9/16/11

Parsing the decline of mainline POrotestantism

The Grass Roots Church:

"The family grace, the gilt-edged testaments worn with devotion, the musty-smelling ten-year-old owl-faced Plymouths chunking on dirt and barely tarred roads, the local church college with two Ph.D.'s, the one-room schoolhouse, one-track life, one religion, just one wife, will of God, and woodshed whipping-these and all the other half-real, half Norman Rockwell intimations of something way back, when religion was religion, and it was all right to take in Grandma when Grandpa passed on-these are the dreams that white Protestantism U. S. of A. (like a boy grown older and moved to the big town) tries to recapture and cannot."

'via Blog this'

Global Online Privacy

Food for thought

The Idea of a Local Economy | Wendell Berry | Orion Magazine: "'The idea of a local economy rests upon only two principles: neighborhood and subsistence...""

I do not see why a local economy could not be part of a global economy if we combined some of Berry's principles with the implications of a decentralized employment model. If jobs are now outsourced abroad, why not throughout this country in cyber-communities where folk work at home or in cyber-spaces.



Global Online Privacy

Why Beyond Pattern Language

Beyond Pattern Language:

Because the existing structure for the presentation of the principles of the cyber-community are nonexistent. Without an image and principles for getting to what should be, even the small changes one could make in a neighborhood are doomed to frustrate. The principles of Beyond Pattern Language include:

Economic Realism: To supplant the car the living space must become the new car, a mass produced, modular unit of many varieties which can be put together in innumerable ways to make the dwellings of the future. This increases by at least five times the reach of the current auto industry. We will decline as an economy until this is realized.

Security Realism: Weather daunts. We are not immune from attacks anywhere. We fear crime in neighborhoods. The cyber-community proposed addresses each of these huge issues.

Quality of Life: The quality of life in our drug and consumer society is egregious. Parts of our society are dysfunctional. My proposal is for voluntary residence in cyber-communities where people assent to the same degree of rules that might be proposed by a co-op or even a landlord. The structure of a cyber-community and the actual structure of dwellings discourages all sorts of criminality.

Abba did not forsake Jesus

The Thinking of George Kennan Linked to the Perception and Articulation of Abba's Way, Page 2 of 2 - Associated Content from Yahoo! - associatedcontent.com:

"Abba did not forsake Jesus. Like all human beings who seek to move the world forward, Jesus suffered the animosity of fearful humankind, unwilling to grasp the offer of Abba which never is extinguished - the offer to live and prosper by values which can uplift the whole world. The values not of some religion among religions but of Abba's universal way, applicable to all people. The way of tolerance, helpfulness, democracy and non-idolatry."



Global Online Privacy

When I thought he might cotton to my words

Obama's Way: An unsure nation awaits an Obama sign:

"If Barack (my name for him from earliest days
when I thought he might cotton to my words)
Were merely to start evoking the world beyond the
Tyranny of oil and sprawl
A world where neighborhoods are not tract homes
But vibrant cyber-communities
He might find a wedge

But until he gets the truth embedded
In his mind and sees that it is as large and portentous
And dangerous as it is
He will be the One Who Was Too Early
Sad to say
So sad to say"

The time to get this down is now.

'via Blog this'

I think Dakota's truth is more complex than the ceremony let on

Obama awards Medal of Honor to Kentucky Marine - latimes.com: "On Wednesday, they shared a beer. On Thursday, President Obama presented the Medal of Honor to Dakota Meyer, credited with saving three dozen lives during operations in Afghanistan in 2009."

His picture says to me, why this war at all? Such wars have been obsolete since Vietnam. I also think Obama knows it but like other things he cannot say it.

Decibels rise with obfuscatory methodologies to game the system

Noxious Oil: Big oil chickens are coming home to roost: "Big oil chickens are coming home to roost"

Now that big oil knows reality is
Against its continuation as a resource
And that its quest for profits is endangered
It will try very hard
As in the noxious Mobil-Exxon fracking ads
To tilt the scales toward short term profit
So that the good life will continue
To flow in the direction of its primary employees

This will continue for 20 years max
During which we could experience yet more oil wars
Higher prices at the pump
And continued
Potentially incendiary
Social and economic stratification globally

Because all business is cottoning to the
Short term mantra
To the Trading Economy
Productless and based on someone else losing

All this is veiled in fast talking TV
Idolizations
Sports and celebrity stuff
Decibels rise with
Obfuscatory methodologies
To game the system

But there is but one solution
See it for what it is
Say no to it
Start acting to oppose it
Do not be bemused by hate mongers
And simplistic solutions
Trust Abba within the human
Practice the values of Abba's Way
Tolerance democracy helpfulness and non-idolatry
And make global democratic revolution everywhere

Imagining a contemporary John the Baptist

Markman: A Film About Jesus:

"EXTERIOR. SUNRISE MOUNTAIN. LAS VEGAS. SUNSET.

A POLICE CAR WITH LIGHTS FLASHING but no siren on, climbs Lake Mead Boulevard toward the crest of the Sunrise Mountain. As it moves over the crest, we see a spectral desert landscape stretching toward Lake Mead, some 25 miles east.

INTERIOR. POLICE CAR.

TIGER WARD (40's), at the wheel talking on his car phone to MAYOR STEVE BLAIR (40's).

TIGER: Yeah, we're secure. I rigged this baby up myself. It's just you and me, your honor.

BLAIR: (V. O.) I'm depending on you.

TIGER: Don't worry, Mr. Mayor. Reverend John WATTERS: doesn't know a thing, in my humble opinion.

BLAIR: (V. O.) And if he does?

TIGER: Jesus. Ain't you got any faith?

BLAIR: (V. O.) Lord, Lord.

TIGER: Look, your honor, you just rest easy with that new sweet thing of yours and leave the reverend to moi.
"

'via Blog this'

Global Online Privacy

The uses of churches

The Grass Roots Church:

"The power and property of the church are in themselves more or less neutral. Church buildings can be used to plot demonstrations, insulate junior-high youth groups, provide a stage for experimental plays that no theater will risk, or encapsulate congregations in sin-proof vinyl. The same is true for the church's boards, agencies, investments, and pension plans. They can be used to perpetuate sterility or to crash through into radical identification with the forces of change and renewal in today's turbulent world." - Harvey Cox

'via Blog this'

Global Online Privacy

Bristol chipping away at the grass roots

Bristol residents reclaim the streets for children’s play | Bristol24-7: "Thanks to a pioneering year-long trial being run by Bristol City Council, residents can close their road to through traffic up to once a week, with the aim of giving children the space and freedom to play outside their homes. Providing all your neighbours are consulted, a Temporary Play Street (TPS) Order will allow you to close a road for up to three hours once a week for a whole year. "

A thicker, tougher, more subtle and more complex view of structure

Christopher Alexander Needs to Be Heard in the 21st Century - Associated Content from Yahoo! - associatedcontent.com: ""It must be emphasized, lest the orderly mind shrink in horror from anything that is not clearly articulated and categorized in tree form, that the idea of overlap, ambiguity, multiplicity of aspect and the semilattice are not less orderly than the rigid tree, but more so. They represent a thicker, tougher, more subtle and more complex view of structure.""


Global Online Privacy

See now the texts that join all texts extant

Abba's Way:

"See now the texts that join all texts extant,
Creating religion in place of truth;
It’s not enough to speak of force and power,
Available, within all who believe."

Global Online Privacy

The Morning Regimen

New Tao Posts: The Tao contains all signs known and unknown: "The Tao contains all signs known and unknown"

How many habits rules and actions all at once
Churn round at rising up to face the day
Our mindful steps we check for balance now
We make it to the fridge crack out the ice
And pour the coffee that we made last night

There's no one here but me today
How strange that is
Yet I make do I pour the sweetener
I carry water to this table
Carry coffee to this place
Push on and see the lights

How many habits change so subtly
With changes we cannot presage
How much our rising and our falling
Is subsumed in a strange grace

The Tao contains all signs known and unknown

The Tao contains all signs known and unknown
Nothing that is begins without the Tao
The will that we possess is most alive
Deriving rules that rise from every sign

RECCMENDATION Richard Gordon Quantum Touch

The Slow as Molasses Press