Joe Chadburn :: Friends blog

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Our community is involved with the advent conspiracy for Christmas again this year.

You got something better going on?

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I’m so stoked that Toronto was able to pull off their government 2.0 summit.

They used live streaming, a moderated board for online questions, and even a twitter backchannel. 

You can find a review of it here.  And slides with audio from the mozilla dude here.  Fully archives should be up shortly.

One quote I thought was hilarious was when one of the group leaders were commenting on adopting new technology… “Everyone else is already there… we just need to get on with it, so we don’t become irrelevant”.  How many times have we heard that coming out of the church?

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My current mandate in life is to seek the good of the city.  This is a wild and wonderfully vague mission statement that offers me the freedom and the burden to do just about anything.

One current tangible expression of this, is seeking the good of the small piece of the community I currently live in.  To live, work, play, and minister all in the same area is definitely an ideal for me.

My building consists of a shared space of three condominiums called the Crossroads complex of at least two thousand people.  For the past year there was a construction sign that read:

Repair, Restore, Renew… isn’t that so much of what the gospel is all about?

Jesus coming to repair the brokenness and sin within us; to restore our relationships with one another and all humanity; and to renew our sense of calling and hope in this life?

Condos are being built everywhere across the city right now.  They remain closed spaces where things can only be birthed from within.  What would it look like to be and create church within Toronto’s rapidly increasing condo market?

The beautiful thing I’ve found so far is that there’s already infrastructure for some degree of community.  There are street sales, BBQ’s, and events that I’ve been able to easily be a part of.

I was also recently voted in to the board of directors of the condo corporation.  The other candidates were way more qualified than me, I didn’t even vote for me!  But somehow, I’m on board.

I have no idea where this is going, but I do know that seeking the good of the city’s we live in is a part of what we’re all called to do.

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Daddy daycare is over, and today’s my first time in a month having the 8 hours of the day all to myself.

Between having the best time in the world hanging out with my daughter, I’ve been squeezing in the odd hour or two each day, at my full time career… trying to change the world of course.

Let me say those of you who are stay-at-home parents, much honor and glory and praise is due to you!  I have no doubt that many of you live with plans on hold and dreams deferred.  You’re a gift to your child and to the world.

And single parents out there, I have no idea how you do it.  period.  You astound me.

Today I made breakfast and lunch for my wife and daughter.  Read through the scriptures (I’ve been reading genesis, and going through John & Revelations backwards).  While watching the Toronto Government 2.0 Summit, I finished preparing for a talk on the ‘theology of ecology’ I’ll be doing with my wife this Sunday.

Also managed to dig through some emails, book my next several meetings, and write up the next ten blog posts.

Finally, a day I feel at least a bit productive.

Now I’m going to go bake my wife a lasagna.

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Pastor Ed Young of Fellowship church has issued a seven day sex challenge, that’s seven straight days of sex for married couples for his entire church of 20,000.

What do you think?

I know one thing for sure, there’s going to be a baby spike in about 9 months.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=367

I’m asking for some audience participation here. I’m reading a book right now called The Beauty of the Infinite. It’s a pretty rigorous read, to be honest, although the author has some stimulating thoughts buried beneath his turgid prose. I’m going to post my thoughts on the book next week, but for now I’m curious about a certain sentence. This is, in essence, an aesthetic question directed at all those who feel sharp at grammar, writing, or English style. I’m looking at how style can itself be a form of rhetorical violence, and I think this sentence sort of gets at that.

So, what I’m asking is for you to unleash your inner editor. You know, the one that wants to point out every little grammar mistake or style distention, but have learned over the years that people get bent out of shape when corrected on what they see as minor points. But I want to hear it.

In other words, I want the part of you that reveled in Eats, Shoots, and Leaves to be let out on this following sentence. There are a lot of examples I could use, but I particularly liked this one because of the semicolon love that is shown. I tend to dismiss the semicolon altogether so maybe I’m a wee biased.

Here it is. Have at it, on anything that comes to mind. Don’t worry about understanding it, just get at the style and the grammar and all around English language usage (though, communicating in an understandable way is a part of that, so maybe you could add those thoughts too). It might also be that this is perfectly fine and acceptable, and my mind just doesn’t want to deal with the complexity of such a supposed master. Here is the, yes just one, sentence:

For all his solicitude for noble values, Nietzsche may prove, in retrospect, to have been the greatest of bourgeois philosophers: the active and creative force of will he praised may be really a mythic aggrandizement of entrepreneurial ingenuity and initiative; talk of the will to power, however abstracted and universalized, may reflect only a metaphysical inflation of that concept of voluntaristic punctiliarity that defines the “subject” to which the market is hospitable; the notion of a contentless and spontaneous activity that must create values describes, in a somewhat impressionistic vein, the monadic consumer of the free market and the venture capitalist; to speak of the innocence of all becoming, the absence of good and evil from being, and a general preference for the distinction between god and bad as a purely evaluative judgment is perhaps to speak of the guiltless desire of the consumer, the relativity of want, and that perpetual transvaluation that is so elegantly and poignantly expressed on every price tag, every declaration of a commodity’s abstract value; a force that goes always to the limit of what it can do is perhaps at one with modern capitalism’s myth of limitless growth and unbounded trade.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=360

Happy Holidays, friends!!

I’m happy to announce the release of That Holy Night (A Christmas EP)!!!

It’s available for $9.99 and can be purchased now through my new website, with a special offer through midnight on November 30) of free shipping on all domestic orders!

GET YOUR COPY NOW! You can also hear samples of the songs, and read the lyrics & the stories behind them.

If you like what you see and hear, help me out by getting the word out; pass the link on to friends & family that you think might also enjoy it!

Thanks for your continued support! I wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving & a blessed Christmas season to come!

Amy

That Holy Night, a new Christmas CD by Amy Gustafson (soon to be Oden!)

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To follow up on the previous post on Christian platforms and networks… I was just re-introduced to this song Hurt, by Johnny Cash.  I haven’t really listened to this song since I was an angst filled teenager when it was originally by the Nine Inch Nails.  I loved the song because I felt it described my reality in raw form.

Hearing it now, I realize while it’s still a glimpse into reality, it’s moreso a reality without hope.

If I ever had the guts to slit my wrists back then, this song would definitely be on replay.

It’s intriguing that Johnny Cash chose to cover this song not long before he died.  After living a life that many others might envy, he lays it all on the line here and calls it an ‘empire of dirt’ (Supposedy he re-embraced his Christian faith later in life).  The accompanying visuals in this are fantastic as well.

I wonder how many of us will look back at the end of our days wondering ‘what have we become’?  Even if we’ve impacted a million lives, who are we when we’re completely alone at our final gasps? What’s the kingdom, without the King?

Lyrics below.

I hurt myself today

to see if I still feel

I focus on the pain

the only thing that’s real

the needle tears a hole

the old familiar sting

try to kill it all away

but I remember everything

what have I become?

my sweetest friend

everyone I know

goes away in the end

and you could have it all

my empire of dirt

I will let you down

I will make you hurt

I wear this crown of thorns

upon my liar’s chair

full of broken thoughts

I cannot repair

beneath the stains of time

the feelings disappear

you are someone else

I am still right here

what have I become?

my sweetest friend

everyone I know

goes away in the end

and you could have it all

my empire of dirt

I will let you down

I will make you hurt

if I could start again

a million miles away

I would keep myself

I would find a way

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=354

I think it is the effect of reading early monastics. Or maybe it is why I found the early monastics so engaging. Maybe a mix of both.

I’m talking about my tendency to engage my inner emotions, complications, desires, and all that other ‘mushy’ sort of stuff that a more astute theologian or pastor might leave off to the side. It’s not becoming.

Yet, I see it as essential. I don’t know anyone else’s inner wrestling with God as much as my own. And in my own I have a lifetime of study, past-present-future, giving me a workbook of a life lived with God in this world.

Sometimes the process gets clogged. I lose my center, or I step in an uninformed direction, or I don’t sit enough staring at trees, letting the tangles of this life clutter my being. Or sometimes, more recently, I get caught up in happiness, and distraction, and surprising blessings.

I’ve said on occasion that I’m naturally a very shallow person. It’s true. Only God did not let me remain shallow. Or, rather, shallowness may have been my start but it is not his end. A big part of this deepening has been the divine No, that could be explained away by a longlasting series of unfortunate decisions and circumstances, or seen as a way God has driven me into self-examination and outward discovery of his work in this world.

I can go so fast, without paying attention, that those traffic lights and yield signs begin to blur. All the more when the lights aren’t red and I feel a go, go, go in my soul.

But there is a crumbling in that. And it becomes a different kind of weakening, a positive enervation, that instills worry, and doubt, and on-edge frustration.

My years in the mountain haven’t gone to waste, however, and I recognize this off-center place more readily, and begin the process of response even as the this-time is still always seems bigger than the already addressed issues of being’s past.

The this-time includes the almost perpetual refrain of not enough money (and the concerns of future school funds, rent, and all the other aspects of life) coupled with a newer reality of how to be a PhD student.

The former part, the bit about money, is the refrain that demands faith. I don’t really have faith. I mean I do, for the religious stuff, but when it comes to actual life? I am still wracked by doubt. I can say with some hope that I’ve not let this doubt interfere, thus my occasional ludicrous decisions, but it’s still there, undermining the moment as I press on towards the future. Makes for constant dissonance if I’m not careful.

The latter, the PhD part, is more tricky. Not least because it is couple with that first one. I need a scholarship to stay in school. I feel I need to perform to the level to get the scholarship renewed each year. This worry puts a strain on my openness and creativity. But it’s also more than that. I am more like an engineer than a theoretical physicist when it comes to theology. I want to see how ‘this fact’ relates to ‘that context’. I like to understand by application not theoretical analysis.

So, I’m realizing strong this morning that after most of a quarter as a PhD student I’ve not yet found how to be a PhD student, how I am best a PhD student. And in this refrain I see I’ve fairly responded with restraint. Caught between here and there I became silent both for here and there. There is a way, I feel it, to be both here and there at the same time.

And once again, the constant lesson, I have to let go in order to finally understand. I have to let go expectations and let go the future and let go trying to make sense and let go the weight that I put on myself to be an influential voice. I have to let go the pride–the pride that wants to sound impressive and the pride that makes me want to not sound impressive so I can better impress more people. I have to put aside the jealousy and I have to let go the yearning to be noticed, and applauded. I have to let go the deep tendency to hide and seclude and treasure my horded perceptions like a young dragon upon his gold.

I have to learn to speak and to be silent, to be truly still rather than merely stifled.

I have to learn to put my hope in the God who leads towards his future even as I live in this present.

I have been quiet because I have been worried, bothered by unresolved potentials, hopes shown but not settled.

I have to learn how to be free again, now among people.

I have to dance.

I see that, I feel that, now the question is how to be that not only in rhetoric but in real response.

My mind and soul have become knotted and I’ve justified that with all the excuses of my present dislocation. But it is precisely in the dislocation that we as Spirited people really can learn and trust and become.

I’m reminded of that this morning and pushed to renew the pursuit of God’s wholly Spirit in this life. This is my confession, of sorts, and my hope that if people are still roundabout this raven’s nest they’ll be free as well in what might become attempts at sketches, finding my center once more through tracing and practicing and exploring in ways that might not always be immediately accessible. I don’t know. I need to see what is now there and find that freedom to dance in the midst of the public square. And, honestly, I’m not really that confident that I’m a good or elegant dancer.

But I want to be. I need to stop worrying about making sense or pleasing particular aesthetics. The music is playing. Now is the time to step.

An added thought. In a letter to me, congratulating me on my entrance into advanced theological studies, Jurgen Moltmann ended with, “Have courage.”

That has become more weighty as time has passed, and I see that as being not only a kind word from a theologian at the pinnacle to one at the base, but also a divine call, the call to have courage to be wholly God’s in the place where he has put me, dissuaded neither by the common pursuits nor the expected fears. That is the word for me now, and onwards. Have courage. I do that, explore that, live that, I think I will see God more every day, culminating in that new beginning when I see him face to face.

http://dualravens.com/ravens/?p=352

Writing to me follows a cadence. Not one of sound or feel. A lived cadence, in which my life begins to find a rhythm of being. As I find the feel for it, my creativity soars, my mind wanders towards varying depths, and there’s a curious interplay of intellectual and emotional liveliness.

I’ve not felt that rhythm for a while now. And I’ve not written for a while now. Neither here on my blog nor anywhere else. My thoughts have dissipated, sometimes outwards in low measure, sometimes reabsorbed within my being.

Unlike past seasons the cause of this disturbed rhythm is almost all good. Good, but presently thrusting me into a prolonged transition, where I don’t feel either here or there or anywhere in particular, a commuter to school, in relationship, in thought, in all kinds of ways.

My class on beauty, which I had hoped to write more about, is done in a few weeks. My musings from this entry into academia have fallen way below my expectations, even as I realize I look back and don’t see missed moments of sharable insight. Just that dissipation that never quite settles into coherent thoughts.

While there are still massive changes ahead, I see these changes as not being yet more prolonged transition but rather new beginning, a profoundly changed settledness in which I can rediscover a new rhythm as I begin life with another, in my own established place.

And, honestly, I miss writing. It’s a boon to my soul, thought and emotions. Leaving it aside is impoverishing for me, in ways that only become apparent when I begin to exhibit the signs of a scurvy of being, a quiet wasting away that increases my sensitivity to the negative and lowers my perseverance towards light and hope.

I don’t see anything changing for a little while, as I try to hold onto what little rhythm I have I put my energy into two major projects.

But, I see it as a goal.

I’ve been away. I’m going to be back. Maybe with a little more theologizing than might be preferred. Probably again with an assortment of pictures of birds and beasts.