block. From my vantage point I'm still looking up at the cab of the sky cranes. Can you imagine climbing that thing every morning?
I just finished reading the latest book in the Emersion series from Baker - Intuitive Leadership, by Tim Keel. Tim and I have spend a little time together over the years at various Emergent events and the like. I first met Tim in October of 2001 at The Ooze gathering in Seattle. We happen to meet up at a coffee shop just before the opening day of the conference and we hung out a bit at that time. They were just getting their new church started back then. Now, seven years later, God has done some pretty remarkable things at Jacob's Well.
For those who are used to reading books about leadership, this is not what you're thinking. The subtitle says it all: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor and Chaos. Tim has spent some time with Alan Roxburgh in recent years. Alan also wrote the forward to the book. Since I have been a doctoral student mentored by Alan for the past 4+ years I can definitely see some of the influence. The truly amazing this is that Tim was intuiting many of these things before he met Alan. I needed 2 hard years with Alan before I started to get it. I knew I was completely fed up with and frustrated by the "church growth" models I had been exposed to. Natural Church Development was more of the same (to give just one example). I just never realized how embedded in a modern, corporate mentality I was until stepping into the space that my D.Min. afforded me.
What Tim does in this book is basically share his personal journey and the journey of the church that he leads. However, I suspect that many readers will be disappointed that he doesn't let us in on more of what Jacob's Well has done and is doing. This is intentional. Instead, Tim offers what he calls "postures" of intuitive leadership, like "A Posture of Learning: From Answers to Questions" or "A Posture of Surrender: From Control to Chaos." In fact, this chapter is really the gem of the book, I think, for those who are wanting to come away with something to do. The first revolution is internal. Leaders need to find ways to change they way they think about the task of church leadership. Our role is no longer devising strategic plans, getting the congregation lined up, and pursuing some ideal future. For one thing, we're discovering that there is no "ideal future." There is only the future that God is bringing to pass in your time and place.
I would highly recommend this book to any pastor who is struggling with corporate, managerial leadership styles that they've inherited. Many of the ways of being church and being in leadership that Tim describes here are the same things we are learning in Hollywood. I can affirm the truth of everything Tim says because we are beginning to live these realities as well.
I'll end with a couple of choice quotes.
We have a mounting leadership crisis in the church. We are facing a crisis of imagination, an ill-fed spiritual attention span nourished by novelty. I believe this dynamic has debilitated local churches....
We are missing prophetic leaders who are able to read the signs of the times, who listen carefully, thoughtfully, and theologically, who respond in faithful and creative ways based on an imagination baptized and engaged in a missional reading of scripture, the environment, the people God has provided in their midst - not to mention the resources at hand that God has supplied....
At it's worst, this reduced pictures of reality has drained the landscape of color and creativity under God, and imagination has been lost in favor of a very small and uniform version of life. Our churches are the religious equivalent of strip malls with the same ten massive retailers located in Anytown, USA (76-77).
How well do our organizations create spaces that allow for diverse people with varied experiences and multiple intelligences to gather in order to discern signs of life intrinsic and extrinsic to our communities? How willing are we to do the hard and long-term work of creativity and contextual engagement? Will we create systems and structures that allow for a new imagination to emerge?
The reality is that creatives walk into our communities, systems and structures all the time, and when they do, they intuit the environment we have created and know immediately whether there is space for them. Most often, they discover there is not (209).
This past weekend we had the privilege of hosting Nathan Brown in our home for a few days. It's always great to catch up with him and talk about our respective lives/work/family, etc. We spent many hours hashing over the issues we each face in the church and what we can do to be catalysts for change.
We also went to a Lakers game last Thursday. Below are a few pictures from that evening that brought together my dad, my good friend, Lennox Fleary and Nathan.
We were in the very last row, way up at the top of the arena!
This is a really cool shot of (L to R) me, Lennox and my dad in the Hollywood & Western Metro Station. All in all a really fun night.
If you've been following the debate in Congress over the Children's Health Insurance Program, you've probably noticed a deafening silence. That's because we have come to a genuine stalemate. Neither side wants to give an inch. From the standpoints of the bipartisan supporters, enough compromise has already happened. Any more compromise and we start compromising children. From the Republican opposition (and all the opposition is Republican) there is an ideological hurdle they just can't get over. They interpret SCHIP expansion as a move toward universal health care. Whether that is true or not, this is where the debate has devolved to.
That means we are facing the end of the Congressional Session with a "no decision" on SCHIP. Now the advocacy groups, like the PICO Network of which I am a part, have to decide whether we will (A) plow ahead insisting on the $35 billion, 5-year expansion, or whether we will (B) settle for a one year extension of the existing program so we can debate this again when the presidential election is over. Many groups are moving toward option B. While the PICO Network, for the time being, will keep up the pressure for the 5-year reauthorization, we are also open to a 1-year extension. The key being, we cannot settle for a bad bill, which would reduce the number of kids covered or make permanent the Bush Administration limitations of 200-250% of poverty. If it means waiting till next year, that is an option.
There is a recent article at The Hill with a quote from yours truly. This reporter interviewed me and Rev. Wiggins on Friday for this article. If you read all the way to the end you'll see that our network is planning to deliver empty Christmas stockings to the district Congressional Offices this holiday season as a demonstration of what Congress has given children this year.
Back in August I wrote a blog post about this incredible little film, Once. In fact, I came straight home from the theater, bought the soundtrack and wrote this post.
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