Home Again, Home Again

We are back from our 13 day trip to New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Boston. We had a good time, but I am ready to stay put for a few days.

While we were hanging out in hotels and airports and planes and such I managed to finish up The Weisman book, The World Without Us. I also read Bill Clinton's latest book, Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World.

Both are worth the time to read. Weisman's book really gets you thinking about how to be more "green." He makes a compelling case and leads you to believe it is worth the effort: monetarily, ethically, and intellectually.

Clinton's book is a snapshot of all that is great about Bill Clinton. When Bill talks about himself, it is pretty boring. However, when he talks about ideas and values and projects and causes, he is at his best. He simply over powers you with the number of details and anecdotes. In the end, Bill tells stories that have you arrive at the old maxim, "tis better to give than receive." And he backs it up - like I said he just over powers you with back up.

It seems to me that for me, going "green" is something I will do in the way I live. Start converting to different light bulbs, shop for "green" products, try to seal up the doors and windows better this winter, and look carefully the next time we buy a car, appliance, etc. As for the giving, it seems to me that I believe most in education. I already give my time and gave up a pretty substantial salary to work where I do. The next thing for me to do is to get serious about giving toward the endowed scholarship fund that we started. I do think that when we are ready to start designating what to do with the fund, we will look at making sure that that someone with a big need gets that need met with this scholarship.

Driving and Reading

... not at the same time.

Gae & I are driving up the Hudson River valley today and tomorrow. Today we visited West Point and are staying the night in Poughkeepsie, NY. Tomorrow we visit Hyde Park and then we drive on to Saratoga Springs.

I forgot to mention another book that I finished in the past few weeks - the latest in the Dune series, Sandworms of Dune by Brian Herbert and Frank Anderson. It was written as though it was the culmination of the overall story, but I understand there is yet another sequel already in the works. This one was pretty good - better than some of the others by these two.

I managed to finish up If God is Love. It presents a compelling set of thoughts and challenges. I think the book is very worthwhile. However, it seems to me that the authors, in all of their study and knowledge and to some extent reinvention of Christianity have left out important bits. If, in fact, they are correct that God saves everyone and that we should all live in peace and harmony and that we should practice a life of non-violence or pacificism, then why is it that God created a gigantic ecosystem here on earth where violence, aggression, survival of the fittest, and species extinction seem to be the history of the planet and all the living things on it. I like their book, but I think it simply ignores the positives that may come from characteristics and values that they don't much like.

Finally, I am very well into the new book from John Dean. As usual, it is well researched and interesting. I also appreciate that Dean lets the reader know right up front that he is writing a polemic. He doesn't try to hide behind his research. He is honest that he is trying to change your mind and goad you into action.

Inundated with Books, Work and Ideas

I finished up The Dawkins Delusion?: Atheist Fundamentalism and the Denial of the Divine by Alister McGrath & Joanna Collicutt McGrath. The book was most interesting in putting forth the idea that at least some radical atheism is nothing more than anti-religious fundamentalism. Probably the book would have been more understandable if I had read the Dawkins book which this book was rebutting. However, I just am not up to slogging through 400+ pages of anti-religion diatribes. I've picked the book up and skimmed it a few times and what little I read seemed tired and pretty much of a polemic.

I am working hard to finish up If God Is Love: Rediscovering Grace in an Ungracious World by Philip Gulley, James Mulholland. This is a radical book with very intriguing ideas. A friend walked up to me at lunch today and asked what I was reading. I replied that I was reading "If God is Love." My friend then responded, "Is He?" And that I answered, "Not based on the way we act toward each other." The authors have a well developed and deep commitment to the idea that God will save everyone and that knowledge should transform how we view the world. If we do not divide the world into saved vs. damned, good vs. evil, then it is much harder for us to rationalize doing or thinking evil to/of others. And as such it should be much harder for us to decide to rationalize our own complicity in cultural systems that oppress or marginalize others. If God loves everyone equally, shouldn't we do likewise? It is an interesting viewpoint and one that intrigues me greatly. I'm not quite finished with the book, but I'm pretty sure I will be buying their first book in the near future.

I've also been reading, The World Without Us by Alan Wizeman. It is a very intriguing thought expirement. And the expirement is exactly what the title says. What would happen to the Earth if man suddenly ceased to be a part of the system? It isn't apocalyptic and it isn't particularly a "human-bashing" kind of book. It is just a sober and interesting set of science-informed speculation.

I've picked up a bunch of other books of late - some I've purchased and a few I've received as gifts. They include Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches by John Dean (which I have started reading), Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman, Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World by Bill Clinton, and Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush by Robert Draper. Those ought to keep me busy for a couple of days.

Gae and I are off on vacation starting this coming Saturday. We are headed to New York City, the Adirondacks, Stowe Vermont, and then Boston, Mass. We will be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary on this trip. We'll try to bring everyone back a jar of cool fall air.

Lots of Balls in the Air

I've been too busy lately to read much or post. I did pick up a couple of new books and have managed to get started on several. Work has been hectic. We are getting ready to launch a new homepage for the Baylor web site. Take a look at some preview info http://www.baylor.edu/newsite.

Either War is Finished or We Are

The title of this entry are words attributable to Herman Wouk's stalwart American Navy officer in War and Remembrance. The book is a masterpiece of a historical novel in my opinion. Wouk weaves a theme of American character & industry, World War, the plight of the Jews and ultimately a theme of a chance for peace and hope emerging from ashes.

In many ways the world of pre and even early World War II is a time which I may have been more at home than I feel today. The transatlantic crossing on ocean liners, America as a reluctant participant on the world stage, a respect for and interest in ideas and oratory and discourse of all kinds... a world before television turned our homes into mini-theaters. A time when university meant education more than career preparation. A time when people read. A time of sweeping convulsions from new political and economic realities and theories. Communism, Socialism, Nazism, Fascism all came to full and often violent expression in this time. Democracy was still new and fragile in much of Europe and was, unfotunately, overcome by internal political and economic forces in too many of Europe's old time nations.

Wouk's Captain Henry leads a remarkable life. He is the naval attache in Germany at the start of World War II. He meets Hitler and Mussolini. He makes an astute intelligence conclusion and report and as such is sought out by FDR and comes to know FDR and Harry Hopkins. He visits London at the height of the blitz and meets Churchill and tours the chain home stations and sees the RAF in action. He serves as a Lend Lease officer on two occasions in the Soviet Union and is in Moscow during the German march on that city. He meets Stalin. He is assigned battleship command at Pearl Harbor only to arrive a day or two after the surprise attack. He commands a treaty cruiser at the battle of Midway and at Guadalcanal. He returns later to the Soviet Union as a special emissary for Lend Lease where he tours Leningrad during the German seige and Stalingrad shortly after the Germans are annihilated there. He is present in Tehran when Churchill, Stalin, and FDR meet together for the first time. And he visits the Manhattan project installations at Oak Ridge shortly before returning for a brief time to oversee landing craft issues for the Normandy invasion. He meets and gets to know Eisenhower and all the big military brass. He then is assigned to the Pacific and serves at Leyte Gulf, Iwo Jima, and other battles. Just after VE day he becomes Harry Truman's naval aide and is present with all the heads of state at Potsdam at the conclusion of the European war. And other characters are present at Pearl Harbor, the invasion of Poland and seige of Warsaw, the massacre of the US Air Force in the Phillipines, and more. You hit all the high spots and Wouk tells a great story with the people of his novel along with a remarkably accurate historical account of the war.

Captain (and later Admiral) Victor Henry writes about the incredible folly and command mistakes and bad decisions at the Battle of Leyte Gulf during 1944. He speaks of the end of an era in which battleships dominated the seas and even how a battle like Leyte Gulf was obsolete only a few years later. At the time Wouk wrote the book the cold war was at full simmer and the US and USSR had enormous massed nuclear arsenals sitting at 30 minutes notice - ready to destroy countries, continents and perhaps all of civilization. He spoke of the incredible folly and stupidity of launching the giant navies of Leyte Gulf and the consequences for those that bore the brunt of mistakes and bad decisions and then concluded that a nuclear Leyte Gulf would be the end of all we know. And then the words, "either war is finished or we are."

Well, it seems that war is not finished. It is fair to point out that in the first half of the 20th century there were two all out everyone choose a side wars that left entire generations of some countries dead. And before that there were the Napoleonic wars and the American Indian wars that lead to the virtual extinction of many native American tribes and there were the Crusades, invasions of the Mongolian Hordes, Romans, Assyrians, and on and on and on - countries and cultures fighting to the death. Since the end of World War II there have been all kinds of wars and conflicts, but somehow we have managed to avoid an all out fight between those that are really armed to the teeth. So, while war hasn't ended, maybe we've taken a few tentative steps down a path toward a better future.

SPOILER ALERT - The end of Wouk's book is worth repeating. One of the characters, Berel Jastrow, is a Polish Jew that fought in WW I, ran a business in Poland, was a refugee early in WW II, joined the Russian army briefly, was captured by the Germans and forced into labor camps including Auschwitz and in roving camps exuming and covering up German massacres in the Ukraine, escapes and then fights as a partisan against the Nazis and eventually is killed - buried in a shallow unmarked grave. It helps to understand this to understand Wouk's ending. Also, Wouk speaks of the initial nuclear weapons as revealing the light of the sun here on earth for the first time.

It is only a story, Berel Jastrow was never born and never existed. He was a parable. In truth his bones stretch from the French coast to the Urals, dry bones of a murdered giant. And in truth a marvelous thing happens; his story does not end there, for the bones stand up and take on flesh. God breathes spirit into the bones, and Berel Jastrow turns eastward and goes home. In the glare, the great and terrible light of this happening, God seems to signal that the story of the rest of us need not end, and that the new light can prove a troubled dawn.

For the rest of us, perhaps. Not for the dead, not for the more than fifty million real dead in the world's worst catastrophe: victors and vanquished, combatants and civiliams, people of so many nations, men, women, and children, all cut down. For them there can be no new earthly dawn. Yet though their bones lie in the darkness of the grave, they will not have died in vain, if their remembrance can lead us from the long, long time of war to the time for peace.

Faith without Perfect Understanding

I finished up the Miller book, Searching for God Knows What. The book is good in that it challenges me and it forces me to think through a number of issues.

Miller's fundamental premise is that God/Christ calls us to a relationship rather than laying out a propositional or formulaic theology. It contends that Christianity is not primarily "idea" driven and that the Bible doesn't particularly explain a theology. He contends that man is fallen/separated from God and that what we need most is to return to him and be in relationship with him.

I understand what Miller is saying.

He uses some really great metaphors in the book to explain our nature. A short version of the metaphor is that we live as though we are in a life boat. The challenge is that while there may be 10 in the life boat, there is reason to believe that the life boat might really only support 7 or 8 of us. Therefore, we are in a constant state of fear causing us to compare ourselves to everyone around us..... and desiring to move up in the pecking order based on some cultural value system. He says we do this because we get our definition from others - from outside ourselves. He even seems to say that this is proof that we were made to be given our definition by others and that when we lost our intimacy or relationship with God we turned to look for another source.

I think his metaphor is a good picture of our psychological make up. I sense that same fear and desire to compare and rank and compete against others. However, while I observe the phenomenon in myself and others, I don't know that it is separation from God that produces this state. It might be, but the proofs are actually "faith" or "belief."

Miller also spends a fair amount of time describing what it will be like to be back in perfect relationship with Christ/God in heaven. While it may be true that this is what will happen, I simply can't understand what that state might be like, regardless of Miller's descriptions.

For if man is fallen and separated from God.... what would prevent man from falling again after entering heaven? If our understanding of free will is in any way accurate, then do we all freely choose to submit completely to God in heaven? Or does free will not exist for us in heaven? And if not, then what will we have become? Not human in any sense that I can understand. And if free will has never really existed, then what is the story of the fall all about and why did God establish creation in this fashion? So, I always end up back at the impossible when I try to consider the whys behind creation, heaven, sinfulness, redemption, grace, and more.

And I can't make my mind "believe" things I can't begin to understand. However, that doesn't mean that I don't have faith. Faith in things unseen and faith in things not understood.

On a personal note, this is the 2nd of Miller's books that I have read. In this one I miss his sense of humility and willingness to "not know" everything. This time he lays out a belief system that sounds as if it is completely certain of understanding God/Jesus' desire for redemption through a relationship. His conviction is admirable, but also a little oppressive in his use of absolutes.

In the meantime, I picked up a novel that is on my shelf and is one of my favorite stories of all time. I have read War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk multiple times and still enjoy it each time.

Gore - Competent, Articulate, Statesman, Boring

I finished Gore's new book The Assault on Reason. The arguments are logical, compelling, and worth reading. If you thought the Bush administration was just bad, but going to be gone soon, this book might change your mind. According to Gore, while they may be gone relatively soon, they have started down a path that threatens our safety, our respect for law, and the future of our democracy.

In many ways, I'd prefer to have Gore as a candidate for the presidency over the current motley bunch.

However, this book is another example of why it is so hard for him to win. He's pretty boring. He takes twice as long to say something as he needs to.

Incompetent, Unlucky, Stupid - Doesn't Really Matter

He received a warning about an impending terrorist attack on US soil in August 2001 and did nothing about it.

He and his administration had a fixation on finding a reason to go to war with Saddam from the earliest days of the administration. He and his administration manufactured a connection between Iraq & al Quaeda after 9/11. He and his administration ran around all over the place indicating that unless we attacked Iraq, there would be mushroom clouds over US cities. He and his administration said we would be welcomed as liberators. It turns out that there was no connection, no nuclear program, and no real welcome.

He and his administration have multiple times claimed the mission was accomplished, the insurgency was in the last throws, the media just showed the bad news, there were enough troops, and that you go to war with what you've got rather than what you want. Well, the mission is not accomplished, the insurgency is well dug in, the media was actually restrained and mislead and is still denied information or access in substantial ways, the military leadership had told the administration that a larger occupying force would be needed, and that our troops were sent to war without body armor.

He said that if anyone in his administration was involved with leaking the name of Valerie Plame they would be fired. Well it turns out that Richard Armitage and Scooter Libby both spoke to reporters about Valerie Plame and the Vice President may have done so..... and then we find out that he "authorized" some or all of these individuals to make such disclosures.

He and his administration pushed a huge increase in corporate welfare through the Medicare prescription drug benefit. The bill was written by insurance and pharmaceutical companies and is costing vastly more (100 times) than was told to Congress. And it turns out that the administration official in charge knew the facts that it was going to be massively more expensive than told to the people or the Congress.

He inherited a huge surplus and is now presiding over the biggest annual debt (by any measure) in our history.

I could go on and on, but this gets the basic idea across. The military is on the verge of being broken. Our debt threatens our economy for years to come. We've lost our moral leadership position in the world. We've created so many problems in Iraq that it defies all understanding.

So my point is this. We elect presidents because we expect them to be right. We elect them with the hope that we will be better off as years go along - safer, richer, healthier, whatever. Personally, I would prefer that presidents be open, honest, deliberative and reasoned and that such a process would lead to making right decisions in providing leadership. Some would prefer that the president be motivated more by faith, intuition, principles, or just plain good luck. That's not my preference. Regardless, it turns out that he and his administration have been wrong about a lot of important issues.

Whether you think he lies or you think he is dealing with a lot of difficult situations not of his making, the reality is that most of us think it is wrong for us to be engaged in a war in Iraq, wrong to participate in torture, wrong to have lost our focus on hunting down Osama Bin Laden, wrong to be loading down future generations with massive debt in order to finance a massive corporate welfare system, and more.

We elect our presidents to be right. Unfortunately, we don't have much recourse between now and the next election.

Curiosity and Humility

I've finished several books in the past couple of weeks and all are worthwhile.

I finished up Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel and it is a spellbinding true story. In addition, it is an eye opener. I think most people would believe that much of the world treats women horribly. And I think that many that I know are either fearful of or contemptuous of the spreading radical Islamic cancer. However, it is one thing to kind of know it or sense it and it is another thing to read the vivid description of a young girl having her genitals mutilated against her will. It is another thing to read a first hand account of the incredible psychological influence of well organized and politically motivated Islamic groups. If you haven't read this book, you ought to do so. I don't know that I come to the same conclusions as the author, but anyone that says Islam is peace needs to have that idea challenged by this book. One of my conclusions from reading this is that I am incredibly thankful that I did not grow up amidst the chaos of east Africa or the cauldron of Islamic fundamentalism. And I am even more thankful that my daughter did not grow up in either of those environments.

Last weekend I stumbled upon a book by Oliver Thomas called 10 Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You: (But Can't, Because He Needs the Job). It is a most refreshing book, especially for a Baptist minister to have penned. It actually says that the Bible doesn't really say much about homosexuality and that we pull the "abomination" stuff from the same area where it says we ought to stone and cast out and mutilate all kinds of folks for all kinds of reasons. And for some reason we've managed to hang onto this one. It also says that systematic exclusion of women from church service is wrong; there are various interpretations of end-times and the post-millenialism of Jenkins and Lahaye fame is both new and not supportable; the creation stories of Genesis are conflicting and incomplete and not intended to really explain how creation happened, but why; and several other juicy ones that I'll let you discover if you choose to read this very short little book. Personally, I thought it was great. To me, it mostly said that as Christians we are allowing ourselves to become dominated by controversial and exclusionary and unsupportable beliefs, rather than carrying out Jesus' message of social justice, kindness, love, and mercy. I'm sure there are conservatives poking pins in little Oliver Thomas voodoo dolls.

Finally, just this evening I finished up Walter Isaacson's fine biography of Einstein, Einstein: His Life and Universe. The biography is good. Einstein the person is spectacular. Non-conformist. Brilliant. Creative. Religious unbeliever. Amazed at the universe around him and blessed with enormous curiosity, powers of concentration, and willingness to question authority and dogma. When new information came to light he changed his conclusions - both in science and in politics. He was a rabid pacifist, but the rise of Nazism caused him to shed his radical pacifism. He was an opponent of Stalinist politics, but refused to go all the way to the extreme of McCarthyism.

There are several quotes from the book that bear recording here.....

Einstein's fundamental creed was that freedom was the lifeblood of creativity. "The development of science and of the creative activities of the spirit," he said, "requires a freedom that consists in the independence of thought from the restrictions of authoritarian and social prejudice." Nurturing that should be the fundamental role of government, he felt, and the mission of education.

There was a simple set of formulas that defined Einstein's outlook. Creativity required being willing not to conform. That required nurturing free minds and free spirits, which in turn required "a spirit of tolerance." And the underpinning of tolerance was humility - the belief that no one had the right to impose ideas and beliefs on others.

For some people, miracles serve as evidence of God's existence. For Einstein it was the absence of miracles that reflected divine providence. The fact that the cosmos is comprehensible, that it follows laws, is worthy of awe. This is the defining quality of a "God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists."

Einstein's own description of the US following the fall of McCarthyism...

God's own country becomes stranger and stranger, but somehow they manage to return to normality. Everything - even lunacy - is mass produced here. But everything goes out of fashion very quickly.

And near his end....

But he knew that the aneurysm on his abdominal aorta should soon prove fatal, and he began to display a peaceful sense of his own mortality. When he stood at the graveside and eulogized the physicist Rudolf Ladenberg, who had been his colleague in Berlin and then Princeton, the words seemed to be ones he felt personally. "Briefly is this existence, as a fleeting visit in a strange house," he said, "The path to be pursued is poorly lit by a flickering consciousness."

It is the quote about humility amongst those above that resonates most with me. I will advocate for what I believe or think or observe with passion. But I believe that I have tried for most of my adult life to try to give the other view or the other side at least the benefit of a possibility. I'm proud and I'm convinced much of the time of my own rightness (hopefully not righteousness), but somewhere underneath I try to keep in mind that I might not be right or that at the very least I might learn something from other views.

The other quote that resonates with me so much is that the absence of miracles, that the structure and order of the cosmos, that when properly understood there is no "weird spookiness" to the physics of the universe; is in itself an indicator of a creator/designer/God. (It is for this reason that Einstein wrestled up to his last moments looking for a unified theory that would take all of the "weird spookiness" out of quantum mechanics.)

I remember reading my Biology textbook early in my first semester as a freshman about the enormity of the universe. I still have that textbook and can locate the passages today. (page 698 and 699 of Biological Science by William T. Keeton [2nd edition - 1972]) The passage discussed the possibility of life on other planets and went on to discuss the vast number of stars, likely planets, and statistical probability that life and intelligent life might exist on other planets. I don't know that the discussion of life elsewhere made a great impact on me, but the huge number of planets whirling through the universe impressed me. And the intricate way that life developed on Earth and the amazing biological organisms and systems that evolved got me to thinking. The grandeur and the sense of design from enormous macro concepts like the universe and galaxies all the way down to micro concepts of cells and molecules and atoms and DNA and cellular reproduction were breathtaking to contemplate. They were (and still are) awe-inspiring.

"God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists."

That is an affirmation of curiosity and a definition of humility. I think that is why I read and why sometimes I think or write.

New Books

I've made a couple of trips to the bookstore in the past couple of days. George Tenet's new book (At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA) was released today and I just had to get it. I read the first two chapters this evening. As usual, I find that those who rise to high office are intelligent and articulate. I'm really looking forward to getting into this one.

I also picked up the new J.R.R. Tolkien book, The Children of Hurin. A new Tolkien book, some forty plus years after his death. Amazing. I haven't started this one yet.

Finally, I picked up Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson. I got started on this one yesterday and it is pretty good so far. Rather than reading a book that positions itself as a "how to" and rationale for thinking, I just decided to read a book about a great thinker.

Quick Update

Thinking for a Change by John Maxwell is off the reading list.

I finished Failing America's Faithful by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and it was very good. It is an excellent challenge to the catholic church.

I also started a new book, Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It promises to be very good.

Starting to Pull the Threads Together

I've started on a couple of new books, Thinking for a Change by John Maxwell and Failing America's Faithful by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.

Also, much to my dismay, I found the Running with Scissors book. It was under the driver's side seat in my car. Crap. Now, I probably ought to go ahead and finish reading the stupid thing.

The Thinking book is okay. Most of the real meat of the book is pretty good. I just don't like the style and some of the illustrations and various statements are worse than uninspiring for me. The general ideas are okay.

Townsend's book is really good in my opinion. It speaks so clearly about the church's past and in her (and my ) opinion best strengths as agents for social justice. So far, the book is dominated by her own experiences as she grew up in the Catholic Church. I strongly recommend this book for anyone that believes that religion and values ought to be at the heart of who we are and what we do as a people and a nation, but also have the sense that despite all the rhetoric and effort, our current national approach to integrating faith into the public sphere is not quite right. Townsend also writes about a need for action through the collective body of the church and a sense of shared responsibility with and for those both inside and outside the church as opposed to a kind of capitalistic rugged individual approach that permeates much of American thinking today.

Borg's books seem to be saying that faith is more about doing than believing. Aktinson seems to be saying that how we live out our faith and spirituality are more important than getting all the believing just right. Townsend is a clarion call for the church and religious people as agents for social justice. It seems to me that there is an emerging mode or paradigm for those that see themselves as spiritually, ethically, and religiously driven or connected to live and lead in a way that informs a "liberal" or "progressive" mindset rather than a narrow doctrinaire, hierarchical, right wing conservative mindset that has become such a strong force in our country today.

Religion

When you look up the word grace in a dictionary there are a lot of definitions, but the one that has stuck with me over time is:

• freely given, unmerited favor and love of God.

Most in the Baptist tradition would say that if you accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior, believing that he is the son of God, died as atonement for your sin, and some would add a genuine confession of your sins and repentance to that equation, then you will be "saved" - living in a state of grace and destined for heaven.

Well, I have a couple of thoughts:

1. If you have to make all these mental decisions or confessions, then it seems to me that salvation is not quite so much "grace" as it is a special state achievable by meeting a bunch of conditions;
2. Requires a lot of mental gymnastics. This equation requires a lot of "believing." Personally, I have all kinds of periods of doubt and questions.
3. I get confused by simple direct statements about God. Sometimes you will hear that God loves everyone and everything. Then you will hear that God's salvation or grace is God's unmerited love and that not everyone is receiving this unmerited love. Maybe I'm just dense, but it seems to me that we create a logical disconnect in our descriptions of God; and
4. Finally, it seems that we confuse just what is the Kingdom of God... Is it some afterlife in heaven or is it a time in the future after Jesus returns or is it right now? Personally, I can't do much about if/when Jesus returns and heaven is a pretty vague concept with vague description. It seems to me that concentrating on the concept of Kingdom of God as a part of the here and now is a better use of my mental and spiritual energies. I'll let the other stuff take care of itself.

I did finish reading the book by Atkinson, RealLivePreacher.com. It was very good. Good writing.

Facebook Photos

Facebook has a way to post a link to albums so I am adding a new section over on the right with links to photo albums. The first link is to an album with pictures from our recent visit to the zoo.

Still Processing.... Please Wait

I finished up Borg's The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith . I was also reading Running with Scissors: A Memoir by Augusten Burroughs.

Running with Scissors was terrible. I didn't finish it, but it was getting really bad. Now I can''t find it. I don't know how I lost it, but I have done so. If you find it, feel free to keep it. It might be good as kindling for a fire.

Borg's book on the other hand really has me thinking. The book was loaned to me by a friend and it was just what I needed. I am so intrigued by Borg's ideas that I've gone out and bought another book by Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith. My friend that loaned me the first book asked me for my impressions. I'm not ready to put all of those impressions out in a medium like this, but some of the main points are:

1. I'm not going to check my brain at the door any longer when it comes to matters of religion, faith, etc. If science, reason, knowledge, etc. tell us one thing, I am not going to just ignore that information when reading the Bible, listening to a sermon, or working to understand the world of spirit/religion/faith.
2. Borg emphasizes understanding The Bible as metaphor, as a language of poetry, and as works written for audiences of thousands of years ago. I think that makes sense.
3. Borg is not 100% compelling in all of his statements.
4. Borg discusses faith and belief as two different things and this is an area in which I have struggled somewhat myself. You can read some of my now obsolete thoughts in this area in two of my earlier posts - Faith & Belief and Meanderings on Faith, Reason, and Loneliness. Borg's comments in this area are particularly helpful for me.

The same person that loaned me the first Borg book has now loaned me Reallivepreacher.com by Gordon Atkinson. The book is an edited compendium of articles that Atkinson wrote for his Blog web site of the same name - RealLivePreacher.com. Early in the book, Atkinson makes the claim that among his initial goals was an intention to write well. I must say that in my opinion he does just that. If I were to meet him today, I think that might be the only thing I would have to say to him. He does write well. And, for me, his view of Christianity, faith, religion, the world of the spirit seems to integrate well with much of what Borg is saying. I don't know that those two would be good friends or like each others work, but for me, reading the two at the same time works very well.

Beyond these thoughts there is a lot more spinning around in my head. However, those thoughts are not very well formed. So, for the moment I'm going to withhold further comment until I can more fully process.

Looking for a Little Help

Two members of the Baylor Unviersity ITS department (family) are battling breast cancer. This has awoken me and others in the ITS departments to the challenges of and broad scope of individuals afflicted with this disease. Our friends, Susan Evans and Patt Black, are doing well, but we still wish to take some positive action to help, to show our support and love, and to bring our collective energies to bear at this time. Therefore, we have put together a team, Paws for the Cause, to participate in this year's Race for the Cure here in central Texas.

I am asking any and all that may see this on my blog or on Facebook or Incircle or elsewhere to join me in taking on breast cancer and supporting my friends and co-workers. Click on the link below to see my web page on the Race for the Cure web site. Please make a donation if you are able to do so.

http://race.komencentraltexas.org/goto/rkwoodruff

Quick Hits

Obama announced to no one's surprise. Personally, I like his attempt to take nuanced positions. We'll see how long that lasts. A friend asked me the other day if I was comfortable having a Moslem for a president. I had to explain that Obama is a Christian. The hack story on the school has subtle and far-reaching effects.

I finished up the Iraq Study Group book. No wonder Bush took a different direction. There were too many recommendations. They wouldn't fit in a sound bite, clever slogan, or marketing campaign that could be sold to Fox News.

I was in Houston to watch my Baylor Bears play baseball over the weekend. We have a lot of really young kids out there, but you can see the talent. That tournament is a tough way for a bunch of freshmen to get introduced to college baseball. Downtown Houston has made a remarkable transformation with the Ballpark, Toyota Center, light rail system, and general regenertation of the area. It's pretty fun to wander around downtown now. The traffic still stinks on the freeways.

The combination of American Idol, the Dixie Chicks winning Grammys and the death of Anna Nicole have the cable news networks going overtime right now. What a cesspool. I didn't watch TV all weekend and turned on the tube when I got home last night. Junk.

Later.

Iraq - Ugh!

Since I last posted I've finished Carter's Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, started The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward - A New Approach by Baker, Hamilton & The Iraq Study Group, and started and finished Peter Galbraith's The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End. I also read Maxwell Taylor Kennedy's Make Gentle the Life of This World : The Vision of Robert F. Kennedy and the Words That Inspired Him.

The books on the middle east lead me to believe that working to support a three state solution in Iraq and a 2 state solution in Palestine make the most sense for long term peace and are also in the best interest of our country. Instability in Iraq serves Iran very well for right now. And instability in Palestine serves almost no one, but Iran can probably still get some mileage from it.

In my opinion, we are turning Iran into a world power with far more influence than their size, economy, or ideology warrant. I say their ideology and yet I believe that it is really only a minority radical Shia Islamic agenda that is best served by the current situation.

Today, in Iraq, the most peaceful portions of the country are the Shia south and the Kurdish north. The part of the country that is most closely aligned with the west in general and the US in particular is the Kurdish north. It is also true that the most independent part of the country is the Kurdish north - they have a coherent government, army (peshmerga), and to some extent vision. They will go along with the single state Iraq long enough to insure that nothing is done to jeopardize their de facto independence. The Shia want to run & rule a religious state and the Sunnis seem to want a return to a unified Iraq with the Sunnis in charge - there are strong secular and religious minded elements in the Sunni camp, but both want Sunni dominance of a unified country. The Iranians are very strong supporters of all brands of the Shia, but probably also stir up the Sunni in order to foment an unstable situation.

The Palestine situation simply serves to create new generations of the disaffected who are great candidates for future terrorist organizations. Further, the more intransigent Israel appears then the more influence we see from Iranian sponsored political (& terrorist) organizations. And every time one of those organizations is able to tweak their nose at Israel or more importantly the US, the more their stature rises in the Middle East.

And as long as our troops are deployed in southern Iraq they are in danger of Iranian sponsored terrorist attacks as well as direct retaliation from the Iranian military. I believe this limits our options with regard to dealing with Iranian nuclear efforts.

The Iraq Study Group advocates a very broad and in my opinion very complex set of suggestions. It looks to me like the chance of general success given the number of objectives could be very difficult. However, their concept of working more in concert with other nations makes sense to me. I sometimes think the Bush administration's idea of working with other nations is to say - We're going to do this. Join us. - rather than truly consulting with those other countries.

From the book of quotes from Robert Kennedy, I found the following...

History is full of peoples who have discovered it is easier to fight than to think, easier to have enemies and friends selected by authority than to make their own painful choices, easier to follow blindly than to lead, even if leadership must be the private choice of a single man alone with a free and skeptical mind. But in the final telling it is that leadership, the impregnable skepticism of the free spirit, untouched by guns or police, which feeds the whirlwind of change and hope and progress in every land and time. -- ROBERT F KENNEDY

That some how fits and it seems like we need a leader that will lead in such a way.

And now the star power is weighing in. McCain is strongly in favor of the troop surge. Personally, I think that an increase of 20,000 is a case of way too little way too late. We can probably dominate certain locales with our troops, but we can't dominate the entire country for an extended period with the troops currently in country or on the way. We can maybe make things look a little better in some areas for a bit, but we'll have a hard time controlling the whole country, especially when our troops have to move on to another area. Hillary is tossing her hat in and now she's pretty much reversing course claiming to be against much of the Bush approach. And Barack is the rock star. He was against the war back when everyone was for it. He shows a little integrity or perhaps he's just not a good politician and got lucky on this one. Edwards regrets voting for the war, but he gets crowded out on the national level at this point. Edwards, however, may have the best combination of organization, rhetoric and name recognition in the early primary states.

What an interesting year this will be.