A while back, I winced when I saw the word ‘congradulations’ on the sign in front of our local middle school. But that ain’t nothin’. Check out this letter from a Staten Island middle school administrator.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the difference between faith and spirituality. I’ve finally nailed down a definition that makes sense to me. Spirituality is a sense that there’s something bigger, transcendent in the universe. This is religion:

Enter Sam: I got sober, I got pregnant, don’t ask me how that works, it is just the way it was. And as some of you may know, there were these tiny little problems. For instance, the father was — comment se dit — not that enthusiastic about my having a baby, and I had no money. But I’d been going to this little church for a while by then, and when I announced during worship that I was pregnant, people cheered. All these old people, raised in fundamentalist houses in the Deep South, cheered. It was so amazing. They almost immediately saw me as the incubator who was going to bring them a new baby, to have and to hold. So they set about providing for us. They brought clothes, they brought furniture, they brought me soul-food casseroles to keep in the freezer, they brought me assurance that he was going to be a part of this family. And they began slipping me money.

Go read the whole essay. It’s amazing.

This just makes my head hurt. Get the whole story from Pam’s House Blend.

via Slacktivist

So, a Vietnam war veteran decides to give his Purple Heart to President Bush:

Thomas said he and his wife came up with the unprecedented idea to present the president with the Purple Heart over breakfast one morning a few months ago as they discussed the verbal attacks, both foreign and domestic, the commander in chief has withstood during his time in office.
“We feel like emotional wounds and scars are as hard to carry as physical wounds,” Thomas said.

OK, it’s a free country. Whatever. The surreal thing is that President Bush invited Mr. Thomas to the White House to present him the medal.
Mr. Thomas’ remark after the ceremony: “He said he didn’t feel like he had earned it.”
Gee, ya think?

From this list of party suggestions for Cinco de Mayo:

Put a “border guard” at your front door to give guests the feeling of going through customs.

Last week I ran across this collection of awesome dog-themed CafePress products. I ordered a T-shirt with this one:

Rafe Colburn links to an article in the Washingon Post about the self-help phenomenon The Secret. I was not previously aware of this hit book, but as soon as I read it, I thought: this sounds like it appeals to the same type of people who are attracted to the Gospel of prosperity. Two sides of the same coin. Interesting.
(NOTE: I’m only linking to pages that are critical of the respective movements. I don’t want to give google karma to the proponents.)

This week, writer John Scalzi is blogging his answers to questions submitted by readers of his blog. Yesterday’s question was, in essence: What is the meaning of life?
Mr. Scalzi suggests that he devised his answer to this question via humanist (non-religious) means:

What I’m leaving out here, for the space of relative brevity, is a detailed examination of processes by which I came to this intellectual methodology, generated through years of self-examination and self-realization via intentional and unintentional experiential phenomena, to produce the robust heuristic structure through which I filter data.

Here’s the heart of his reply:

Finally, in the larger sense — the one in which I am a citizen of the world, that I like no man am an island, blah blah blah blah blah, it becomes a matter of asking one’s self first whether one wants to be engaged in the world, and then if so, how best to be of utility. I do enough things that I feel engaged in my world and I feel like I’m trying to do beneficial things (or at least I’m doing as little harm as possible). I think it’s my responsibility to try to make the world a better place than it was before I got here; I don’t feel obliged to be heart-rent at every thing that’s wrong with the planet. One person can make a difference in the world, so long as that one person realizes that one person can not do every thing or be actively concerned with every damn thing. I pick and choose; everyone does. I focus on what I think I do well, and where I think I can do good. (emphasis added)

I find his answer to the BIG QUESTION quite similar to my own, which I formed in the context of being a Christian. I guess it all comes down to the source of the responsibility, and his answer shows what I believe: that there are many ways to realize your obligation to ‘love your neighbor’.

A couple of weeks ago, Rafe Colburn pondered whether we’re in ‘Boom 2.0’. I now have conclusive evidence that we are indeed in a boom, in the form of a short article from the Austin Business Journal:

NaturallyCurly.com Inc. has raised $600,000 from angel investors.
The company will use the funding for marketing and technical development. NaturallyCurly.com is a Web site devoted to curly hair. Board members include entrepreneur Tim Wall, Dr. Philip Sanger and NEA Venture Partner James Treybig, who founded Tandem Computers.
“Companies like NaturallyCurly have been able to see opportunities that have gone unnoticed by high-tech nerds like me,” Treybig says. “The movement to communities like NaturallyCurly is the foundation for the future of advertising.”
NaturallyCurly.com was founded nine years ago. The Web site provides articles, product information, salon recommendations and tips for curly-haired people. The site has registered members from around the world and nearly 10,000 visitors daily, according to the company. Last year, founders Michelle Breyer and Gretchen Heber also launched CurlyKids.com for children with curls.
NaturallyCurly.com has been nominated this year for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in Austin.

I just wish I could figure out a way to cash in on the insanity. I’d create a site for bald guys, but we just don’t use very many hair products. No retail or ad profit there.

I frequently describe myself as a liberal or progressive Christian. Twice in the past couple of weeks, I have been asked exactly what that means. While I have some general statements, it bothered me that I didn’t have a concise, easy-to understand answer. In response to this frustration, I started reading Brian D. McLaren’s A Generous Orthodoxy (which Rick Diamond, who I recently met, recommends on his blog.
I haven’t yet gotten too far into the book, and I don’t yet have an answer to my question, but I found the first chapter of the book to be an informative brief theological primer. In this chapter, Mr. McLaren describes “the seven Jesuses I have known;” he writes a short summary of the unique characteristics of seven ‘branches’ of Christianity. At the end of the seven characterizations, Mr. McLaren writes:

I am a Christian because I believe the real Jesus is all that these sketches reveal and more. Saying that, a question comes to mind…
Why not celebrate them all? . . . I’m recommending that we acknowledge that Christians of each tradition bring their distinctive and wonderful gifts to the table, so we can all enjoy the feast of generous orthodoxy–and spread that same feast for the whole world.

I definitely identify with this viewpoint, so I think I’m looking in the right place to help me voice my views. Stay tuned…
By the way, ‘the Liberal Protestant Jesus’ is one of flavors that Mr. McLaren describes. Since I identify much more with Mr. McLaren’s viewpoint than this one particular flavor, I see why I’ve had trouble describing my own theology. I have a feeling I’ll end up abandoning the word ‘liberal’ as soon as I find a more accurate and less charged description.