Waving or Drowning?

Yet Another Unreasonable Non-Negotiable From Jesus

More killer Rohr for you:

"Another of Jesus' non-negotiables is justice and generosity toward the poor and the outsider. That's quite clear, quite absolute—page after page of the Gospels. And now Christians think nothing of amassing fortunes and living grandly. Jesus’ bias toward the poor was something that rich nations did not want to hear."
(Richard Rohr, from the CAC webcast, Nov. 8, 2008: "What is The Emerging Church?")

Faith & Philanthropy (UPDATED X3)

Arianna Huffington reports from Davos:

If bankers and politicians were stocks, the people here would be shorting them (although there is definitely still a "buy" on Barack Obama, as the warm reception for Valerie Jarrett, who spoke here on his behalf, shows). But attendees would be gobbling up shares in philanthropy and faith. At today's conversation about how new catalysts -- such as the innovative use of technology and social media -- can be used to stimulate new forms of interfaith dialogue, religious leaders of all persuasions, including Jim Wallis of Sojourners, Jonathan Sacks, the chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations in the United Kingdom, and Mustafa Ceric, Grand Mufti of Bosnia, talked about how they are seeing a surge in people turning to faith. It was interesting to watch as our moderator, Jonathan Zittrain, the Harvard law professor who wrote The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, surfed MySpace and Facebook, pointing out on a big screen group after group dedicated to faith and interfaith dialogue.

More voices, people, more voices.

Read the rest here

UPDATE: Just saw this, from yesterday's column from Arianna:

So far, the two questions that keep coming up in almost every speech, panel, and hallway conversation are "what went wrong?" and "how did we miss the signals?" The consensus conclusions:
1) Too much faith in the free market.
2) Too much faith in economic models.
3) Too little transparency.
4) No moral compass.

It's like the world is dying of thirst and we've got the only water well in town. Why are there not more voices in this conversation??

UPDATE: Thankfully, Jim Wallis is there:

Every morning when I wake up in Davos, I turn on my television to CNN in my hotel room. And every morning, there is the same reporter interviewing a bundled-up CEO with the snowy “magic mountain” of Davos in the background. The question is always the same: “When will this crisis be over?” They actually have a “white board” where they make the CEO mark his answer: 2009…2010…2011…later.

But it’s the wrong question. Of course it’s a question we all want to know the answer to, but there is a much more important one. We should be asking, “How will this crisis change us?” How will it change the way we think, act, and decide things — how we live, and how we do business? Yes, this is a structural crisis, and one that clearly calls for new social regulation. But it is also a spiritual crisis, and one that calls for new self-regulation. We seem to have lost some things and forgotten some things — such as our values.

UPDATE: Actually, this seems like as good an opportunity as any to pull in an NT Wright quote (Thanks to Beth) that to me brings this issue full circle, and even helps to decipher what I'm going on about here:

We have of course just witnessed a kind of secular version of Isaiah 9. The election of Barack Obama has been hailed with wild delight around the world. ...The whole world was hungry for hope, and now Obama, who is indeed brilliant, charming, shrewd and very capable, is being told that the government of the world is upon his shoulders, and we expect him to solve its problems. Poor man: no ordinary mortal can bear that burden. Nor should we ask it of him. The irrational joy and hope at his election only shows the extent to which other hopes have failed, making us snatch too eagerly at sudden fresh signs. And that can only be because we have forgotten the Christmas message, or have neutered it, have rendered it toothless, as though the shoulder of the child born this night was simply a shoulder for individuals to lean on rather than the shoulder to take the weight of the world’s government.

No Title Required

January 29, 2009
What Red Ink? Wall Street Paid Hefty Bonuses
By BEN WHITE
New York Times

By almost any measure, 2008 was a complete disaster for Wall Street — except, that is, when the bonuses arrived.

Despite crippling losses, multibillion-dollar bailouts and the passing of some of the most prominent names in the business, employees at financial companies in New York, the now-diminished world capital of capital, collected an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses for the year.

That was the sixth-largest haul on record, according to a report released Wednesday by the New York State comptroller.

While the payouts paled next to the riches of recent years, Wall Street workers still took home about as much as they did in 2004, when the Dow Jones industrial average was flying above 10,000, on its way to a record high.

Some bankers took home millions last year even as their employers lost billions.

Read the rest here

Oh How Times Have Changed

In Davos, China and Russia lay a verbal beating on the US for the world's economic woes:

In the official opening address of the World Economic Forum, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia spoke of a financial “perfect storm” that has decimated the old system, rendering it obsolete.

“A year ago, American delegates speaking from this rostrum emphasized the U.S. economy’s fundamental stability and its cloudless prospects,” he said, speaking through a translator. “Today, investment banks, the pride of Wall Street, have virtually ceased to exist.”

But the damage goes beyond Wall Street, he said. “The entire economic growth system, where one regional center prints money without respite and consumes material wealth, while another regional center manufactures inexpensive goods and saves money printed by other governments, has suffered a major setback.”

The Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, left little doubt that Beijing blamed the United States for the economic breakdown. “Inappropriate macroeconomic policies,” an “unsustainable model of development characterized by prolonged low savings and high consumption,” the “blind pursuit of profit” and “the failure of financial supervision” all contributed, he said.

Read the rest here

Up, Up in the Air

I'm off to Toronto in the morning to meet up with my writing partner. There will just be enough time for writing, for some time with family, a dinner with some high school friends, my usual visit to The Meeting House, then home again Monday.

FYI I'm now buying my carbon offsets from planetair.ca, as recommended by David Suzuki, among others I respect. There's going to be a lot of flying this year, and I'm committed to offsetting it all.

Life After Greed

I'm a huge Douglas Coupland fan; I've read most of his novels several times over, and I think Life After God might be one of the greatest books I've ever read.

Coupland has a brilliant column in today's NYT. He hits on the irony of society pining about wanting to cut back, to spend less, then screaming when the opportunity is forced on us. Coupland nails us right where our sickness lies.

Right now, it seems almost impossible to imagine ever spending more on things except, maybe, gasoline. And yet the prospect of less consumption fills us with dread. It’s not the having less part that is frightening — people are generally happy as long as everybody’s in the same boat. What’s frightening is the fear that our system can’t handle less, and it’s not as if there’s some other system out there shouting: “Try me! Try me!”

We’ve finally spiked over the edge of the chart — we’re at the place we couldn’t see in social studies classes, when late 20th-century trends like population and raw material consumption and pension indexes were extrapolated along the x- and y- axes into infinity.

In my mind we were never really in the future until we hit that edge — and now we have — and because of this, everything we sense in 2009 is going to be new, but that’s what the future was always supposed to be about.

Read the whole piece here. Once again--this might be three times now--I have to ask, where is the church on this? This is big.

Re-Formation

I think this quote from Richard Rohr is stunning in its simplicity (emphasis mine):

The new Jesus scholarship acknowledges that it’s at the energetic level, the life level, the love level, that the mystery of Jesus is passed on; and not just getting the words right.

This scholarship broadens the view to include previously neglected perspectives: the feminist/womanist lens, the lens of the poor, the lens of the Blacks, the lens of gays, the Jewish lens, and the lens of sincere secular seekers.

I don’t think Jesus ever intended to create Christianity as a new religion. I think he was trying to reform the Jewish religion, and in that was trying to reform all religion.

(Richard Rohr, from the CAC webcast, Nov. 8, 2008: "What is The Emerging Church?")

Up, Up and Away... With Your Dough

Just quick post to point you to a couple of links dealing with the fact that Citigroup is trying to go ahead with a deal to acquire a $50M private jet, despite the fact that the grand institution is being kept afloat with tax-payer money. The good news is they're also trying to sell two older models worth $27M each, so I guess in the long run my American friends are actually making $4M in the deal.

Forget I said anything.

Carrion Comfort

C.S. Lewis counted the great Scottish preacher and author George MacDonald among his greatest influences. Not long ago I posted How Much is Enough?, a quote from Lewis. Let me tell you, ol' Jack was a lightweight compared to his gruff hero.

Today, well... read this for yourself:

"Or are you so well satisfied with what you are, that you have never sought eternal life, never hungered after the righteousness of God, the perfection of your being? If this latter be your condition, then be comforted; the Master does not require of you to sell what you have and give to the poor. You follow Him! You go with him to preach good tidings!--you who care not for righteousness! You are not one whose company is desirable to the Master. Be comforted, I say: He does not want you; He will not ask you to open your purse for Him... Go and keep the commandments. It is not come to your money yet. The commandments are enough for you. You are not yet a child in the kingdom. You do not care for the arms of your father; you value only the shelter of His roof. As to your money, let the commandments direct you how to use it. It is in you but pitiable presumption to wonder whether it is required of you to sell all that you have... for the Young Man to have sold all and followed Him would have been to accept God's patent of peerage: to you it is not offered."

...

"Does this comfort you? Then alas for you!... Your relief is to know that the Lord has no need of you--does not require you to part with your money, does not offer you Himself instead. You do not indeed sell Him for thirty pieces of silver, but you are glad not to buy Him with all that you have."

(George MacDonald, UNSPOKEN SERMONS, Second Series: The Hardness of the Way)

In 1854, the deacons of the church MacDonald was pastoring forced him out. Really? Imagine my surprise.

The Spirit of Service

It's been an interesting week to say the least.

Of course on Tuesday there was that little thing we like to call a turning point in history. Beyond the actual inauguration, this business of 'service' seems to have a lot of people excited. It seems we were ready to do something, we just needed someone to stand up and lead.

Friday I had the chance to spend a little time talking with a friend on the subject. My friend is in her sixties, and she has traveled extensively and lived in various places around the world. She told me of the calls she has received from friends around the world this week, asking her for help in figuring out what their part in this new world is, what their pledge should be.

In my friend's words, the question of the hour is "Are you ready to embody the spirit of service?". All this is in keeping with my own view of the coming of the Kingdom, and our roll in that redemption and transformation of creation.

Yesterday our faith community gathered here at Delta House and watched the inauguration speech again, and discussed the spiritual implications.

This morning I read in Nick Kristof's column about a document Bill Gates will release tomorrow.

Bill Gates will publish his first “annual letter” on Monday outlining his work on his twin passions — health and development in the poorest nations and education in America — and calling for the United States to do more even during this economic crisis.

It seems Bill wants to know what we are going to do too.

Do.

Too.

It's time to do.

Are you ready to embody the spirit of service?