When faced with the raw devastation of the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan, my words feel foolishly small.
The photos and videos of the destruction are utterly surreal. None, for me, more so than this one below. What begins as a seemingly harmless, ankle-deep flow of water quickly turns into a raging torrent, wiping out cars and even buildings:
As Eugene Cho commented recently, it’s altogether too easy to act like a jerk in the name of “contending” for the Gospel.
I think Rob Bell’s characterization of broader American culture is unfortunately true of the church many times as well: “There is this low-grade boiling rage that many people carry around with them everywhere they go.”
[Ironic edit: The aforementioned Rob Bell has become a trending topic on Twitter because of a group of people who are adamantly opposed to him, filled with the typical name-calling, gnashing of teeth, and end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it hysterics typical to such trending topics.]
Apologies for sounding like a stereotypical, institution-suspicious Xer when I say this (but totally not apologizing for still nerding out over The Breakfast Club, as seen in the photo above!), but I am growing weary of the infighting in my denomination. I think we could play a pretty mean game of church insider-bingo with the vocab being thrown around: tall steeple churches, white papers, open letters, angry responses, clarification letters… BINGO!
Race, Politics, Family
Back in October, we went to see Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company’s production of Yellow Face, by David Henry Hwang — the Tony-award winning playwright behind M. Butterfly.
I’m a bit of a cultural Philistine, so I don’t make any claims to understand much about theater, but I really enjoyed this performance. Yellow Face is a semi-autobiographical, postmodern take on race, identity, family and artistic integrity. You can read a bit more from Mo’olelo here.
I appreciated David Henry Hwang’s use of humor throughout the play, given the intensely personal nature of the ground he was covering. Discussions about race, politics, family, art, etc. can quickly become glum affairs. The quick pace of the dialogue, the multimedia backdrop (see a few photos here), and the interweaving of fact and fiction held my attention throughout.
Yellow Face raises many important questions: How much of our identity (our “face”) do we choose? How do we understand race and identity in our ever-changing culture? Do our parents’ dreams eventually become ours?
After about a year, I finally finished reading Love is a Mixtape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield.
[An aside: Have I told you how much I love our local library? Seriously, rediscovering the library last year has been such a source of joy for me. Being able to renew Love is a Mixtape many, many times online, discovering obscure music -- Derek Bailey, anyone? -- and choosing new books with my daughter... the list goes on and on. My friend Richard inspires me through his work as a librarian to dream of better ways of being a church: giving ourselves away for the sake of the community, becoming a trusted resource, finding ways to engage people of all ages...]
The theme for the upcoming Idea Camp in Las Vegas is sex.
Oh boy.
For many of us in the church, myself included, this is a really tough topic. Talking about it can be awkward, embarrassing, or confusing. Throw on top of that the vast amounts of Christians who struggle with pornography and sexual-based sin, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for sweeping this conversation under the rug as fast as possible.
However, I deeply appreciate the leadership of Charles Lee (founder of the Idea Camp) in being willing to go there because these conversations need to happen. Sex shouldn’t be some shameful thing (no matter how badly our culture has skewed things); in the light of Christ and His redemption, it can and should be a beautiful thing.
Posterous
