David Wierzbicki :: Feeds
November 17, 2008
Soon from Pete Rollins: The Orthodox Heretic
As long as Pete continues to publish I will continue to need to find gainful employment in order to purchase what he produces. There just might be no one else in out there currently writing that I would stop everything to sit and read. (Not)
From Pete’s website:
For so many the Christian faith is viewed as little more than a drug that enables the weak to escape reality. An opiate that helps its users to avoid facing the injustice of the world and making a stand against it. In short, the Christian faith is perceived to be a counter-revolutionary ideology that keeps people passive, infantile and ineffectual.
In contrast Rollins has created a series of parables that shatter this popular perception. Parables that demonstrate how radical faith has never been concerned with escaping the world we inhabit but rather with engaging in it more fully. That genuine Christian faith has never capitulated to injustice but rather fought against it at every turn.
Tags: philosophy, parable, theology, peter rollins, emergent, postmodern, reading, metaphor, faith
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November 10, 2008
November 08, 2008
Maps of the 2008 Presidential Election
Red states? Blue States? Not exactly. It seems that America actually votes along urban and rural divisions.
Here is the Electoral Map we are all familiar with…
But this give a false impression. Now look at the voting broken down by county (I think that’s what it is) and given hues ranging between red and purple based on actual percentages…
The famous blue west coast looks a lot different. What’s interesting is the bleed out we see this time around though. Back in 2000 the lines were even more sharply drawn between city and country. (Check out Illinois, which went to the democrats in that Election!)
There is much more analysis over here. One final picture that I find interesting. Because of the density of city population, these images are still deceiving. It looks like the Republicans should have won by a landslide. This ballooned image based on population really draws out the real influence these regions hold. (Sorry Montana.)
***Extra Extra***
The University of Michigan websites and I have a lot of history.
Back during my love affair with the work of Salvador Dali I stumbled upon this dadaist/surrealist site.. The Flightless Hummingbird. I am ecstatic that it is still live!
Tags: 2008, Election, Obama, McCain, Map
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November 04, 2008
Summary of Kingdom Theology
An amazing summary of the meat in kingdom theology from Wolfhart Pannenberg himself:
“Hope for the coming Kingdom knows that ultimate fulfillment is beyond human powers to effect. Yet, far from being condemned to inactivity, we are inspired to prepare this present for the future. Such preparation is the work of hope carried out by love. Conscious of the preliminary character of his achievements, the man of hope is open to more promising answers to the problems that claim his energy. Thus he is opened beyond himself to the future of God’s Kingdom.”
Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Kingdom of God (p. 126)
Tags: kingdom, theology, pannenberg, eschatology, gospel
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November 02, 2008
Arting Update
I added a convenient link to my tumblr arting page to the blog. If you click the fun little guy in the upper left corner he will take you to the artings. The tumblr page is a hub of sorts for my online art and writing. It links to another portfolio page and my flickr account among other places.
I just added the below piece to that page. I would love to hear thoughts/critiques of my art bits. Also, if you are in need of illustration/design work I’m doing some limited freelance work alongside school.
Tags: arting, portfolio, design, art, freelance
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Saul Williams is Voting
Saul’s poetry has been so imporant for the last decade. Evidenced no more strongly than in the “Pledge of Resistance.”
And once again, in 2008, Saul speaks what needs to be said.
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November 01, 2008
Just Found An Emergent Video
Just stumbled on this video about the emergent church from a few years ago as I pull up some resources for a paper I’m writing. Just about the best video I have as of yet come across online. Open, honest, real, sincere, genuine.
Tags: church, emergent, emerging
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October 30, 2008
25% Chance
Warning: Below results may not reflect the truely paralyzing sissiness of the quiz taker.
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October 24, 2008
October 15, 2008
Journaling, Reviewing, Reading, and Studying
About a month ago I announced that I would be blog-journaling through Don Postema’s Space for God
I don’t know where my recent love of books has come from. When I was a child I read constantly, but from adolescence through till I was about 25 I hardly read a thing. I am very glad that I have been re-energized to engage with the written word. I feel so much richer for it. A very good kind of rich.
Anyway… nose back in book!
Tags: reading, mcknight, foster, postema, journaling,
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Poverty and Simplicity (Blog Action Day)
“God made man simple; man’s complex problems are of his own devising.” Ecclesiastes 7:30
What if I were to say that I yearn for this poverty? We must fight against poverty that is not simple. We should strive for poverty that is simple.
Perhaps embracing a poverty of simplicity is the answer to ending systemic poverty. My frustrations all circle around the issue of my affluence. I’m rich enough to be a magnet that attacts all kinds of garbage.
Richard Foster says, “Experiencing the inward reality [of simplicity] liberates us outwardly. Speech becomes truthful and honest. The lust for status and position is gone because we no longer need status and position. We cease from showy extravagance not on the grounds of being unable to afford it, but on the grounds of principle. Our goods become available to others.“ 1
Jubilee, Redistribution, Ending Your Affluence, Simplicity, Freedom.
(This is an addendum to my previous post for Blog Action Day. I just could not end with simply complaining about my lacking. Now I’m going somewhere!)
Tags: poverty, simplicity, blog action day, affluence, jubilee
- Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth
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My Confessional (Blog Action Day)
This post is part of Blog Action Day. Thousands of bloggers and millions of readers are participating in an attempt to make the landscape of poverty change, diminish and become manageable. Today I’m not feeling up to the task of taking anything on. I’m using the day to confess some stuff that has been clogging up my life like cholesterol in an artery…
This morning I went to the bank to take advantage of some student rates. I also took the opportunity to grab myself a lower interest rate credit card. After growing my financial empire I drove over here to the coffee shop where I sat down with a gourmet fair-trade organic coffee, turned on my mac and began to use the café’s free wireless connection. I am a king. Seriously. And so are you.
I slept in today. I had a hot shower inside my house. Water and electricity and natural gas flow into my home uninterrupted. Most likely there is food rotting in my fridge. And I will no doubt even have a second coffee today before I leave the cafe.
Even when I’m busy it is not because I am walking a tightrope between life and death. At no point during the last 24 hours have I walked any distance farther than my kitchen for drinkable water, killed an animal with my own hands for food, washed my clothes in a river, or wondered if I would even be able to eat tomorrow.
I am a king. And I don’t know how to handle it. What I mean is, I don’t know how to make it just be OK. It’s extraordinarily easy to just not think about it. I have a hundred thousand options available to me that can help me ignore this inequality. I can watch Steve Jobs with his blue jeans and keynote presentation and salivate at “uni-body construction” and led screens. I can watch Lost or Survivor and fantasize about how white, privileged society would act if it was “tribalized” (aka – trivializing the tribal)… I’m not going to continue…
Ignoring it is easy, but when forced to consider the situation I get uncomfortable. I’m reminded of how horrid it is that I ignore it. Imagine: My sister is sitting on the street – hungry, cold, dying. I could see her if I looked out the window beside me if only I dared to look. I’m uncomfortable with it so I pretend it doesn’t exist. And in the process I kill my sister.
I’m guilty of murder. I don’t say that to be dramatic. I believe it. In my own life I have killed hundreds and hundreds of people that I have encountered. I justified my murder by accusing THEM. “If I give this dude the change in my pocket he’ll just misuse it. It’s better misused by my hands than his.”
Wow. So I think I’m done with the purge. I could go on but I’m certain I would violate some blog etiquette or something.
It’s time to get constructive.
Tags: poverty, blog action day, confession
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October 13, 2008
Blog Action Day is Two Days Away
Only a couple more days until Blog Action Day. Sign up and participate or just read and comment, and help change (and start) the conversation on poverty!
Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.
Tags: poverty, blog action day
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October 05, 2008
The All-Good
MY GOD,
Thou hast helped me to see,
that whatever good be in honour and
rejoicing, how good is he who gives them,
and can withdraw them;
that blessedness does not lie so much
in receiving good from and in thee,
but in holding forth thy glory and virtue;
that it is an amazing thing to see Deity
in a creature, speaking, acting,
filling, shining through it;
that nothing is good but thee,
that I am near good when I am near thee,
that to be like thee is a glorious thing:
This is my magnet, my attraction.
Thou art all my good in times of peace,
my only support in days of trouble,
my one sufficiency when life shall end.
Help me to see how good thy will is in all,
and even when it crosses mine
teach me to be pleased with it.
Grant me to feel thee in fire, and food and every providence,
and to see that thy many gifts and creatures
are but thy hands and fingers taking hold of me.
Thou bottomless fountain of all good,
I give myself to thee out of love,
for all I have or own is thine,
my goods, family, church, self,
to do with as thou wilt,
to honour thyself by me, and by all mine.
If it be consistent with thy eternal counsels,
the purpose of thy grace,
and the great ends of thy glory,
then bestow upon me the blessings of thy comforts
If not, let me resign myself to
thy wiser determinations.
From The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions
The church read this together today. Such a powerful statement of our
receiving and giving all to God: from Good, to Good, for Good. This, I
think is maybe what folks really mean when they assure you that “It’s
all good.”
Tags: prayer, thanks, good, blessing, puritan
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October 01, 2008
See the World Through the Eyes of Google, Circa 2001
I don’t know how long this will be available for browsing, but it gives a great picture of the online world from approximately January 2001. Google has made accessible for searching, their oldest available index. Try it out. It provides a peak into the topography of the internet just before it truly exploded. T1 and cable access was still prohibitively expensive for most people. Napster had just recently had its free mp3 sharing curtailed. Believe it or not, Emergent Village did not yet exist… Strangely though, the church emerging was already alive and well 
…And being the egomaniac that I am, I attempted to search my name and found that 2001 predates any google-able web presence for myself.
Edit: This is incredible!
Tags: google, search, history, 2001
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September 29, 2008
We Are So Messed Up
Western Civilization: The whole is comprised of two dominant worldviews/traditions.
Greek Tradition: detached, disembodied, timeless, universal, reflective, critical, rational
Hebrew Tradition: involved, embodied, historical, local, committed to specificity
If anyone can figure out how to lead a civilization anywhere when it is rooted in this soup my hat is off to them!
Tags: philosophy, western, civilization, greek, hebrew, plato, jesus, culture
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September 20, 2008
Journaling : Space for God : Introduction
During the next few weeks I am going to engage the art of journaling. Although I do keep this blog updated on a generally frequent basis, I don’t feel that I have made use of its potential in a way that has really been able to transform and impact my life and relationships. As my vehicle in this exercise I am going to be reading and journaling through Don Postema’s devotional journal, Space for God
To be completely transparent, I am doing this in part to get a grade for a class. As part of my grade in Spiritual Formation I am to engage with Don’s book through a journal to be handed in at the end of the semester. I decided to do my journaling in this more public space both to encourage myself to be consistent with my journals, and to maybe share with you all some truth and beauty along the way. I hope that this is as invigorating for you as it for me.
“What else can make us one but prayer? What else can unite us but a common recognition that all that is, is a divine gift calling forth from us words and actions of thanks? What else can gather us but a spirituality of gratitude that sets us free from our many divisions and allows us to celebrate together the presence of the living Christ among us? Don has brought together John Calvin and Thomas Merton; Dutch and Japanese drawings; Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox reflections. What unites them? Gratitude, the deep awareness of the giftedness of life. The prayer of thanks is indeed the place where we all can meet – not looking at each other and finding fault with each other but looking together at him who forgives us our faults over and again.”
– Henri J. M. Nouwen (from the preface to Space for God)
Tags: journaling, spirituality, don postema, discipline
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September 19, 2008
Photo: Our Front Door
doorway1, originally uploaded by senor diecast.
Just a recent photo I took while at home. I love the various wood textures and the old architecture of our place.
And I really dig light and shadow.
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September 17, 2008
Life of the Ages
Eternal life. Where is it? When is it? For a long time I have thought about eternal life as a life after all my birthdays have run out. For most of my years I have spoken about the eternal life as the ‘afterlife,’ as ‘life after death.’ But the older I become, the less interest my ‘afterlife’ holds for me. Worrying not only about tomorrow, next year, and the next decade, but even about the next life seems a false preoccupation. Wondering how things will be for me after I die seems, for the most part, a distraction. When my clear goal is the eternal life, that life must be reachable right now, where I am, because eternal life is life in and with God, and God is where I am here and now.
– Henri Nouwen
This to me is one of the basic differences between the Jewish way (life with God here and now) and the Platonic/Greek way (life with God after you escape this world).
On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”
He answered: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”
“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”
Luke 10:25-28
What is blocking you from tasting life with God now?
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September 14, 2008
Interpretation: Jesus and Paul
From page 46 of Exploring Protestant Traditions
This isn’t really unique to Lutheranism, but my question is around the idea that Paul’s doctrine of justification is “the doctrine by which the church stand or falls.” (p. 47) I have no problem with Paul’s emphasis on the doctrine of justification by faith, nor the Lutheran re-emphasis, but what I do have a problem with is how it seems to push the life and teaching of Jesus into a Christian footnote. What authority does the earthly teaching and ministry of Jesus hold when it seems to be subservient to what is deemed the most glorious work of scripture – the doctrinal work of Paul? How can we hold the ministry of Jesus and his gospel of the Kingdom of God in a rightful relationship with Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith? What comes first? Should we not interpret Paul’s doctrine in light of Jesus’ gospel? It just seems that have often reversed this.
I assume it is this question among others that will be discussed at the upcoming Reclaiming Paul Conference. If anyone has an extra plane ticket to Kansas City I would love to snatch it up!
Tags: justification, gospel, protestant, christian, tradition, paul
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Quick Update – An Emergent in a Baptist Bible College
Sorry for the absence as of late. My head has been getting reorganized into full-time student mode. I’ve been out of the school world for 5 years now, so it has taken a bit of work to get organized. I’ve been working iCal like never before.
In a most incredible turn of events, one of my classes this semester is focused on contemporary theology with an emphasis on the emerging church movement. It was my friendships and engagement with emergent and various similar groups of people that began my re-engagement with theology and a search for a deeper understanding of God’s mission and the church. So when I found out that this course was being offered I jumped at the opportunity.
As a launching point into 21st Century theology we briefly exploring the major Protestant traditions of the last 500 years. I am right now taking a break from reading the chapter on Lutheranism out of Exploring Protestant Traditions
The class composition is interesting. I was expecting a lot of “new reformers” and me. It is a bit more broadbased than I was expecting, but most students described themselves as “theologically conservative” last week. A few stated an interest in reading some of the emerging thoughts and a few folks were wonderfully honest in their confession of not having made up their minds on almost everything. As far as I could tell, I was the only person in the class to self-identify as being emergent in my position (whatever that means). When describing myself I even used the term “conversation” without realizing. I guess I really am emergent.
I guess this sort of folds back into the constant question posed around the internets concerning that word. The word emergent describes many people that I have come to see as friends in the journey. If I was following some specific church father I would call myself Wesleyan or Lutheran or whatever as a way of identifying with my tribe, so why should I feel ashamed of aligning myself with this triby non-tribe of fellow emegents? I mean, I just don’t really fit fully into any other space. I was raised Baptist and I’m grateful to the formative influence that tribe has had on my life. I don’t really see the harm in calling myself a Baptimergent or some such thing.
Anyway, I think I’ll leave those thoughts incomplete for now. Back to it.
Tags: emergent, emerging, church, school, theology
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September 08, 2008
The Stanley Hauerwas Podcast
My friend Mike just alerted me to this. Apparently Stanley Hauerwas has his own podcast. Having just finished reading Resident Aliens I just about spit my coffee everywhere when he told me about it.
Tags: hauerwas, podcast, theology
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September 07, 2008
Not So Crazy Anymore
Why do I spend all my time on this chatter about Jesus and the has-come/is-coming reign of God in the world, when I could be discussing more important matters – such as contending how the ages of church history line up with the seven churches of Revelation?
…
Sorry… just noticing how far I’ve come in my pursuit of what I think is important in life. If contemplation on literal Revelation eschatology orders, fulfilled prophecies, army ranks, etc. is your bag; please don’t take too much offense. It’s just that, from where I am standing today, I think it is a monumental waste of time.
Oh, and what is up with 3am? Seriously. There is some sort of train-of-thought vortex when you reach that point in the night. Stupid thoughts leak in as insightful thoughts drain out your nose. Bed time.
Tags: stupidity
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