There’s a new and quite extensive feed of UU blogs available at WebUUs.com. I’ve discovered quite a few new reads in the last day or so.
Heads up: WebUUs.com
06.17.05 | Permalink | Comments Off on Heads up: WebUUs.com
Matthew Fox: Good news or old news?
06.17.05 | Permalink | 4 Comments
What to say about Matthew Fox’s "New 95 Theses" and call for a "New Reformation?" (Hat tip to Paul Wilczynski, btw.)
I have ambiguous feelings about Fox. I’m grateful for his inversion of Christian metaphors in books like Original Blessing, which came to me at an important time in my life. I’m embarassed by his sloppy scholarship and his uncritical adoption of everything New Age, politically correct, and trendy ("techno cosmic mass," anyone?). I’m suspicious of his motivations—of his antagonistic history with Ratzinger/Maledict and his current fashioning of himself as a new Martin Luther.
Do I disagree with the New 95 Theses? On the whole, no. Do I find them inspiring, challenging, or moving? Not really. But perhaps this is just because Fox’s "good news" is old news to me?
Changing the rules of the game
06.13.05 | Permalink | 7 Comments
A friend advises me that I cannot change things unless I either (a) know the rules of the game or (b) control the rules of the game. Changing things when you control the rules of the game seems easy enough, although whether or not that change turns out to be for the good or the bad can be another matter entirely.
Yet if you merely know the rules of the game you can also change things. The road here is much tougher. One tack is to appeal to those who control the rules of the game on behalf of their rules. Another is to appeal to them on the basis of simple compassion or justice. When these tacks don’t work, you can use the rules of the game against those who control the rules. But this only works if (a) the rule controllers aren’t following their own rules and (b) the rule controllers believe they need to be seen as rule followers, not rule breakers. And, again, that’s assuming you can figure out the rules of the game in the first place.
Another friend advises me that I can in fact change no one, only myself. Click to continue reading “Changing the rules of the game”
Passion tinged with responsibility
06.13.05 | Permalink | Comments Off on Passion tinged with responsibility
Even though she’s writing about preaching in particular, PeaceBang’s thoughtful comments are one of the best descriptions of what it’s like to be in the ministry that I’ve yet to read (emphasis mine):
- preaching is the aspect of ministry that brings me the most constant anxiety (which I am beginning to understand as "passion tinged with a sense of profound, unremitting responsibility");
- preaching is the honor granted me by a congregation whose trust and attention I constantly want to keep earning;
- preaching is the art form that connects me to my life-long, intuitive and unexamined adoration of language ("Word!");
- preaching is the one aspect of ministry within which I grant myself almost no self-forgiveness, because while one can never fully prepare to make the best possible pastoral response in any given situation, one can (and should) be damned well prepared to climb into the pulpit on a Sunday morning.
Run, Lamont, run!
06.12.05 | Permalink | Comments Off on Run, Lamont, run!
Hey, I wouldn’t believe it either if I hadn’t seen it myself. This fabulous piece of professional hauling equipment, worthy of royalty, is held together by no less than a frayed piece of rope. I guess they were out of duct tape.
Hey, kid, if dad offers to build you a tree house, run!
Slight redesign
Luck would have it that the good folks at Broken Kode issued a version of their killer Manji template with a sidebar built in. The new template is called Rin and is easily skinnable if you’re familiar with CSS and willing to experiment with hacking the PHP.
I had tried to shoe horn in a sidebar myself, but I was never happy with the results. (Blockquotes were particularly wonky.) With the sidebar working, I’ve restored the "most recent comments" list with the help of a nifty plugin. WordPress just keeps getting better. If you’re thinking about making a switch from some other blog software, I highly recommend it.
UPDATE: Added some more stuff to the sidebar: an add for some tasteless swag I made and a list of the most popular posts.
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