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Weekly Meanderings

Weekly Meanderings

Last updated on: May 21, 2011 at 12:09 am by Scot McKnight

Weekly Meanderings 2011-05-20T19:11:58-05:00 Scot McKnight

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Young boys fishing in 1940

Amanda Munroe: “There are a lot of people in the world who think sport is a unique and powerful tool for achieving peace. (Sarah, Sarah, Meeghan and I are 4 of them). Our team’s work this summer wants to connect these folks and ask: “How?” “Why?” and “What’s it like to be there?”

Joe Carter, at First Things, has an excellent piece on “X-Cons“: Gen X conservatives. “One difference is is that unlike the Baby Boomers, we haven’t had every segment of our generation analyzed and examined. Take, for instance, those of us who grew up to be culturally and politically conservative. You don’t hear much about what you could call, if we weren’t weary of labels, X-Cons.”

Lynne Hybels on love wins: “I’m not making a big, cosmic, eternity-touching statement when I suggest that love wins. I’ll leave the big, cosmic, eternity-touching statements to theologians and biblical scholars and preachers and controversial authors. I’m just saying that the longer I live and the further I travel and the more I see and experience of the brokenness of life, the more I realize that every encounter and every relationship goes better when we approach it from a position of love. I don’t think love means that we have to agree about everything. But I think it means that we listen hard, and that we do our best to understand the fears, the frustrations, the dreams, the worldview, the experience of “the other.” And while we listen, we pray that God will open the eyes of our hearts and expand the capacity of our minds. And we pray that the Spirit, the Passion, and the Redemptive work of Jesus will have its way in us and in the world.”

That picture of the Eastern Bluebird is from Rob.

Christine Scheller’s interview with Spence Smith. Good article by Brad Wright. I couldn’t wait to read Patrick’s take on this.

Mike Glenn’s important reminder, one that needs to be said routinely. Eugene Peterson.

Roger Olson joins us at Patheos. Wow, Patheos is the borg.

Karen: “Anybody who can’t find beauty in this world ain’t likely to find it in the next one either. I don’t know when The End is coming. Writers rarely do, but we don’t worry about it. We just go about the day stringing words together, doing loads of laundry, reading, fixing chicken salad, praying, filling the bird feeder, observing, pondering, and going back to rewrite that sentence we wrote earlier. I been asking myself lately what would I do differently if I knew for sure the world was coming to an end on Saturday, and try as I might, I can’t think of a thing.”

Cornel West goes after President Obama.

Thou shalt not lie about… Thanks Ted

Meanderings in the News

1. W.W.: “If it turns out that the road to plutocracy is paved with co-opted political discretion, and not the selfish wishes of the conspiring super-rich, we’ll need to consider carefully what to do about it. The good news is that democracy works reasonably well. Policy does tend to reflect majority public opinion if the public is paying attention to the right things and knows what it wants. The bad news is that the public isn’t paying attention to the right thing, and I fear the way we have been talking about inequality and plutocracy isn’t helping.”

2. Wayne Drash, on forgiving George Wallace for his racism: “Kelvin Croom decided to go with his father. “And I’m glad I did,” he said. The rumors in the black community, Croom says, had been that Wallace was on a forgiveness tour to get the black vote. But Croom says he saw it differently in person. “He said he was wrong,” Croom says. “He asked for forgiveness. It was up to us to do that once he asked. It’s just so amazing. He played the great politics of the day – and by using hate and racial divide he won.” Yet when they met privately that day at the hotel, Croom says, “This man was really concerned for his soul and his relationship with Jesus Christ.” Croom says the biblical story of Saul the persecutor becoming Paul the Apostle flashed through his mind. “I remember a man called Saul whose name was turned to Paul,” Croom says. “The story of Saul is amazing. And I saw it with my own eyes in George Wallace. So I had to forgive Gov. Wallace as well as so many of the things he stood for.” He says he keeps a photograph in his office of Wallace in the governor’s mansion; Croom’s mother stands on one side, his father on the other. “It just reminds me of where we come from,” he says.”

3. CNN: “Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) — Pakistan’s parliament threatened Saturday to cut off access to a facility used by NATO forces to ferry troops into Afghanistan, signaling a growing rift that began when U.S. commandos killed Osama bin Laden during a raid on a Pakistani compound. A resolution adopted during a joint session of parliament condemned the U.S. action. It also called for a review of its working agreement with the U.S., demanded an independent investigation and ordered the immediate end of drone attacks along its border region. Failure to end unilateral U.S. raids and drone attacks will force Pakistan to “to consider taking necessary steps, including withdrawal of (the) transit facility” used by the NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, according to the resolution.”

The ugliest baseball uniform ever!

4. David S. Reynolds on the doomsday prophets. It’s today: “If you’re too busy to think about Armageddon, as prophesied in the Bible, think again. It’s next Saturday. At least that’s what followers of the California-based Family Radio ministry are saying. Since last October, Family Radio believers have fanned across the county in buses announcing that a tremendous earthquake will shatter the world on May 21. On that day, Jesus will reappear and take to heaven around 3 percent of humankind — true Christians chosen long ago by God. Other humans will endure 153 days of death and horror until they are annihilated on Oct. 21, the end of the world.”

5. Christie Garton: “After job losses, home foreclosures, mounting debt and bills some can no longer afford to pay, families like theirs have become part of the new face of hunger in America. Vicki Escarra, president and CEO of Feeding America, the nation’s largest hunger-relief charity with a network of more than 200 food bank partners, says there is a growing problem with suburban poverty, “where new clients are individuals who have never needed to rely on the charitable food system.”

6. Anthony Faiola: “Athens — Already struggling to avoid a debt default that could seal Greece’s fate as a financial pariah, this Mediterranean nation is also scrambling to contain another threat — a breakdown in the rule of law. Thousands have joined an “I Won’t Pay” movement, refusing to cover highway tolls, bus fares, even fees at public hospitals. To block a landfill project, an entire town south of Athens has risen up against the government, burning earth-moving equipment and destroying part of a main access road. The protests are an emblem of social discontent spreading across Europe in response to a new age of austerity. At a time when the United States is just beginning to consider deep spending cuts, countries such as Greece are coping with a fallout that has extended well beyond ordinary civil disobedience. Perhaps most alarming, analysts here say, has been the resurgence of an anarchist movement, one with a long history in Europe. While militants have been disrupting life in Greece for years, authorities say that anger against the government has now given rise to dozens of new “amateur anarchist” groups, whose tactics include planting of gas canisters in mailboxes and destroying bank ATMs.”

7. Dan Vergano: “The study, which appeared in 2008 in the journalComputational Statistics and Data Analysis, was headed by statistician Edward Wegman of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. Its analysis was an outgrowth of a controversial congressional report that Wegman headed in 2006. The “Wegman Report” suggested climate scientists colluded in their studies and questioned whether global warming was real. The report has since become a touchstone among climate change naysayers. The journal publisher’s legal team “has decided to retract the study,” said CSDA journal editor Stanley Azen of the University of Southern California, following complaints of plagiarism. A November review by three plagiarism experts of the 2006 congressional report for USA TODAY also concluded that portions contained text from Wikipedia and textbooks. The journal study, co-authored by Wegman student Yasmin Said, detailed part of the congressional report’s analysis.” This report isn’t clear enough for me, but I’m keen on hearing from anyone who knows more. Is this removal on a technicality or is the evidence or conclusion flawed?

8. From CNN: “We eat what we get. It’s not like I can say ‘I’m going to eat something healthy,'” says Joel, a resident of a downtown Atlanta shelter. For Joel, and other homeless people like him, having a meal does not mean choosing between an organic pear and gorgonzola salad or locally-grown arugula with artisanal cheese. Instead, food options boil down to one thing: sustenance. The food is received mostly by donation, which means it’s often cheap, non-perishable, and generally less than healthy. However, one Atlanta nonprofit, the Atlanta Mission, has recently taken the term “community garden” to a new level by adapting a vacant lot in the downtown area and transforming it into a garden filled with raised vegetable beds. It’s tended daily by the very men who inhabit the shelter and whose bounty will benefit the shelter’s kitchen.”

9. The biggest non-story of the year by Faith Karimi.

10. John Tierney on Martin Seligman: “This feeling of accomplishment contributes to what the ancient Greeks called eudaimonia, which roughly translates to “well-being” or “flourishing,” a concept that Dr. Seligman has borrowed for the title of his new book, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being. He has also created his own acronym, Perma, for what he defines as the five crucial elements of well-being, each pursued for its own sake: positive emotion, engagement (the feeling of being lost in a task), relationships, meaning and accomplishment.”

Meanderings in Sports

Sad story about Derek Boogaard.

Weekly Meanderings

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May 20, 2011

And 93 years later the fellas are at it again!

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May 21, 2011 Saturday Afternoon Book Review: Hauerwas, Wells and friends

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