gathering in light

Here are a couple little internet treats for you all on this Dress-Down Friday.

For those of you who are into the alien-baby accessorized look:

This video is really just amazing:

John Howard Yoder is alive, kind of.

Some Catholics are getting into the emerging church conversation.

Are you a Stay at Home Dad?

Because I am a big fan of the mac app DevonThink I thought you should check this out:

Cool moleskine icons for your computer.

Democracy and Disappointment: On the Politics of Resistance – a lecture by Alain Badiou (I haven’t actually been able to listen to it yet but it looks good).

And finally I thought this video was pretty cool as well:

I have felt called to ministry ever since I was in high school. I remember, at one point, my youth pastor telling me he’d like to go with me to the downtown where we lived, soap-box in hand and let me have at it. Things have in some ways changed a lot since then, you won’t find me on a real soap-box anytime soon but I guess starting this blog five years ago is not far from this idea. I have always loved sharing ideas and teaching, I love it when I see people light up and get excited about theological and philosophical topics.

I decided to study Bible and Theology in undergrad because I wanted to go into ministry, I had helped lead my youth group while I was still in high school and really enjoyed that process, plus I felt God had a clear call on my life to pastor, so Theology was for me. After some prodding I decided to try my hands at youth ministry, which I really enjoyed doing. This was not only my entry point into doing ministry as a career option but it was also the entry point for me into the Quaker world. I began the recording process (similar to ordination) with the Evangelical Friends in Ohio but never finished because of our move out the LA.  After moving to Southern California in 2003, I started working with Young Life and did that for two years before decided to focus more heavily on my studies.

I’ve gone through points where I haven’t wanted to pastor, where I wasn’t sure I was cut out for it (that remains to be seen) and whether it was the avenue I really wanted to pursue. Thus, I began a PhD because I know I like to teach, work with people and research. My most common feeling has been that I want to do both teaching and pastoral ministry, that I feel called to bridge the gap between the congregation and the “ivory tower.” And that for me both of these areas are integral to who I am. As Emily once said, she feels I’d be a pastoral teacher or a teaching pastor. Over the course of this past year or two I started thinking about pastoral ministry again, that I miss all the things (or at least most) that come with territory, but also that my own theological understanding is lacking the other side of who I am.

This past October Colin Saxton, the superintendent of Northwest Yearly Meeting, wrote an email to me suggesting I apply for a recent pastoral opening at Camas Friends Church in Camas Washington. I had recently told him  about how busy I was in school and how I was trying to remain focused at the task at hand, but alas he felt this was an opportunity I would want to know about. He was right. I read through the information sheet on Camas and found that it sounded a lot like my kind of Quaker meeting. Here is one statement that stood out to me:

We are a Quaker Meeting intending to reach out and serve our community. Our goals are to continue the spiritual and physical growth of our congregation as we journey together as a community. We wish to serve as a witness of Quaker testimonies to our greater community. We are here to love God and love people.

Here is an evangelical Friends meeting that’s not only comfortable with identifying as Quaker, but are outward focused (to their community) and see this witness as rooted in Quaker testimonies. This sounded, along with the rest of the information I read, very intriguing. So I sent in my CV and resume, filled out their questionnaire and wrote a short letter describing where I stood on important theological matters.

I had a phone interview with the search committee in November and then they took the holidays off to pray and discern their next steps. While I was in Philadelphia for the peace gathering, with a crew from the Northwest Yearly Meeting, I got a call from a member of the search committee asking if they could fly the three of us up to Washington for a weekend visit. That sounded good to us so in February we visited Camas, as well as Portland (about 20 min away), and had a great time. Everyone in the meting made us feel really welcomed. My initial inclination that this was a community I’d like were confirmed by our visit. Emily and I both, upon leaving, felt this was a Quaker meeting we’d attend if we lived in the area (I also preached my first sermon in about 7 years that Sunday during our visit, which was quite an event).

And as some of you who follow me on twitter already know, this past week Camas Friends called me to be their next pastor, and after a weekend of discussing it with family and friends we accepted the call on Monday. Yes, my doctorate is looming large, but the church is excited and supportive of this process. I’m at the point now in my studies were the rest of what I need to do is independent studies that I can do from a distance and if I can stay on task I hope to wrap things up in 2011-12.

We will be moving to the North in May and leaving behind wonderful friends, a great church community, and 6 years of our lives being around Fuller and working in the area. It also means that we’re not moving closer to Ohio anytime soon, a hard fact for us to face especially since we now have a child. But we’re really excited about this opportunity as well, a feel the Lord has opened way for us. We are also excited to be living in the Northwest, and so close to Portland! I have long admired the reputation of the Northwest Yearly Meeting as evangelical Quakers who are unashamedly Christian yet work with other Quakers across spectrums and are committed to their tradition. I really look forward to getting back into the swing of things with ministry and dreaming with the people at Camas Friends about the ways in which we can help be a witness to God’s kingdom in that place.

More on all this in the coming months…

My Friend posted this today, and it seemed worthy to share here as well. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has signed a bill repealing the death penalty. His statement is worth reading, here are a few highlights:

I have decided to sign legislation that repeals the death penalty in the state of New Mexico.

Regardless of my personal opinion about the death penalty, I do not have confidence in the criminal justice system as it currently operates to be the final arbiter when it comes to who lives and who dies for their crime. If the State is going to undertake this awesome responsibility, the system to impose this ultimate penalty must be perfect and can never be wrong.

But the reality is the system is not perfect – far from it. The system is inherently defective. DNA testing has proven that. Innocent people have been put on death row all across the country.

Even with advances in DNA and other forensic evidence technologies, we can’t be 100-percent sure that only the truly guilty are convicted of capital crimes. Evidence, including DNA evidence, can be manipulated. Prosecutors can still abuse their powers. We cannot ensure competent defense counsel for all defendants. The sad truth is the wrong person can still be convicted in this day and age, and in cases where that conviction carries with it the ultimate sanction, we must have ultimate confidence – I would say certitude – that the system is without flaw or prejudice. Unfortunately, this is demonstrably not the case.

And it bothers me greatly that minorities are overrepresented in the prison population and on death row.

And,

From an international human rights perspective, there is no reason the United States should be behind the rest of the world on this issue. Many of the countries that continue to support and use the death penalty are also the most repressive nations in the world. That’s not something to be proud of.

In a society which values individual life and liberty above all else, where justice and not vengeance is the singular guiding principle of our system of criminal law, the potential for wrongful conviction and, God forbid, execution of an innocent person stands as anathema to our very sensibilities as human beings. That is why I’m signing this bill into law.

via ABQNews: BREAKING: Death Penalty Dead.

Here’s my latest installment at Barclay Press. As you’ll notice I worked at weaving a number of ideas I’ve had together and tried to initiate a forward step in a Quaker understanding of “liturgy.” More on this to come.

What Quakers were against wasn’t forms but rather things that became objects and ultimately obstacles for our belief. Anything that takes the place of or “prevents us from experiencing the true reality” of our social situation or the reality of the kingdom of God was to be questioned by the church. Two assumptions play into this reading, first in every generation we have to ask this question again, “what is preventing us from experiencing the reality of our social situation, from the reality of the kingdom of God?” It’s not enough to simply duplicate a black and white copy of everything the first generation of Friends did – that requires no faith and betrays yet again a faith fixated on something else. But neither can we simply dismiss their keen insights either. As Pink Dandelion has argued silence itself has become a form, a fixation, that can lead to disbelief but neither can we get rid of this because we know that rituals, pastors, etc. can also become obstacles to faith.

(From Repetition and A Non-Liturgical Liturgy)

My friend Rhett Smith is doing a weekly segment on his blog called “What Are You Passionate About?” What he’s doing every Friday is asking different people he knows to talk about their passions and share them with his readers. Here’s what he writes:

One of the questions I’m constantly curious of is, “What are you passionate about?” It doesn’t matter if it’s in a therapeutic setting, church setting, or in a casual conversation with a friend, or someone I hardly know.

Locating your passion in life is of utmost value, especially when it correlates with what you do in life, whether that be your vocation, hobbies, service work, etc.

So I’m starting a new series where I plan on asking a different person online “What are you passionate about?” It’s my hope that it’s a great opportunity to get to know others better and see what drives them, and what things we can learn from them.

This week he asked me to answer these questions:

• What are you really passionate about?
• How does what you are doing vocationally or volunteer wise serve that passion?
• How can those around you (friends, online community, etc.) best support you?
• How can those around you (friends, online community, etc.) best support you?

You can read my answers over on his blog “Wess Daniels: What Are You Passionate About?”

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While you’re at it check out the other two people that have done the segment so far:

• Matt Knisely: What Are You Passionate About?
• Tony Steward: What Are You Passionate About?

There’s a really interesting article in the New York Times today about a police office who was being charged with brutality in a criminal case. The suspect was caught carrying a gun and was purportedly punched by the officer while he was in cuffs. The Times reports that, “Officer E. said he has never been disciplined for brutality.” In other words, according to him this was his first offense.

The interesting thing about this case is how he was finally convicted with the brutality. The day prior to the confrontation the officer posted on his myspace page that he was feeling “devious.” And an earlier facebook status revealed that he had been “watching ‘Training Day’ to brush up on proper police procedure.”

The officer was quoted as saying:

“You have your Internet persona, and you have what you actually do on the street,” Officer E. said on Tuesday. “What you say on the Internet is all bravado talk, like what you say in a locker room.”

(From About New York – A New York Police Officer Who Put Too Much on MySpace – NYTimes.com)

The usual way to look at this would be to see the internet as a place where people escape to, where they go to let off steam: The virtual is the space that keeps us from doing these things in “Reality” or what they fantasize about. But I think a better understanding, or at least more interesting read of this situation (following Žižek), is this: what happens on the web, in the virtual or dreams or fantasy, is where comes closet to the real of our desire. In other words, reality – the day to day of our existence – is where we escape to in order to hide from desire. If this is (at least somewhat) accurate, far from devaluing the experiences we share online, in the virtual, we see just how important these expressions are. It’s not two selves represented: the one in reality is the true one and the one in the virtual is the false one, rather, it works the other way around and we can use reality to masks our desires.

This seems to be exactly what happened with this officer. All the bravado in the locker-room is who he really desired to be, it reflected in a sense who he really was, masked beneath a self-controlled (he’s never been convicted of brutality before) enforcer of law and order. He was unable to control the flux between the two and his desire flowed into his physical action. The problem is that instead of repent and be reconciled for the destructiveness of this “kernel” he masks it, covering it in yet another layer of fantasy. The Christian response is not to cover up the kernel of our desire but to redirect, hand it over, to God. If our desire becomes destructive it needs to be unmasked, not hidden under another mask which is how this officer is dealing with it:

Officer E. said he is now being careful to mask his identity on the Web and that he has curbed his tongue because of the acquittal. “I feel it’s partially my fault,” he said. “It paints a picture of a person who could be overly aggressive. You put that together, it’s reasonable doubt in anybody’s mind.”