Saturday May 10, 2008

Here's Doug

This is a blast. Here is Doug Pascover's story:

From the ages of 10 months old until 7 years, my family lived on the South side of Chicago so the White Sox were my first religion. I became a Christian at 13 and have never been particularly good at it. I worked as a cowboy, farm-hand and construction-worker until I went to Emory University at the age of 24. While a student and for a few years after I worked at The Carter Center's Interfaith Health Program. Today I am the Executive Director of an agency that helps adults with developmental disabilities become independent, which sounds virtuous but mostly isn't. (My employees have virtuous jobs.) I am very involved in the development of State policy towards people with disabilities, mostly as a crank. I raise dogs in lieu of children, marriage being too complicated for me.

I guess, considering your politics and religion focus, I can add that I am a member of the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) and a political independent with fairly conservative views on the size and scope of government and no interest in regulating personal behavior. I have a very difficult relationship with large, man-made institutions including both government and the church.

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Friday May 9, 2008

Meet Thinker

We have all come to love and appreciate Thinker. Now, a bit more about her:

Thinker here.

I went from nursing to teaching theology....figure.

However, I teach in "Catholic" school so the community and administration are one. Not much in the way of politics, but a lot of great friendships in such an atmosphere. I have several friends in the "New Thought" movement and am always intrigued with their way of thinking God through. But Catholic I am and will remain - sometimes hanging on by my fingernails, but convinced that this way of Tradition, Sacrament and Scripture holds the most possibility of understanding for me. Oddly enough - I also came out of an Evangelical adolescence. As I recall - in my adolescent rebellion - about the only thing I could have done to really piss off my parents was become Catholic - so I did that. God does have a sense of humor.

A priest once told me that God comes to us in the way we can understand God. Those without belief simply have not had God named well to them. They have often been hammered with a belief system where there is only literal dogmatic understanding or where "anything goes" and there is no systematic thinking. Literalism makes God very small and mean indeed ( I have found the God that some literalists espouse is the one who hates what they hate and will have vengeance on those they fear) and "anything goes" simply does not work. I am preparing to join the associate group of a group of nuns. This means I will be connected to them by intention and commitment, but will get to avoid being a nun. For some reason people often mistake me for a sister. I quickly point out the vast differences in holiness and life style. However, I apparently have the right haircut for the job. Most sisters that I know have a much greater sense of style than I do. My kids want me to have a makeover before one of them gets married. My husband, however, thinks I’m adorable just the way I am. Of course the kids think he needs a makeover too.

About 15 years ago I discovered the work of Rene Girard and mimetic theory and have been astounded at its depth, its truth and its vast application to all that I do. Currently writing and teaching about mimetic theory and film. I’ve seen almost every movie anyone can think of and use those films to teach the great story of incarnation and redemption. It seems to work.

Before I was a nurse – I was a social worker and before that – a singer. So, I’ve had a long career or several long careers.
Getting a master’s in theology was the integrating of all for me. Recently completed more graduate work in theology and am pretty sure I never want to go to school again and I know for a fact that I never want to write a paper ever ever again. I hope that is clear.
Been married for a very long time to a wonderful man and have three grown children. Have a badly behaved dog (which means I am a bad dog owner), a lovely cat and when I’m not teaching, reading, blogging, cleaning, cooking, or chatting with friends – I watch movies. ADD has its gifts – multitasking being one of them. I’m in the process of adding lots of walking to my list of daily tasks.

David’s book and friendship have been important to me this past year. It’s hard to find people who “seek” and they do seem to come on board here. David seems to evoke that in most of us.

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Thursday May 8, 2008

Meet Brian

Brian Horan has been walking with us for a while now. Here's a bit about him and the bonus pic too. Thanks Brian.

I am 33 and am changing careers from public school teaching to nursing. The politics of public education were too much to bear, but like a moth to the flame I follow local and national politics.

I grew up in the Evangelical Republican Right. I was soured my first year of my undergraduate in '92 when Bush the elder made it much more difficult for middle class kids to get financial aid. Plus, I never understood how supply-side economics coincided with the Gospel preference for the poor.

Still, my first year of university I was involved in Campus Crusade. On a mission trip after my freshman year my faith fell apart because I was surrounded by biblical literalists; but I could no longer in good conscience take the Bible literally.
I maintained friendships but dropped the dogma. I still keep in touch with the Campus Crusade director who is a genuinely awesome person.

Since I have investigated Buddhism and New Thought (as espoused by Religious Science, A Course In Miracles, Eckhart Tolle, Neale Donald Walsch, etc.) Eckhart Tolle in particular brought Jesus into a new focus for me.

Even though I may bitterly disagree with you on some issues, I consider you a thoughtful brother in God. I first saw a news item about your book a few years ago and have followed you with avid interest since.

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Wednesday May 7, 2008

Race

I just watched 90 minutes of election coverage on CNN... 90 minutes that can best be summarized as 90 minutes of evidence that Sen. Obama's brilliant race speech needs to revisited.

Because for 90 minutes the entire subtext of the conversation was that the black folks in Gary, Indiana were up to something sneaky because the votes took so long to be reported. Then, low and behold, the rest of the votes from Lake County came in and... guess what? The problem in the delay wasn't with heavily black Gary, it was with the heavily rural polling places.

It was an ugly 90 minutes for CNN.

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Filed Under: barack obama, casting stones, cnn, hillary clinton, indiana primary

posted by David Kuo @ 1:23am Permalink Email This Add to:

Wednesday May 7, 2008

What are our stories?

For the past 18 months or so we've developed this community called J-Walking. The very best part of this for me has been getting to know many of you... even you canuckle. ;-)

Everyone has gotten to know a lot about me - sometimes too much.

So, a request. Email me your stories. I want to post information about each of you - who you are, why you are here, what you are interested in, what your questions are, things like that. Email me at dkuoblog@mac.com so I can post... I can post them to protect identity so don't worry about that part of things.

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Monday May 5, 2008

What is faith?

As most of the readers of this blog - and yes, depite the lull in my blogging this is still my blog - know I've been dealing with this tumor-type object in my brain for the past five years.

For the past 18 months we've been smacking it around with some chemo. And for 18 months it has been retreating. (There are no "buts" to follow -- all is well). In fact, it has been retreating so much that for the last five or six weeks I haven't even had the mildest seizure (and I only have very mild seizures in my left leg to begin with).

I don't know what to do with this reality.

On the one hand it is thrilling. I haven't gone this long between seizures for four years.

On the other hand I don't want to get too excited about anything because I understand what the doctors say - I have a chronic illness and they have no way to cure me.

But somewhere in the midst of all of this is that famous five-letter word - faith.

I'm not sure how to handle faith at this moment. Do I have faith the seizures won't return - something that would be, very simply, miraculous? Do I have faith that the tumor is shrinking? Do I simply rejoice in every day of life no matter what happens?

What do you guys think?

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Monday April 28, 2008

The temptation of Miley Cyrus

It is hard to read about Miley Cyrus' recent "issues" - in Vanity Fair, other slightly tart pics - and not fear for the road she is being tempted to walk... a road not unlike the one Britney Spears walked a decade ago.

Like Cyrus, Spears was a young Christian girl with a very upfront values system - sex, she said, would wait until marriage.

Over time, however, she began walking a road that seemed - visually at least - at odds with those values; it was a road that capitalized on and exploited her emerging sexuality.

This album cover:

..ended up presenting her in a video this way:

And over time that became this:

And so on and so forth and...

The shame for this in Cyrus' case and in Spears' case doesn't lie so much with photographers or managers or magazines or any other media. The shame lies with their parents.

What on earth are THEY thinking? They are supposed to be the grownups here. You know, the ones who are supposed to be protecting and guarding their children? And Cyrus' father let her pose like that? Do they become so star struck or money struck that they become blinded to simple things like... oh... the fact that someone is taking semi-nude pictures of them to be printed in a magazine?

I've got daughters. I know what I would do if anyone suggested that they wanted to take "artistic" photos of them draped in nothing but a sheet.

Suffice it to say I'd need to repent for violence.

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Filed Under: britney spears, miley cyrus, vanity fair

posted by David Kuo @ 1:46am Permalink Email This Add to:

Tuesday April 22, 2008

The permanent Republican majority lives

Whoever would have guessed it? The permanent Republican majority lives.

For a few years now it has been a joke - Rove and Mehlman talking about a Republican movement so strong that the Democrats simply couldn't take it down. But in 2004, after Bush's reelection it wasn't a joke. Republicans were making inroads with Hispanics and African-Americans. Democrats were demoralized and defeated.

But then it all imploded. Iraq imploded. Faith and trust in Bush imploded. Republicans imploded. People started talking about a permanent Democratic majority. No more.

What is happening in the Democratic party right now threatens to destroy it for the foreseeable future. Andrew Sullivan summarizes tonight's data:

what is striking in the exit polls is the polarization on three lines: gender, race and age. It was dead even with men; but a massive advantage for Clinton among women. The racial difference is obvious as well. But what really leaps out is age. Obama lost every cohort over 40; Clinton lost every cohort under 40. Race also affects the generations in turn: 67 percent of whites over 60 voted for Clinton - a massive 24 point advantage.

This death match will march on and on through the remaining primaries. The polarization will grow. And when one of them "wins" the nomination they will have won the right to preside over a party divided against itself- young against old, black against white, rich against poor.

Then they will lose - badly - to John McCain and the Democratic infighting will only continue. It will take a decade - more? - for the party to recover and in the meanwhile that once mocked dream of a permanent Republican majority will have been resurrected. Amazing.

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Filed Under: barack obamam, casting stones, hillary clinton, karl rove, ken mehlman, permanent republican majority

posted by David Kuo @11:04pm Permalink Email This Add to:

Tuesday April 22, 2008

Thoughts on suffering

I noticed the great blogalogue between NT Wright and Bart Ehrman.

Ehrman writes:

We live in a world in which a child dies every five seconds of starvation. Every five seconds. Every minute there are twenty-five people who die because they do not have clean water to drink. Every hour 700 people die of malaria. Where is God in all this? We live in a world in which earthquakes in the Himalayas kill 50,000 people and leave 3 million without shelter in the face of oncoming winter. We live in a world where a hurricane destroys New Orleans. Where a tsunami kills 300,000 people in one fell swoop. Where millions of children are born with horrible birth defects. And where is God? To say that he eventually will make right all that is wrong seems to me, now, to be pure wishful thinking.

I was in Uganda last month. While there I saw, if not hell, some of its suburbs. The stories are familiar to us all - dying children, slums beyond description, systemic brokenness that robs hope. So many of those questions popped into my head - How could God allow this sort of thing? What kind of god could allow children to live like this.

It isn't a new question for me or for any of us. It is among the world's oldest questions I suspect. But as I thought about it something clicked. God isn't allowing this suffering. I am. You are. We are.

I will focus on Africa's suffering. Africa finds itself where it does today because of a billion or more decisions that people made... individual decisions. A decision not to invest here. A decision to buy a slave there. A decision to drive an unfair trade deal here. A decision to pay diamond miners pennies. Billions and billions of decisions like this have been made over the centuries. The result? Africa today.

Is that God's fault?

I think not. Because at every moment those decisions were made God was whispering for people to do the right thing, the just thing, the merciful thing. But we chose not to listen.

God has done his job. We haven't done ours.

I used to think the suffering question was a serious head scratcher, a truly troubling thing - the best evidence against God. No more. I think it is largely an excuse to make ourselves comfortable in our complacency by blaming God for the suffering we aren't spending our lives addressing.

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Filed Under: bart ehrman, blogalogue, nt wright, suffering, uganda

posted by David Kuo @ 1:46am Permalink Email This Add to:

Tuesday April 22, 2008

What happens in Pennsylvania...

...gives the election to John McCain.

I've taken a short break from election madness to try and see it from a different perspective - I've been talking to friends in Pennsylvania and non-political friends from around the country and around my block and cannot help but arrive at a single conclusion - barring some huge gaffe, some great scandal, John McCain will be the 44th President of the United States.

Here is one particularly interesting anecdote:

Two friends have voted Republican in each of the last three elections. They are white, upper income, have two children, and have loved Barack Obama. They saw him as the outside agent of change, the unifier, but more importantly, they saw him as an honest politician above the fray.

I use the past tense for a reason. They are disillusioned and angry and will not vote for him in November. Why? Because their hopes have been dashed and they see him as the worst of all possible things - a man who has wantonly and cynically manipulate hope for his own greedy political ends.

It wasn't one thing but rather an accumulation of all the things - Wright, the bitter comment, the debate, etc.

I asked whether they would vote for Sen. Clinton. They laughed heartily. John McCain is their man now. He is the safe choice. He will keep things between the guard rails for the next four years. After that all bets are off.

Clinton and Obama have destroyed each other, destroyed massive goodwill that millions of Americans had toward the Democratic party, and reminded everyone why they hate politics and politicians. It really doesn't matter who wins later today or by how much - both candidates are alread losers... one just gets out of the race more quickly.

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Filed Under: barack obama, casting stones, hillary clinton, john mccain

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