Would you believe me if I told you I knew the future?

I don't, so I guess the question itself is irrelevant. I have ideas. We all have ideas. But we don't really know do we? What does it mean to know anyways? How do we 'know' something that is so separate and distinct from us? How do we know something doesn't exist--yet or ever?

And you thought this post would be about a pretty picture, but now we're getting into the foundations of epistemology.

I don't know where we'll be in five years. I don't know where we'll be in 10. I don't know where we'll be tomorrow. How's that for comforting? But it's honest. It's real. Part of this is being real.

I don't know what tomorrow will bring for us. For you, for me. But I hope. I hope our lives will piece themselves together. I hope that our stories will be intertwined in a way that they cannot possibly be separated.

Have you seen someone make a rug? Or knitting something together by hand? I think that's a little about how stories work. Hard labor of making two things become one thing. There's something insanely magical in that.

So I don't know. But I'll keep on drinking arabic coffee and turning the cup over to read the grinds. I'll keep on making rugs and knitting and hoping. That's what we can do.

Wesley

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Perhaps God is strangest and most foreign to us exactly here, in God's faithfulness. We are inclined to faithlessness. We flit from god to god, security to apparent security, thrill to thrill. The church and individual Christians constantly cozy up up to ascendant ideologies and nationalisms. We are prone to prostitution, in the sense that we are constantly available to the highest bidder. Yet all the while the one and true God perseveres, keeps up wild pursuit of a beloved that will not be forgotten or relinquished.

Families at the Crossroads: Beyond Traditional & Modern Options by Rodney Clapp

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"More than 400 years ago a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives. So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of government remain unknown to you, then I suggest you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked."

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No Talmudic tracate has a page one; the book always begins, so to speak, on the second page. An old explanation of this practice has it that by starting on page two, by not learning page one first, you know from the beginning of your studies that you will never 'know it all.'

I had a conversation with a great friend the other day about creation and 'knowing' creation. I thought this sentence (or two) summed it up pretty well. You can't 'know it all.' You can't 'know' creation; there is an epistemological fracture between the moments of creation (vis-a-vis page 1) and what exists to us.

Wes

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So long as there is this supposed 'natural growth' of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, no one in their right mind--not even President Barack Obama--can hope for any kind of viable and lasting peace in the region. The Arab countries have made themselves clear on several occasians: there will be no peace, none, if Israel remains a significant presence in the West Bank.

It's time that Israel and the West faced the reality of the Palestinians' situation.

Wesley

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Laura. Why do I deserve someone like you? I don't. But that doesn't mean a thing to you. We have this amazing thing of 5+ years, and I'm loving every single minute of it. It's hard, but it's good. Seriously, what more could I ask for? I love you. Look at that smile, how could I not love that smile?

Wes

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What an amazing and brilliant peace of advertising. Makes you want to buy a new Sony Bravia HD TV, doesn't it? Or at least think of different things we can film with a super high speed camera and then overlay intense ambient sounds on top of it.

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God is not weak

God is not powerful

God is not transcendent

God is not present

God is not ignorant

God is not caring

God is not hate

God is not love

God is not a lie

God is not truth

God is not unfair

God is not just

God is not reckless

God is not in control

God is not nothing

God is not real

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We're singing a song in chapel this morning:

Soon and very soon, my King is coming, robed in righteousness and crowned with love. When I see Him I shall be made like Him, soon and very soon. Soon and very soon I'll be going to the place He has prepared for me. There my sin erased my shame forgotten–soon and very soon. I will be with the One I love; with unveiled face I'll see Him. There my soul will be satisfied: soon and very soon.

I don't really like this song.

It rubs me in the wrong way.. as if the purpose of Christianity is to get us as far away from this world as possible. This message is antithetical to the gospel of Jesus and instead is more the gospel of gnosticism and Greek dualism.

Jesus calls his disciples to be in the world (though, admittedly not 'of it,' whatever that means). Not to focus totally on what will happen. The 12 disciples were too focused on what Jesus would do instead of being present in what he's doing in the present.

Christians, or those who go by that name, everywhere are plagued by a restlessness that calls them forward into a distant and intangible future. Instead: be present.

Maybe the lyrics should be changed to 'Soon and not so soon, my King is coming, because he's already given us a task to do.'

Wes

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Wesley

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"We can understand religions as always-contested and ever-changing maps that orient devotees as they move spatially and temporally. Religions are partial, tentative, and continually redrawn sketches of where we are, where we've been, and where we're going."

Thomas Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion.

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Oh, nothing. I'm just hanging out in the VIP/Press area at the West Beach Music Festival. Good day. What are you doing?
 
Wesley

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