post game report

I’m with Collin Cowherd on this one. I think it is difficult to beat a competitive team twice in one year. So we will see the Cowboys in the playoffs hopefully.

I tempted to complain about the Al Harris interception that was stolen from us which led to us not having a third challenge to challenge the poor spot of the ball that led the Crosby field goal at the end of the game. And I’m tempted to complain about the my legs ran into yours pass interference call, but the Terrell Owens “let me give you the game sealing touchdown” interception makes up for all of that.

In the end the game seemed like one were the Packers were strangely close and really shouldn’t have been. They got outplayed in almost every element of the game, and Tony Romo really has emerged as the best thing to come out of Wisconsin in a long time.

Having said all that we need to talk about what is most important. Two words…Aaron Rogers. Holy Snikies!!! I was as pessimistic as anyone. The few glimpses I saw were like Joey Harrington on a bad day. And then last night happened. I suppose you feel guilty speculating about the career of Paul before Jesus had actually ascended, but let start whispering folks…The future looks a bit brighter in chilly Green Bay.

is the middle ok

Just a quick thought on this day before thanksgiving. Today I went to the movie “Enchanted.” I would lie and say that I was outnumbered by my sister-in-law and wife, but the truth is, that I’m a sucker for these kind of movies and in the end made the decision.

The middle, is that he best place? Moderation…really…in all things? I guess if I took one truth away from the movie it was this. The people from the enchanted land needed a good dose of reality. A good dose of anger, heartbreak and everything that is real about life. Conversely the people from reality needed a good dose of what seems to be enchanting. To be reminded that dreams do come true and that we are awoken from this slumber from what seems to be a divine kiss, and I can’t help but think that…that is just right.

Some days we wake up needing to be reminded that all isn’t ok and some days we need to be reminded that all is going to be o.k.

Casting call for new penguin movie

My wife recently landed some sweet deals at the gymboree, a piece of american capitalism that specializes in textiles for those who can't quite hold their own spoons. Among the 31 super saver deals (all for $.99 or less might I add) was this sleeper (not costume).

sorry about pictures two posts in a row...but let's be honest you enjoy pictures more than my writing.

the latest

here are some pics of chunk change

1. Halloween outfit from grandma
2. homecoming parade at baylor with mom
3. red outfits picture with dad
4. black and white red picture...the type of thing that would be posted on a wall in a gap store because Josh was famous for something like..."josh carney and son roy...re: inventor of the 'indie' image"

believing today

I’ve been thinking a lot about the question “what is the gospel” as is evidenced by a few of my recent posts.

I feel like I’ve given up on the epistemological (confess Jesus as your savior) leg. Not because it’s not true, but because it is the leg we’ve seen abused our whole lives. Like televangelists or even evangelists who just get you to confess that you believed a certain story line was true 2000 years ago. I like how my friend Lanny puts it. It’s about insurance and it is difficult to have a relationship with insurance.

The power and the notion of the epistemological leg has been redeemed for me recently. We hired a new ranger at work who has been a Christian for three years. He uses some of the language I despise, but something incredible happens when he tells me his conversion story. I’m deeply moved. I think I’m moved because though he uses some of the language I don’t like, I get that for him the language means something genuine deep within him. His words aren't coated with the baggage of the church. He describes or better yet has trouble describing the weeks or so before he decided to pray the prayer.

I ask the question about knowledge. “Was it really that you just didn’t understand the story of Jesus and someone told it to you and then a light bulb went off and you believed?” Knowledge is the problem, but it’s not propositional knowledge…it’s belief knowledge and the way that belief knowledge changes you. Empowers you from the inside. Stirs your soul.

He throws out these powerful lines like, “well I guess I started to read the Bible and I just couldn’t put it down…I don’t know why I couldn’t…I just couldn’t.” And I ask him, when you actually decided to pray the prayer did something happen? He hesitates, “yeah, this peace came over me.” So then my smart ass, and yet curious ass asks him that if he thinks he would have been saved had he died five seconds before he prayed the prayer and he gives a response that reminds me of what the faith used to be about before I spent years bogged down in seminary and theological questions, “I guess only God knows that.”

I like his story. I like it because he wrestled with this “decision” to become a Christian for weeks before he did it. I like because as awkward as it was, he and his believing mother sat down and prayed about how he was feeling when he started to think about becoming a Christian. I like his story because when I asked him about who he was before he was a Christian and he said, “well I guess I always believed in God, I just didn’t want to acknowledge Him because then I would have to admit there was a problem with me.”

I take that kind of statement and Romans seems alive for me again. I think my problem and it is problem I’m grateful for is that I grew up in Christian home knowing the power of believing knowledge my whole life. But perhaps I forgot or even don’t really know what it was like to struggle to believe and this is why my friends words are so enchanting.

Well I’m not sure this helped, but at least it’s out of my head. I can sleep now.

Popeye Sailor Man, Olive Oyl, Bluto and a very happy first Halloween

mnf

here we are talking about what Brett should do in these type situations

the mundane miracle

At the emergence conference, the last question the panel was asked was, “what hope does the emergent church have to offer.” “That is a puzzling question,” I thought to myself. The super spiritual me was thinking something like, “only Jesus really offers hope, we merely (trying to find the right word) sloppily participate in that hope…but I’m not sure we really offer it to anyone.”

The last thing I said, and this might be bold to speak on behalf a church community, is that we help people find beauty in mundane life of the Wendell Berry World. I read Jayber Crow some years back now and was struck by how both incredibly boring his life seemed and yet how incredibly sacred it seemed.

I just finished Anne Lamott’s book and I would argue that her book belongs to the canon of the emergent manifesto, though I’m not sure I can use that term since Doug Padgitt and Tony Jones edited a book called the Emregent Manifesto, but you know what I mean. Her work seems to be a cornerstone of identity for those who just can’t seem to find a home anywhere that even remotely smells of traditional.

On the cover the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle remarks, “Anne Lamott is proof that a person can be both reverent and irreverent in the same lifetime. Sometimes eve in the same breath.”

We’d love to say that our lives are something like Frodo’s…that we participate in this almost transfinite narrative, but the truth is our lives are a lot more about changing dirty diapers, doing the laundry and attending funerals. They just don’t seem like Frodo’s, but they do seem a lot like Jayber Crow’s. And some nights when I tempted to long for Frodo’s story I think of Lamott who reminds me that there is incredible meaning in the dirty diapers, laundry and funerals. Almost can we say, transfinite meaning.

But still…I think about Jesus and I see leapers healed and food multiplied and surely that world must be more exciting than this one. Lamott’s life…my life are just a sequence of messy moments riddled by grace. God walking after us with a dirty dishrag soaked with sin. Then one day I notice the lens through which I see “miracle” has been refocused, and I realize that the changed heart and friend offering forgiveness truly are more miraculous than the cancer that was eradicated and the spine that was straightened.

I guess God’s interested in the mundane miracles.

Yesterday was one of those storybook days that reached an apex in our family’s venture outside to gather fallen pecans from our trees by the house. The pics are from this adventure. The weather was uncharacteristically 58ish with a crisp breeze and I found myself uttering a meaningful prayer in which I thanked God for the struggle to get warm. A rarity in Texas.

In Truett’s Spiritual Formation program we did a number of things including trying to learn to be thoughtful in our prayers and experience God through them. I remember one of our leaders in my second semester talking about “feeling the warmth of the water run down one’s back, as one soaked in the grace that can be a warm shower.” That’s how I felt in a real intentional moment yesterday when I paused to notice life seemed perfect in that present moment. There I was collecting pecans with my healthy son and beautiful wife outside a house that we somehow managed to purchase as a part time park ranger and full time teacher. I felt the cold kiss my skin. I caressed my son’s increasingly chubby cheeks. I tasted the fresh fallen pecans. And I gazed at my beautiful wife. I sensed grace there. There, where the veil between heaven and earth seemed especially thin.

Good

Michael Jordan has far and away been the best athlete I've witness play a sport in my lifetime. Tom Brady is making a case this year.

Emergence 2007 part 2

“There are multiple problems with King’s theology as well as Padgitt’s…the kingdom of God and not the cross of Jesus Christ stands at the center of the liberal theological system.”

Mark Driscoll in response to Doug Padgitt in Listening to the Voices of the Emergent Church, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 145.

Robert Dugan makes fun of my overuse of the words “ontological” and “epistemological.” This is probably warranted, but my defense is that they are useful categories for understanding the relationship between many things in life including the “two legs” (to borrow a term that Doug Padgitt used this weekend) of soteriology.

I grew up with a one leg understanding. I know about the epistemological leg. The leg that rightly informs us that we need to confess Jesus as our savior in order to be saved. It is the leg that is steeped in Paul, knows all about justification by faith alone as well as Paul’s claim to know nothing but Christ and Him crucified.

But something happens. Children die around the world because of aids. Economic and social inequality widens in our communities. There is talk of water shortage around the world and food for everyone is a glaring problem. Suddenly I find myself engaging the social work students who sit across from me in my seminary class rooms and feel as though I haven’t really been embracing the whole picture of salvation.

Why does the whole creation long for redemption? Why is there no talk about belief in the sheep and goats passage? Why does Jesus spend so much time restoring if we all die in the end anyway?

I learned of my need for two legs…and so I discovered the ontological leg of salvation. The leg that has dire need of seeing salvation participate in the now. It’s the leg of salvation that asks you not just to receive something, but to participate in something. It is the leg that people stand on when who they have become is laid against the backdrop of God’s all consuming reality at the end of the Lewis’s The Last Battle.

The best thing I learned this weekend was this. Someone asked if we can separate Jesus from the Kingdom of God? I’m still not entirely sure what was meant by that, but Doug pointed out this verse in Acts 28:31 “proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance.”

In our journey towards God there is this beautiful interplay between taking one step on the epistemological leg and meditating on the person and work of Jesus and then letting that reality empower your stride with the alternative, ontological leg. The leg that participates in the Kingdom and experiences the KOG today and finds eternal life today.

My response to Marc Driscoll is that I understand the logical priority of the epistemological leg, but not the theological priority. Though the liberal protestants have pushed the ontological leg to the distorted forefront of the picture picture, I don’t think the right backlash is to pit the epistemological leg against and push for the priority of the same.

My thoughts.

Carney

Emergence 2007

This has been a whirlwind of a week including and primarily because of this weekend. Tuesday afternoon I got a call from Tony Jones asking me to consider filling in for Dan Kimball who’s father was in a freak accident and is nearing death. Dan was supposed to be one four panelist for the Emergence 2007 conference in Austin loosely based on his contribution to the book Listening to the Voices of the Emergent Church.

I took the invitation a bit intimidated by the rest of the panel who all have far more ministry experience and theological depth. Tonight was our first session which pinnacled in a discussion about atonement and the scripture. I’m definitely the little fish in the pond, but this experience has been rewarding and I have learned a lot. It has forced to me to be more thoughtful about certain theological issues and also helped me solidify my thinking in other areas.

I will report more…hopefully tomorrow evening.

Goodnight friends.

Please for Dan Kimball and his family.

American Idle

2008 world series for sale?

"get out the check book. A-Rod 50 million. Bonds 40 million. Japanese pitcher 55 million."

Disgruntled

Mike McCarthy is the worst coach in the history of the NFL

Green Bay Population 102,313

"the green bay packers organization is a model for all of the rest of professional sports."

keith olbermann
10-7-07 Sunday Night Football Preview

political prodigal takes test

My dad forwarded this to me and I found it very helpful. Made me think through what I really think about the issues and how I might cast a vote on them.

who would you vote for?

I've called myself moderate for four years, but have discovered that my top four choices were all jack-asses.

tony romo

Dear Dallas Texas,

You are welcome.

Wisconsin

happy half birfday

Roy's half birthday party with friends Macy Joy Shelton and Noel (some spice I can't pronounce) Fillingham. He got a ball and a big boy sippy cup. Life is good at six months.

The radical role of reconciliation...Rom 8:28

About two weeks ago my brother was walking his beagle in their neighborhood when suddenly his dog, Shiner, was attacked by a mutt. This was no stray like the ones lurking behind every trash dumpster in the alleys of Waco. This was a much-loved mutt by an elderly couple from a nice neighborhood. This mutt was estimated to be 125 lbs and did a number on my brother’s beagle. As soon as my brother was able to get his dog’s attacker off, he naturally picked up Shiner who instinctively bit at him and caught him just below the chin. So my frantic brother sprinted back to the house with a bloody chin and dog who had unimaginable damage done to his stomach at that point as far as anyone could tell countless damage to his internal organs.

At first, the conversations were fairly predictable from what I gather. The elderly couple, shocked by their dog’s behavior, apologized repeatedly and preempted any questions about liability with a promise to pay all medical bills. My brother and his family naturally worried were more concerned about their dog’s life and tabled those conversations for the time being.

As things settled down the good news poured in. Shiner is making a good recovery and the elderly couples homeowners insurance is going to cover everything and so my brother doesn’t have to worry about their dog’s medical bills sinking the elderly them.

My brother did have the conversation, not suggesting anything, but rather pointing out that it could have been a child. The mom of the mutt felt so bad about the incident that she became sick and lost sleep. Eventually the mutt’s dad called a vet friend for counsel and the couple made the incredibly difficult and brave decision to have the dog put to sleep.

My brother and his wife felt so bad about this that they took a basket full of goodies to console the couple. During Shiner’s initial recovery and before the couple put their dog down the man and his wife would repeatedly check on the status of Shiner expressing both deep concern and a desire to be accountable.

The miracle, the real miracle is that two families have allowed the situation to be touched by grace and the lens through which they have begun to see each other is not as dog attacker owner and dog attacked owner, but those victimized the messiness of life and those victimized by the messiness of life. Their conversations have continued and they have mourned with each other knocking down the natural barriers that try and build themselves up so we can wallow in self-pity of victimization.

It seems to me that grace was offered and grace was received and then grace was offered and grace was received. And that’s beautiful. And that, I suspect, is exactly how it’s supposed be.

Rom 10:17

Anne Lamott is one of those authors who is almost abused around UBC. You hear her name so much that you begin to believe that she has become overpopularized in a culture that prizes itself on finding hidden treasures in a pop culture. That way we can categorize what we are currently into as indie or pomo or emergent or whatever word is currently novel enough that it hasn’t become the vernacular of the larger pomo, indie, emergent crowd and thus useless.

Yesterday I was loading the pictures of Roy onto my computer for yesterdays post and I looked over to my left to the two remaining bookshelves that are filled with books that I deemed not good enough to be seen in my office. The ones I leave at home and tell people that “those are Lindsay’s books.” I was scanning the literature of “not quite good enough for Josh” and froze on Lamott’s book. I don’t think I would have given her a chance if it were not for Craig, who is most definitely her advocate even through all her popularizing. I’ve heard her compared to Miller, or actually Miller compared to her, and to be honest I thought Donald Miller’s book was mildly interesting at best. Yet in spite of all this and as one who has come to respect Craig’s reading suggestions I picked up the book.

I made my way through the first 55 pages and I can I say it is some of the most refreshing reading I’ve done in a while. Anne did a lot of things for me in these first 55 pages, but let me share this. I’ve been reading some books on atheism to get ready for a sermon and of particular interest to me has been the evolution discussion. Last night I watched a show on National Geographic called “Before the Dinosaurs,” in which they explore history over the last 450 million years. Taking in the emotional detachment of the prehistoric animals and their non-relational behavior I can’t help to feel that evolutionary history seems a bit crass and impersonal. And even if they didn’t get it completely right, there is still this reality in which the animal kingdom can be absolutely brutal to each other even within the last 6,000 years and often humans seem to be the epitome of this behavior. And so I begin to wonder and ask how things are to be processed if one maintains the worldview that there is no God. As one who can be overwhelmed and begin to change perspective when immersed in too much anyone thing I felt a lifeline thrown to me by Lamott.

She writes
“I didn’t go to the flea market the week of my abortion. I stayed home, and smoked dope and got drunk, and tried to write a little, and went for slow walks along the salt marsh with Pammy. On the seventh night, though, very drunk and just about to take a sleeping pill, I discovered that I was bleeding heavily. It did not stop over the next hour. I was going through a pad every fifteen minutes, and I thought I should call a doctor or Pammy, but I was so disgusted that I had gotten so drunk one week after an abortion that I just couldn’t wake someone up and ask for help. I kept on changing Kotex, and I got very sober very quickly. Several hours later, the blood stopped flowing, and I got in bed, shaky and sad and too wild to have another drink or take a sleeping pill. I had a cigarette and turned off the light. After a while, as I lay there, I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner, and I just assumed it was my father, whose presence I had felt over the years when I was frightened and alone. The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there—of course, there wasn’t. But after a while, in the dark again, I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus. I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this.”

Traveling Mercies p 49

Anne reminds me that this chaos and crass behavior is exactly what Jesus intends to redeem through recapitulated behavior.

Grace for today