Waving or Drowning?

An Open Letter to President Obama from Michael Moore...

...And I would happily sign it too.

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so.

It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That's the way General Washington insisted it must be. That's what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. "You're fired!," said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in' hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).

So now you feel backed into a corner. 30 years ago this past Thursday (Thanksgiving) the Soviet generals had a cool idea -- "Let's invade Afghanistan!" Well, that turned out to be the final nail in the USSR coffin.

There's a reason they don't call Afghanistan the "Garden State" (though they probably should, seeing how the corrupt President Karzai, whom we back, has his brother in the heroin trade raising poppies). Afghanistan's nickname is the "Graveyard of Empires." If you don't believe it, give the British a call. I'd have you call Genghis Khan but I lost his number. I do have Gorbachev's number though. It's + 41 22 789 1662. I'm sure he could give you an earful about the historic blunder you're about to commit.

With our economic collapse still in full swing and our precious young men and women being sacrificed on the altar of arrogance and greed, the breakdown of this great civilization we call America will head, full throttle, into oblivion if you become the "war president." Empires never think the end is near, until the end is here. Empires think that more evil will force the heathens to toe the line -- and yet it never works. The heathens usually tear them to shreds.

Choose carefully, President Obama. You of all people know that it doesn't have to be this way. You still have a few hours to listen to your heart, and your own clear thinking. You know that nothing good can come from sending more troops halfway around the world to a place neither you nor they understand, to achieve an objective that neither you nor they understand, in a country that does not want us there. You can feel it in your bones.

Read the rest here.

Advent Preparation

This feels right, on the first Sunday in Advent...

“Come Lord Jesus,” the Advent mantra, means that all of Christian history has to live out of a kind of deliberate emptiness, a kind of chosen non-fulfillment. Perfect fullness is always to come and we do not need to demand it now. This keeps the field of life wide open and especially open to grace and to a future created by God rather than by ourselves. This is exactly what it means to be “awake,” as the Gospel urges us!

Advent means to be aware!
Advent means to be alive!
Advent means to be attentive!
Advent means to be alert!
Advent means to be awake!

Advent is, above all else, a call to full consciousness and a forewarning about the high price of consciousness.
(Richard Rohr, Adapted from Preparing For Christmas, p. 4)

And if you would like a soundtrack for this meditation:

I still haven't found what I'm looking for.
(U2)

Feels Like Heaven

She said you know what heaven is like? & I said I wasn't sure & she laughed & said grown-ups didn't know much at all about important stuff & I said I had to agree with her even though I was one of them myself.
(Brian Andreas, Storypeople.com)

Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
(Jesus Christ, Matthew 18:3)

Did You Say Didache?

Tony Jones has a new book coming out on the Didache (pronounced DID-ah-kay) called The Teaching of the Twelve: Believing & Practicing the Primitive Christianity of the Ancient Didache Community. I've had a sneak peek, and this book is a treasure. Readers of this blog will know that its my view that the People of God have gone off course, and that the misdirection has been going on almost from the beginning. For that reason, the earlier we can go back, the better we'll be able to see what it meant to be a follower in the early days of the faith.

Next week I'll be participating in a blog book tour hosted by Paraclete Press. Here's what they have to say, and the schedule:

The Didache, an early handbook of an anonymous Christian community, "is the most important book you never read." It spells out a way of life for Jesus-followers, including how to show one another the love of God, how to practice the Eucharist, and how to take in wandering prophets.

Likely written before many of the New Testament books, this little-known text can enlighten the way that Christian are church, today.

Tony Jones new book, The Teaching of the Twelve, unpacks this ancient document with insight and perspective, and traces the life of a small house church in Missouri that is trying to live according to its precepts.

Included in the book is a new, contemporary English translation of the Didache (see below) or listen to Tony Jones read the complete text.

Join us on a blog tour of Tony Jones new book, The Teaching of the Twelve: Believing and Practicing the Primitive Christianity of the Ancient Didache Community beginning the first Monday of Advent, November 30:

November 30: An introduction with Tony Jones

December 1: Chapter 1 - The Most Important Book You've Never Heard of - with Adam Walker Cleaveland at pomomusings and Thomas Turner at everydayliturgy

December 2: Chapter 3 - The Didache Community - Then and Now - with Ted Gossard at Jesus Community and Amy Moffitt at Without a Map

December 3: Chapter 4 - There Are Two Ways - with Tripp Fuller at homebrewedchristianity and with Holly Rankinzaher at happydaydeadfish

December 4: Chapter 5 - Sex, Money, and Other Means of Getting Along - with Chris Monroe at Paradoxology and Mike Todd at Waving or Drowning?

December 5: Chapter 6 - Living Together In Community - with Brother Maynard at Subversiveinfluence and Mike King

December 6: Chapter 7 - The End is Nigh - with Greg Arthur at Holinessreeducation.com and Mike Stavlund at Awakening

December 7: Epilogue - with Luke C. Miller and Carl McColman at The Website of Unknowing

December 8: Special Question - Is this text - The Didache - really so important? Why? Do we know that it was important to the earliest communities of Christians? with Jonathan Brink at Missio Dei

December 9: Special Question - Does the Didache teach or advise anything that substantively differs from what was decided at the earliest ecumenical church councils (such as Nicaea) with Dwight Friesen

December 10: Special Question - Why is the Didache relevant, in particular today? Is it more relevant today than it was, say 100 years ago? Why? with Bob Hyatt

Starting Dec. 1st purchase 3+ copies of this book at a 40% discount. This special offer ends on December 11th, with the close of the blog tour! and with Holly Rankinzaher at

The full text of the Didache is here.

Be sure to tune in and provide input. See you next week.

Christianity and the Olympics

I've made no secret of my own opposition to the Olympics, particularly from a faith-oriented perspective. A recent CBC article brings to light the diverse and contradictory reactions of various Christian groups to the spectacle of the 2010 Winter Olympics:

"We see ourselves as vessels that God can use, whether that's verbal or just in the ministry of presence … just being there and being available."
Melanie Neufeld, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

"The church structure should be engaged in all of community life, and to contribute for good."
Karen Reed, More Than Gold

"It seems unthinkable to align ourselves with the massive corporate enterprise as the Olympics."
Dave Diewert, Streams of Justice

Read the entire article here.

One alternative to this marginalizing spectacle:

For more information on the "failed legislation" referred to in the video, see this post on the Streams of Justice blog.

Stephen Lewis Needs Your Aeroplan Miles!

Long time readers of this blog will know that Stephen Lewis (@stephenlewisfdn) is one of our favorite people out there. Have you got some extra Aeroplan miles in your account? Here's what Stephen proposes:

For one day only, Aeroplan will match every mile donated to the Stephen Lewis Foundation through their Beyond Miles programme. On December 1, 2009 – World AIDS Day – donate your miles online and make a difference for communities in Africa.

Donated Aeroplan Miles make our work possible. By using Aeroplan Miles to offset costs of flights, hotels and car rentals, we are able to allocate more funds directly to the grassroots HIV/AIDS organizations we fund.

HOW WE’LL USE YOUR MILES

In March 2010, your miles will bring together Canadian and African grandmothers at an African Grandmothers’ Gathering in Swaziland. For the first time, grannies from SLF-funded projects in 15 countries will come together in Africa to share their experiences, build relationships and forge a strong network of grandmother activists. We will use donated miles to facilitate the travel of both African and Canadian grandmothers to Swaziland. Help us raise 2.5 million miles on December 1st to make this Grandmothers’ Gathering a reality!

YOUR DONATION MAKES A DIFFERENCE

To date, Aeroplan and its members have contributed nearly 30 million miles to the Stephen Lewis Foundation! Since 2006, we have used donated miles to support projects in 15 African countries. Donated miles have enabled us to bring the voices of African grassroots leaders to the forefront, create partnerships through our mentorship programme, send our field representatives to see the projects firsthand, and to bring together community workers to share strategies and experiences with psychosocial counselling, orphan care and home-based health care. Thank you so much for making this possible!

Help us spread the word by telling your friends and family and linking to our Aeroplan donation page!

Sounds like a plan to me... maybe it will help alleviate some of my guilt from flying so much! Mark your calendar and do something tangible this year on World AIDS Day.

Salvos and Sex

Our friend Danielle Strickland can't seem to stay out of trouble. After doing great work for years in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, she found herself exiled to Australia. And there... well, just take a look:

Seriously, way to go Danielle.

An Ancient Voice Speaks to the Present

How think you that you obey Christ's commandments, when you spend your time collecting interest, piling up loans, buying slaves like livestock, and merging business with business?... And that is not all. Upon this you heap injustice, taking possession of lands and houses, and multiplying poverty and hunger.
John Chrysostom (c. 347 - 407 AD)

Mike's Heresy of... 2005

It's funny how things work. Here I am writing about love, and a post that is almost five years old just popped up on my stats.

In that post I made this rather bold assertion:

"I don't think followers of Christ have any business being generous."

Take a look if you like and see where I went with that thought. There was quite a vigorous discussion in the comments.

Love, Leading, and Following

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately on my assertion that as a Follower of Jesus I am not burdened with the responsibility of saving the world, but instead I'm simply commanded to love my neighbour. (The irony of course is in the fact that as more of us do love our neighbour, the world will be saved. But I digress.)

Elsewhere I've made the case that neighbour should be defined as everyone. The logic is simple and goes like this: Jesus said, "Love your neighbour", who could be described as those closest to us, not just physically, but also culturally and relationally. He also said, "Love your enemies", who could be described as those farthest from us, at least relationally. So we are to love those closest to us and those farthest from us. It seems to me that everyone between those two points should then qualify for love as well.

To put it simply we are to love everyone. (As I've said before this is a great relief because it removes the need to figure out who is worthy of my love and who is not.) This makes sense to me because it seems to line up with the radical love demonstrated by Jesus himself, over and over again. Love everyone.

Yesterday I was pushed further in this thinking by a brief post from Brian McLaren. He linked to the video of Bon Jovi performing "We Weren't Born to Follow" and referred to it as a musical commentary on Romans 12:1-2.

The word weren't really got me thinking. 

As Followers of Jesus we are born to, well... follow, aren't we? After all, when Jesus was alive he said just that. "Follow me."

Let's play with this a little.

Jesus walked the earth demonstrating radical love and inviting people to follow him.

And today, if the Apostle Paul is to believed, the People of God are to function as the Body of Christ. Could it be as simple as to say that today the physical manifestation of Jesus--that is to say, us--is to walk the earth demonstrating radical love and calling out to others, "Follow me."? Not me as in us, but me as in the one we represent. The analogy gets a little clunky here but I trust you see my point.

In that sense Jon and the boys from New Jersey are correct. We weren't born to follow, we were born to lead. To lead others to Love, to lead them to Jesus, to lead them to the God who is going to redeem it all.

(Click image below to go to the video)