Becky Hicks was my high school evangelical dream girl. Ah, that we would have met at some New Years Eve Praise & Worship Marathon, but, alas, it just wasn’t meant to be. The Revealer picks up the story from Brio.
“Follow your dreams” is a popular theme in teen magazines, but Brio, dedicated to “challenging teen girls toward a healthy self-concept” — through Christ — takes that mantra the extra mile in “One Nation, Under God,” by Marty McCormack. Actually, an extra 7,000 miles.
McCormack uses the poppy, perky prose of secular magazines such as Seventeen and CosmoGirl! to tell the story of 19-year-old Becky Hicks, who literally followed her dream — she considered it a set of instructions from God — to spend a year lugging a cross on her back around 3/4 of America’s perimeter. […]
The trip took place some years ago, but The Revealer wonders what Hicks has accomplished since then. “I want to do crazy things for God,” she told McCormack. At the time of writing, she planned to “take” the inner cities with a walking campaign she compared to the book of Joshua. Of course, Joshua pretty much killed everyone in the cities he “took,” but we think we know what she means.
UPDATE: Let’s just hope she doesn’t mean what these guys meant.
If these numbers keep up, I’m going to have to become a Republican if I want to keep rooting for the underdog.
Heheh. Not really, silly.
Bring it on, indeed, eh?
The curious thing is that most people–in spite of wanting Bush out of office–think it’s likely that he’ll win a second term. If this is true, the key to a Democratic victory in November is easy: convince folks that it could actually happen.
Note to self: quit premature gloating.
I had the good fortune to catch up with an old friend this weekend. The conversation turned to (post-)seminarian humor. Seminarian humor is irreverent, to say the least. There’s something about spending three or four years of work-weeks reading, writing, and fretting about Life, the Universe, and Everything that turns humor perverse.
I carry a stuffed-animal Jesus in the back seat of my car–buckled in so he can’t get out of hand. I advise backseat passengers to keep an eye on him, in case he gets “handsy.” Tickle Me Jesus was a revenge gift from my campus minister, who I had sent a 400-page coffee table book on the fulfillment of biblical prophecy in our times. (Does he also know I put him on the mailing list for Chick tracts?) There’s the re-gifting of volumes of the Left Behind series, and the Wash Away Your Sins hand soap next to bathroom sinks. A friend breaks into an a capella solo of “Jesus, Jesus, there’s just something about that name” at a party. At another party seminarians dish Michael W. Smith videos. A new pastor nicknames the oldest woman in the congregation “My First Funeral.” What is it about seminary that produces this sense of humor?
And then there are more obscure examples. I’ve picked up the habit of exclaiming, “and then his body was eaten by dogs” whenever the Jesus Seminar is mentioned. (Justice will be done if that is John Dominic Crossan’s epitaph. Not that there would be much left to bury in his grave at that point.)
There is the chance that this is just my own sense of humor, or the sense of humor of my small circle of seminary-graduate friends. But I learned early on in meetings with clergy-type colleagues that when the door closed, the off color language and off color humor came out in spades. It was their way of letting each other know it was safe now, that we could quit acting like preachers already.
Other professions have their own dark senses of humor. It’s only natural. It’s a way to cope with the difficulties of being in that profession, difficulties that only other co-professionals are likely to understand. In many cases, it would be unprofessional to expect those being served to try and understand. So black humor becomes a secret handshake, a secret decoder ring for determining who is safe to confide in.
Click to continue reading “Losing my religion”
As I scramble to get things ready for the beginning of the spring semester here, the two following Taoist poems from 365 Tao (and the Hives) have helped me keep perspective.
Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people’s approval
and you will be their prisoner.
Make your choice, then step back.
The only path to peace.
Potter at the wheel.
From centering to finished pot,
Form increases as options decrease;
Softness goes to hardness
Judith Dovers
Coordinator of Public Involvement
Atlanta Regional Commission
Ms. Dovers,
I write to express my enthusiastic support for the proposed C-Loop and Beltline transit projects.
As a native of Oklahoma City, I grew up without any meaningful public transit. Using cars was so ingrained in the culture of Oklahoma City that persons using the meager bus system were viewed with suspicion, even requiring police attention. When I moved to Boston for seminary, I sold my car, deciding to risk depending upon public transportation. I was not disappointed with my decision, taking the rare taxi when public transit would not suffice and enjoying the extra study time on my way to class.
Atlanta seems to lie somewhere between these two extremes. A disabled friend of mine relies on MARTA for his day-to-day transportation and is usually able to get where he needs to go. But late buses and circuitous routes often make what would be a fifteen minute trip by car into a one or two hour ordeal. My commute from East Atlanta to Emory takes between twenty and thirty minutes by car. Judging from the bus schedule, that commute would easily take an hour by MARTA (assuming both connections arrived on time). So I limit my MARTA trips to the airport and downtown cultural and sports venues.
The Beltline project seems to me to be a “no brainer.” Connecting dozens of Atlanta neighborhoods and relatively inexpensive to build, the route seems to be begging for transit (and other) development. I could use either the Glenwood, West Point, or Inman Park stations to visit friends, shop, visit city parks, and enjoy Atlanta nightlife. Judging by my experience in Boston, my proximity to three Beltline stops would make my home’s property value soar. The 22-mile park would alleviate Atlanta’s green space deficit, and the route can only decrease in-town traffic since it will get people within a short walk or bus ride of just about anywhere in Atlanta proper.
It is embarassing that the premier private university in Georgia has no train stop and only four bus routes. It’s embarassing that there is no easy way for students and faculty to get from one Atlanta-area university to another, crippling cross-school cooperation and thereby hurting Atlanta’s reputation as a hub of higher education. When I graduated from seminary in Boston, I worked for a consortium of nine Boston-area semaries. Seven of the nine were accessible by public transportation, allowing students to cross-register for classes and faculty to collaborate face-to-face across university lines on projects. It is a shame that Atlanta students and faculty cannot easily do the same. The C-Loop would fix this.
It perplexes me that in the past the ill-considered wishes of a few dozen Druid Hills residents have trumped the real needs of Emory’s 23,000 employees, 12,000 students and 6,000 patients. Many of those employees are the “working poor” and cannot afford cars, even with second jobs (and, one assumes, a second interminable MARTA commute). The C-Loop could dramatically reduce traffic in the area, returning motion to the virtual parking lots of N. Decatur Road and Houston Mill Road, making the entire area more livable. And property values can only rise in response.
Funding aside, I can think of no reason why anyone would oppose development of the C-Loop, besides the thinly veiled racism and wealthism of not wanting the “urban element” in Druid Hills’ “backyard.” In fact, Druid Hills is in Emory’s backyard, and the real needs of the many should outweight the parochial desires of the few.
Sincerely,
Chutney
Forget Presidents’ Day. We want Deliberation Day. (But maybe change the name to something better, like “Democracy Day.”)
