Missio Dei has an opening

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Outlaw Caroling NOW!

As a proud consumer and patriot, I am thrilled that political-correctness has removed the most explicitly Jesus-related songs from America’s stores, malls, schools, and squares.  For too long these imminently dangerous songs have been permitted to assault shoppers’ ears with their radical un-American agenda.  That today’s shoppers, students, and citizens are now limited to hearing only the pliant canticles of reindeer and jolly snowmen should bring warming comforts to all concerned Americans.  But we still have much work to do.

Let us consider three of these dissident ditties.  First, an old hymn called “O Holy Night“:

… Behold your King!  Before the lowly bend.  Behold your King!

America is a republic, not a monarchy.  To suggest there should be a king here should be considered an open assault against the office of the Presidency.  President-Elect Obama needs all the help he can get in the days ahead, particularly in such troubling economic times.  Yet this treasonous tune shrieks on:

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother
And in His name all oppression shall cease.

Do these carolers not want America to be strong?  This sounds like dangerous anti-business, anti-America propaganda aimed at emboldening the enemy with a “gospel of peace”, and opposing the free market.  Why should any of us be forced to hear suggestions that we love one another?  Why, while shopping, should we have to think about peace?  And what does slavery have to do with my made-in-China purchases?  Don’t these daft fools know that democracy and strong national security are what make oppression cease?

Yet that is but one song.  Now, consider the song “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing“:

“Glory to the newborn King
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!”
Joyful, all ye nations rise;
Join the triumph of the skies;

Again this claim that there is another sovereign than the one established by the Constitution.  What seditious songs are these!  Though in this age of science and reason we know better than the fairy-tales they adorn these carols with - yet they seem to take this allegiance with utter severity!  Make no mistake: carolers identify themselves as an un-American insurgency.  Patriots should give them the expatriation their songs imply and anticipate.

We must underscore, moreover, that giving stuff is the reason for the season.  What unconscionable devilry stews about in these troublesome door-to-door dissidents, that they would want to subvert our festal cornucopia of iPods and gas cards with a holiday about peace on earth?  True Americans abhor such malicious attacks upon our economy, our way of life, and our most sacred and profitable holiday.

Lastly, noble reader, I disclose with much discomfort and moral turmoil the lyrics of one “Joy to the World“:

Joy to the world! The Lord is come.
Let earth receive her King
…
Joy to the world, the Saviour reigns
Let Saints their songs employ
While fields and floods
rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy

…

He rules the world with truth and grace

Joy has already come to the world, and it is the American Dream.  What joy this Jesus may give as an interior, mystical so-called “warm-fuzzy feeling” is all fine and well.  But this absurd notion that the caroler’s feeble myth can commit any more joy upon the brotherhood of man than is available to the inner person through any other religious path must be exposed for the foolishness it is!  The thinking, contemplative person sees immediately that it is democracy, technology, and consumer capitalism that bring joy to the world.  Nintendos, not dead Rabbis, repeat such sounding joys as our youth can make.  Carolers insisting that this rogue sovereign brings joy to even the fields would deny that great rallying cry of our entertainment-driven way of life, “Yes Wii can!”

Our economy and nation are in troubled times.  And in troubled times we as a people must resist any songs that might give us pause from our united effort in the twinkling trenches of our malls to make the American economy strong again.  We must continue to trend toward a thing-oriented holiday instead of a people-oriented holiday, if we are ever to again claim our stake in history as a city set on a hill.

We should be thankful, too, that more Christians have not caught on to the seemingly blatant unAmericanism of their carols.  And it is these social quirks that we must leverage with nuance and zeal in the name of the Republic and the cause of blustering consumerism.  Indeed, in the councils of secular society, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Jesus-compassion complex.  The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.  We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our holiday-season liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.  Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge consumer and military machinery of America with our dying and increasingly sterile religions of old, so that Caged Spirituality and the Liberated Consumer may prosper together.

We must therefore be ever the more thankful for the patriotic Americans who have worked tirelessly to remove Jesus and his unAmerican agenda from Christmas.  Our hearts go out to those who have sacrificed so much to ensure that our nation’s shopping masses need never feel in their souls the sharp jolt of the carolers’ promise that another world isn’t just possible, but broke through on Christmas night.  Political correctness has helped keep America strong; it has girded the loins of our empire, and so helped birth and preserve this new American century.

The work ahead of us is plain to see, if this consumerist way of life is not to perish from the earth.  Sometimes, the way may not be clear.  Yet we have an inspiring advocate and example, a model who has in recent history gone ahead of us to show today’s patriots the way forward in this long War Against Caroling –  under apartheid in South Africa, it was illegal to sing Christmas carols.  America would be wise to follow.

DO NOT BE CAUGHT SINGING CHRISTMAS CAROLS NEAR THE FOLLOWING:

• shopping malls
• military recruitment centers
• big banks
• strip malls
• car dealerships

IT WILL BE THE PATRIOTIC DUTY OF EVERY AMERICAN TO STOP YOU FROM SINGING SUCH FILTH AND TREASON IN OUR NATION’S MOST SACRED HALLS.

Tony Jones to Leave Emergent Village

Author’s Note: When I wrote this piece on March 6th, 2008, I had no idea how prophetic it truly was. In November, Tony Jones stepped down as National Coordinator for Emergent Village. This article prophetically anticipates the reason for Tony’s departure.

Tony Jones, author of the New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier, announced today that he will be leaving Emergent Village. Tony will be taking a new position with Smurf Village, where he will serve as an assistant to Papa Smurf.

According to Jones (who will now be known as “Tony Smurf”), the move “affirms the way in which God is at work in the world today.” Jones believes that it is important for emerging Christians to “reach out to established traditions” with “smurfy cooperation.”

Speculations abound regarding the transition. But Jones asserts that this move is motivated by a desire to “bring the life and teachings of the Smurf world to the larger Body of Christ.” Says Jones (Tony Smurf): “Smurf spiritual disciplines and social justice practices are respected by millions around the world. I think of this as a necessary step for our two villages to work together for the Kingdom of God.”

Critics are wary. Addressing a gathering of young church planters, Mark Driscoll commented: “Emergent keeps going further to the left. It is no wonder that Tony has blatantly embraced the communist teachings of the Smurfs. The next thing you know, Smurfette will become the national coordinator of Emergent Village.”

Other critics believe that it is “unnatural” to live in mushrooms and that it is “indecent” to go without shirts.

Director of Smurf Village, Papa Smurf, believes that these criticisms are “without base.” Says Papa Smurf: “Does not our Lord say ‘do not smurf, lest ye be smurfed?’–I believe that critics should give us a little slack as we explore what it means to live in a post-smurf world.”

* * *

Disclaimer: This is a work of satire…Tony is still the national coordinator for Emergent Village. Any resemblance between Tony Smurf and Brainy Smurf is entirely coincidental. To support the wonderful work that he (Tony, not Brainy) does, buy his latest book here. The rumor is, it is smurfin’ good.

2012

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Litany of Thanksgiving in the Midst of Empire

Sisters and brothers, rejoice! We live sustained by the presence of the Humble God.

Thanks be to God.

God the Father, source of all life,

Thanks be to God.

God the Son, giver of hope,

Thanks be to God.

God the Spirit, voice of love.

Thanks be to God!

As we lament over the wounds of this land

God weeps with us.

As we give thanks for those who live faithfully in Babylon

God gives thanks with us.

As we struggle for justice

God struggles with us.

As we strive for peace

God strives with us.

As we seek to cut the root of Empire from our hearts

God works in us.

As we give our possessions and gifts away

God blesses us.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give God thanks and praise.

God of all nations, we praise you for your faithful servants who’ve done justice, loved mercy, and walked humbly with you, their God.

May we be counted among them, O God.

For apostles, martyrs, leaders, and saints, and for humble folk whose names are lost but you’ve remembered in the book of life.

We give you thanks, O God.

For nameless multitudes who suffer violence and oppression; who are beaten, raped, or murdered; and for the nameless multitudes today whose lives are maimed by economic and social structures that dehumanize.

We grieve and promise to work for justice, O God.

In the midst of Empire we recognize our inadequacy. We cry out for the power of your Holy Spirit.

Spirit, fill our lungs with prophetic speech, and animate our limbs to work justice.

We cry out to your Son, whose love for humanity led to a cross.

May we walk in your path, Brother Jesus.

God, source of life, sustain us.

In the name of Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Angst-giving

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Christmas: Set the pace for peace

The last weekend of November marks the beginning of the Advent, setting time for all of us to expectantly wait for the blessings of the Christmas season. While there are many opportunities this upcoming month to worship, serve and celebrate with friends and family; I’d like to suggest that this Advent season we should consider ways of setting a pace for peace.

When researching the word pace, I came across an image of a flag used by an Italian peace organization established in 1961. I discovered that the Italian word for “pace” is our word for “peace”.

“The Italian PEACE flag was inspired by the flag of Anglo-Saxon pacifists who marched in Aldermaston for an anti-nuclear protest, led by Bertrand Russell. Mr. Capitini asked some housewives from Perugia, who were friends of him, to sew with all possible speed some colored stripes to form a flag to be shown during the march. The women choose to sew the background of the flag in the colors of the rainbow in remembrance of the story of the Flood. God provided the rainbow after the flood as a seal of his alliance with humans and nature, promising that will never be another Flood. So the rainbow became the symbol of peace between the Earth and Heaven, therefore these ladies felt it was a good reminder of peace to humankind, making it their flag’s foundation.

The Advent and Christmas season, is one where the words, “Peace on earth” are commonly seen on cards and heard on television commercials amidst the mass of commerce-driven advertisements. It might be possible for us to grasp peace as a reality this advent, if we are intentional in setting a calmer pace in our celebrations and traditions we take part in.

Just one of the ways that American families sometimes participate in the hectic pace of the holiday season revolves around November 28th, the day after Thanksgiving. This day is traditionally one of the busiest shopping days of the year and has earned the title of “Black Friday” due to the stress-filled accounts of early morning sales, over-crowded stores and a hectic paced shopping atmosphere.

In reaction to consumer-driven chaos of “Black Friday” a campaign called, “Buy nothing day” was set for November 28th to encourage people to not buy anything for 24 hours and begin thinking of ways to celebrate the holiday season that don’t revolve around what can be purchased. This year, the campaign has taken on a new twist and has been coined, “Make something day!” Instead of spending the traditional shopping day at the mall, what if we spent the day with our family and friends, making gifts from previously collected craft supplies or thrift store items? In this small way, we would make gifts and memories with and for the people we are closest too and take a step to set a pace for peace this holiday season. Without peace or pace – life is chaos!

While holiday shopping is one way we all celebrate this season of giving, we might be surprised by the joy that a “Make something day” could add to our treasury of holiday traditions. I encourage you and your family to find ways of celebrating this season of wonder by taking part in traditions that foster peace, joy and love in anticipation of Christmas morning having gained a greater understanding of the priceless gift God gives though Jesus.

Peace on earth and good will to humankind,

Tara

(For more information on Make Something Day go to: www.makesomethingday.org

Set your pace

Setting a pace is not the same as running full tilt desperately trying to win a race.
Setting a pace allows for breathing, for seeing, and energy for kicking it when the finish is almost reaching.

Work in movement and take the time to stretch, to sing and even to rhyme.
We need so badly to check out and play: with dreams, paint and even some clay.

In setting a pace I will strive to succeed, avoiding frenzy - panic - and always having somewhere to be.

I need to create, express and to see - makes a much better person than hurry tries to force me to be.

Opening my eyes and unplugging my ears, will give me more wisdom and stay off frustrated tears.

Set the pace, allow some space, set the place, write it down and make the time.
Set your pace.

Poem by: T.L. Eastman 2008

Author Bio:: Tara Lamont Eastman is a youth worker, blogger, poet and songwriter. She lives in Western NY with her husband and two children.

The Prophetic Vision of Liberty Hyde Bailey’s Poetry

( A longer version of this piece originally appeared in The Englewood Review of Books)

Liberty Hyde Bailey, born in 1858, was raised on a farm in Michigan and it was farm life that would set the tone for the rest of his life. He studied first at the Michigan Agricultural college and then under renowned biologist Asa Gray at Harvard. From there, he maintained a long and successful academic career teaching botany and horticulture in Michigan and then later at Cornell in Ithaca, NY. He wrote a number of significant books for academic and popular audiences on plants, agriculture, rural life and conservation. His writings were foundational for today’s new agrarian writers, and he has been praised extensively by Wendell Berry, Gene Logsdon and others. Bailey’s writings in botany are well-known and his essays rooted in rural philosophy are also widely recognized. However, much less is known about Liberty Hyde Bailey, the poet. Wind and Weather, originally published in 1916, was the only collection of Bailey’s poetry that received widespread distribution.

For our church communities today, however, perhaps the most striking part of Bailey’s poetry is his notion that “poetry is prophecy” (OTN 32). There are, of course, many ways in which the term “prophecy” is used. Bailey describes the function of prophecy as helping humanity in the effort of “acquiring a stronger hold on aspirations that are simple and elemental and universal” (OTN 32-33). Such a return to the simple, elemental and universal, parallels Bailey’s description of the prophetic in his book The Holy Earth: there he notes that prophecy is rooted in a vision of the eschatological reconciliation of all things, especially the reconciliation of humankind with nature. Thus, Bailey’s poetry is prophetic, first and foremost, because it points to a vision of an inter-connected creation that is reminiscent of the scriptural eschatology of shalom, i.e., “the reconciliation of all things.” This vision of harmony in creation flows throughout the poems of Wind and Weather, but is most poignantly expressed in poems like “Brotherhood”:

I am the bird in its nest of straw
And I abide by my time and law,
I am the tree standing night and day,
And I am the plant that fades away;
And men grow green and the men grow brown,
And life rises up and death drops down;
And men, and life, and the things that be
They flow on and on unceasingly.

I am the wind that blows to the sky,
And ageless cloud that goes floating by;
I am the rain and the river flow,
I am the seasons that come and go;
I am the dusk and the morning light,
The call of day and the voice of night;
And I pass out to the silent sea,
Flowing and flowing eternally.

Bailey’s poems stand as firm reminders that art (written, visual or otherwise) plays a key, prophetic role in the life of the Church, by helping us imagine and keep before our minds the end of creation, the reconciliation toward which all history is flowing. Bailey emphasizes this point in The Holy Earth: “[The biblical prophet] Isaiah proclaimed the redemption of the wilderness and the solitary place with the redemption of man, when they shall rejoice and blossom as the rose, and when the glowing sand shall become a pool and the thirsty ground springs of water” (THE 11-12). Thus, for Bailey, the nature poet today functions in a similar way, reminding his listeners that their salvation is bound up with that of all nature.

With such an eschatological vision in mind, Walter Brueggemann observes in his classic work The Prophetic Imagination that “the task of the prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us” (3). I would contend that Bailey’s poetry serves prophetically in exactly this way. Although published almost a century ago, Bailey’s critiques of the dominant consumer culture in poems like “Enough” and “Goods” (”And all my kin may have their goods / For the deep old glooms [i.e., woods, ed.] are mine”), ring as true today as if they were written yesterday. Another key facet of his poetic critique of the dominant culture is his opposition to the city and all the technological achievements that it represents. Although there are a few explicit references to this opposition (e.g., in “Wreck”), it is primarily manifested by its notable absence in the landscape that Bailey paints over the course of Wind and Weather. Bailey emphasizes the intentionality of this omission in his essay on nature poems: “[T]he nature poem of wide reach must be the poem of the man who is free. Such poetry must spring from the open air; perhaps it must be set to words there – at least outside the city” (OTN 31). Similarly, in The Holy Earth, he faults the urbanization of human culture for the increasing lack of being “brought into touch with the earth in any real way” (18).

In contrast to the dominant culture, Bailey envisions a culture grounded in an alternative consciousness (to use Brueggemann’s term). Although there is no evidence that Bailey was sympathetic to the monastic tradition, it seems that his alternate vision resonates with the traditional Benedictine virtues of prayer and work (“Ora et Labora”). These virtues of reverent contemplation and diligent working of the Earth will be useful for us in describing the ethics that Bailey proposes to guide us toward the eschatological reconciliation.

Prayer in Bailey’s poetic vision is rooted in our humility. One should especially note this word’s root humus, meaning earth. Such an earthiness is a fundamental virtue of Bailey’s thought, and is manifested in the virtue of connectedness as described above. The posture of our prayerful humility, says Bailey, is silence: “We need now and then to take ourselves away from men and the crowd and conventionalities, and go into the silence, for the silence is the greatest of teachers” (OTN 36). This posture is also reflected in poems like “Discovery” (”…I went into my questioned heart, my heart of hopes and fears – I found the perfect silence there, the silence of the years.”) and “Majesty.” Bailey also addresses the energizing role of contemplative prayer in “Horizon”:

Lift me out of my laboring day
Lift me up to the blue and away
And let me discover my own horizon line,
Then drop me back to my work and play
And the far ends of the world in my day shall shine.

Indeed, for Bailey the rightful state of all creation is prayer; e.g., see “Prayer”:

How sweet the world at sunrise was
How fresh the breezes lay
How joyously the song-birds prayed
To herald in my day!

But perhaps the heart of Bailey’s ethical vision –- the intertwining of prayer and work -– is best embodied in “Country Church”:

…
And out of it all
As the seasons fall
I build my great temple alway;
I point to the skies,
But my footstone lies
In commonplace work of the day;
For I preach the worth
Of the native earth, –
To love and to work is to pray.

I recently had the opportunity to share a few words at the funeral of my grandfather, a lifelong farmer. I read this poem to his rural church congregation there and encouraged them that Bailey’s vision as expressed here captures the essence of our gathered obedience to the way of Christ. A church community – rural, urban or otherwise – can, in my estimation, do no better than to set their sights on embodying such a prayerful, diligent and connected life, as is depicted in Bailey’s “Country Church.” Bailey also advocates the virtues of work through the image of the well-worn hands of the farmer in “Hands” or in “Farmer’s Challenge.”

Ultimately, the tone of Bailey’s prophetic vision is one of hope. We see this hope set forth best in “The Signs of Life”

…
The gaps fill in; the earth is rife
With energy that mastereth –
The upwards signs of birth and life
Are greater than the signs of death.

Here we are reminded of the scriptural theme that though the resurrection of Jesus, death will be swallowed up in life. This theme echoes throughout the poems of Wind and Weather and indeed is another reason why we, the Church, should immerse ourselves in Bailey’s poetry.

As followers in the way of Christ, we have been made ambassadors of Christ’s coming reign of peace, which will cover all creation. Bailey’s poetry, as collected here in Wind and Weather, is prophetic in that it points us in this direction and energizes us for the work to which we have been called. In his essay on nature poetry, Bailey proclaims “I believe … in the power of poetry – in its power to put a man at his work with a song on his lips and to set the mind toward nature and naturalness” (35 OTN). May we open our hearts to the power of Bailey’s poetry, and more importantly, may we tune our hearts to the song of God, who created and is now reconciling all creation!

Sources:
WNW – Wind and Weather.
Indianapolis: Doulos Christou Books, 2008. Reprint edition.

THE – The Holy Earth.
Indianapolis: Doulos Christou Books, 2008. Reprint edition.
OTN – Outlook to Nature.
New York: Macmillan, 1905.

(image courtesy of zen)

Author Bio:: Chris Smith lives in Indianapolis with his wife and three children. He is am member of the Englewood Christian Church community, a bibliophile and the editor of THE ENGLEWOOD REVIEW OF BOOKS.

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