and now for something completely different

I stumbled across this clip today - luv it. For those of you who haven't heard my creed rant yet, let's just say that I am not a fan of creeds and I think this video demonstrates my issues nicely. One argument I've heard that makes some sense to me in continuing their use, is the common language they provide across the Christian church. But mostly I just can't get over my intellectual assent problems. Even after reading from Marcus Borg in the Heart of Christianity:

But credo does not mean "I hereby agree to the literal-factual truth of the following statements." Rather, its Latin roots combine to mean "I give my heart to."

At one point, I started looking for alternate creeds that I could give my heart to. Here are a few.

• The Maasai Creed


• Let's Confess It


• United Church of Canada New Creed


• Retro-Modern Creed

Do you have a statement of faith that you can give your heart to?

extra, extra, read all about it

A couple of pretty newsworthy events have happened this week in the life of the Christian church.

The first event I heard about was the online release of the Codex Sinaiticus. This is "a manuscript of the Christian Bible written in the middle of the fourth century, contains the earliest complete copy of the Christian New Testament." Leaves and fragments of this manuscript have been held in four different locations around the world. All the available pages have now come together in the digital world - yeh technology!

I know I can't read these pages directly and they don't provide English translations for all of the pages, but I love the idea that they are there and available for all. And, I am intrigued by the books it includes that are not in our modern Bible and how it's been "heavily annotated by a series of early correctors."

The second event was the release of an Encyclical Letter "Caritas in Veritate" by Pope Benedict XVI. I'd never heard of this letter or ever really been a fan of the pope, but apparently he planned this "Charity in Truth" message to coincide with the G8 summit hoping to rattle a few cages. It's a pretty rambling document, written in a male-dominated voice, but it appears there are a few gems.

Here's what some other bloggers are saying about it:

• Pope Benedict XVI encyclical letter denounces excessive zeal for assertions of intellectual property rights in knowledge by KEI


• Pope Benedict on the Global Economy by Jim Wallis

BTW - is it weird that I learned about these things from listening to the BBC and not the US news?

to be educated

A review of our book by one of my favorite professors at Texas Lutheran.

A book review by Norm Beck,
Poehlmann Professor of Theology and Classical Languages

If to be educated is to be led from one position and perspective to another, Dr. Tom Wilkens and Kim Wilkens, together with other members of their family and in interaction with their culture, eloquently demonstrate what it means to be educated. Their book, in a most profound sense, is also our book.

During the 24 years in which Dr. Wilkens was my closest colleague on the Texas Lutheran University faculty, I and thousands of others within the community of this University were blessed to be educated in so many ways by him. That education has continued during the past decade in which he and Betty, who had been our campus nurse, have traveled and interacted in educational endeavors in many other areas of the world. In the broadest sense, he reminds us that, although we may be resistant, if we are sentient beings we are constantly being educated by our interactions with others, especially by those who are younger than we are.

Kim Wilkens, co-author with her father, a graduate of TLU not too many years ago, provides an education and an articulation for all of us, including those who are closest to where she is in her life and faith pilgrimage. There is so much of TLU in these authors and in their book, a book that defines and exposes us.

The subtitle, “A modern father and postmodern daughter reflect on their pilgrimages of life and faith,” provides an indication of education within slightly more than three hundred pages and thirty segments, each segment of which can be read separately much as we might read articles in a Reader’s Digest publication, but with much more cohesion. The primary title, Un-American Activities: Countercultural Themes in Christianity, challenges us and alerts us to the educational scope of the work, expanding for us the purview of the book far beyond the arena that is TLU.

Find the complete review here.

where you do not wish to go

I'm at a conference in SA called The Jesus Way. Okay, I admit it sounds like an over-the-top Christian immersion experience and in some ways it is. And so in many ways, I feel like an impostor here. There are lots of people very comfortable with their Christian identity. The metaphor of sheep, ready and eager to follow a shepherd comes to mind. The thing is, I'm not sure many of us are prepared to go where we do not wish to go. That's what I've liked about this conference - is the challenge to do just that. Should being comfortable and being a Christian be mutually exclusive?

Where is it you do not want to go and what are you going to do when, inevitably, you arrive there? What will you learn? Who will you trust? How will you find freedom? When you find yourself where you don't want to be, will your life be about where you are or who you become? These are life questions that trouble me and I find that this is where the way of Jesus offers me the best hope to grow from challenging experiences instead of being buried by them.

wait for me by moby

i'm going to ask you to look away
i love my hands, but it hurts to pray

the life i have isn't what i'd seen
the sky's not blue and the field's not green

wait for me, wait for me, wait for me

i'm going to ask you to look away
a broken life will never stay

tried too hard and i always lagged
days are gray and the nights are black

wait for me, wait for me, wait for me

trip of a lifetime

1 boy, 1 mom, 1 dad with 2 grandmas and 1 papa just got back from the trip of a lifetime to 5 countries - Zurich (Switzerland) with long layovers both ways, Venice (Italy) for 3 nights, Azamara cruise for 7 nights stopping in Kopar (Slovenia), Zader & Dubrovnik (Croatia), Santorini & Nauplion (Greece) & Athens for 2 nights.

Overall, it was an incredible experience. Here are a few of my random thoughts about the trip:
- The boy was an amazing navigator through the twisting, narrow streets of Venice, but it still gave me nightmares thinking of him getting separated from us and navigating those streets alone.
- After that, letting the boy have the run of the ship was easy.
- My first impression of the cruise staff was how super friendly they were. Then I found out that this ship is known for having the friendliest staff, so I began to get cynical and wondered if they were friendly because they wanted to be or because they had to be.
- The cruise is definitely one of the more high-end things we have ever done. I started the trip feeling kind of guilty, but by the end I was getting kind of used to the pampering.
- The cruise staff was a way more diverse group than the passengers.
- Traveling with grandparents is definitely a bonus.
- Dubrovnik turned out to be one of my favorite stops. Exploring this walled city by the sea was an incredible experience.
- Walking through ancient Mycenae ruins gives you the perspective that our US history is pretty puny.
- Encountering some kind of ruin around every corner of Athens just reinforces the feeling that ancient history permeates this place.
- Almost everyone we met throughout our journey spoke some English.