I went to see a movie on permaculture (permanent agriculture), starring Bill Mollison, at a humanist church in Oakland with a friend. The movie choice was her suggestion, but I daresay it was just what I needed to see, after a week at UU GA where I found out a lot of what was wrong in the world but not as much of what to do about it.

Permaculture is more than a new way of gardening -
it's a sustainable way to live on planet Earth

If you ever get a chance to see a movie like this (the one we saw was from 1991), and if you care about our Earth, it will make you want to garden.


pax hominibus,
joel

My 20 year reunion is coming up soon, and I stumbled across classmates.com so I figured I'd check to see who from my graduating class was signed up, especially since its a free service (seemingly). My friend Rita has an entry there, so I sent her an email through the classmates.com email interface. AFTER I'd sent the email, it popped up a little HTML dialog box saying:

Make sure Rita can read your message for free by becoming a Classmates Gold member.

The cost of membership is a small price to pay for the peace of mind you'll get knowing that Rita —or any Classmates member—will be able to read messages from you.



OR Let Rita pay.

That is a classic hook. I'm a poor student in school and doubt I'll use classmates.com for much else, so you probably know which one I chose. Sorry Rita! (Though if you're reading this, chances are you ponied up the money to them, which is a testament in and of itself.)


pax hominibus,
joel

.
On Sunday, i ended up at one last lecture/workshop at the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly, which I mistakenly thought was titled "The Second Coming," on account of a guy who was walking around the conference center with a quickly-assembled sandwich board (including duct tape) with the words "The Second Coming" on it, saying that Rev. Bill Murry's lecture on the new religious humanism would be delivered again in a conference room of the nearby doubletree hotel. Silly me, I thought it would have something to do with how religious humanism would be connected with the second coming, but after getting home and looking through the GA program guide, the title of the course was "Reason and Reverence: Religious Humanism Today" and the description had nothing to do with any second coming whatsoever. I was there because the S.C. is totally my bag, and wanted to be kept abreast of where UUs were on the subject, but even though it had nothing to do with that, I did learn a bit, especially what the part he said about the five essential things for a 21st century religion (do a search on the link above for "viable religion").

During the Q&A at the end of the lecture, a woman expressed great concern about how it seems that the voice of UU has lately been swinging further toward the theistic end of the spectrum and leaving humanism in the lurch. I waited in line for the Q&A mic, and then expressed my thoughts to her concern -- that humanist/atheist religious naturalist, humanocentric theism, and theistic universalism are each models of looking at the nature of the world, and rather than seeing our situation as a matter of choosing either one or the other, we could choose a "both/and" system, allowing ourselves to understand the world from several viewpoints. This would be in a manner similar to an exploration of human personality types; we don't have to hold up Jungian archetypes or Myers-Briggs models as the exclusive end-all be-all answer. Each provides us with different information and handles for communicating and understanding. Likewise, if we can see the world from more than one religious model, we can have a greater understanding.*

Additionally, and in support of UU president Rev. Bill Sinkford's call for embracing more religious language, I said that if UU humanists are to attempt interfaith dialog (which I believe is critical, since there are 299,800,000 non-UUs within America), we need to be able to translate a humanistic understanding into theistic language. And I think that is entirely possible. Though not a humanist myself, I do draw from what I've learned from it, and want to find a way to engage with revealed religions and mystical religions, based on the well-grounded (but metaphor-poor) understandings provided by humanism.

After I'd suggested the above, while many had signalled agreement with what I'd said, the dyed-in-the-wool humanist woman who I was responding to was shaking her head, and another asked me, "How can you respectfully say 'How's your God working for you?' ?" The question seemed, and still seems, not directly related to what I'd spoken to, so after saying I didn't follow where she was coming from, I decided rather than stealing time from Mr. Murry's Q & A session to engage her in tangential dialog, I'd just bow out and remember the question for later.

On the train from the conference to the airport, I did spend some time thinking about it, and I think there's a lot to be said for that question: "How can I respectfully ask (of Christians, I will assume she meant) 'How's your God working for you?' ?"


*In retrospect, I must acknowledge that while it is important that we entertain and understand other belief systems, or theological models, practice is another thing. When we have to roll up our shirt-sleeves and get right down to practice, each of us has a single model that operate from. That model may be a personalized variant of the religion we've been taught (e.g. - a practioner of Methodism, Lutheranism, or 7th-Day Adventism is going to have some idiosyncracies in their belief system that differ slightly or even greatly from the official line). Or that model may be an eclectic hybrid with wisdom gathered together from more than one religious belief system. In either case, the more closely we hold each of the elements of our belief system to our heart/mind, the more that element is going to affect our action/practice, and those elements from other models that we are only just considering and hold further away -- those elements will not affect our practice in any dramatic way, if at all.

lyrics:
Like any miracle
You are as easily ignored
-Helmet, Almost Out of Sight

colors: grey with light blue (portland skies)

mood: okay

chant/prayer/mantra: make it yr best.


pax hominibus,
joel

Hi.
I was planning on tm'ing this from my phone, but naturally *after* it allowed me to type in this full message (a LOT to type in with yr left thumb, though i had an hour to wait before getting on my plane) without introducing a character limit, my phone tells me "The address is too long. You must send a shorter message."

How about "Aaaaaaugh!!!"?

Because it matters to me so much that you know this little story, I am now typing this from a computer where I'm staying, after copying the entire message longhand into my notebook. Here it is:

I jst had an annoyance at the airtport. If u know me, u know i get upset about plastic waterbtls and that i'm also a little forgtfl, so if i need h20 while travelin, i buy a new botl and then wash and reuse it by filling it from home. Today I had a h20 bottle, a nice 1 ltr with a sturdy twist nozzle, with th intentioni of using and refilln it all week. at th security checkpt, they pulled me aside after letting me reclothe. he pulls out the bottle and doesn't let me drink it empty or pour it out so i could keep it, just throws it away. i wakled 100 ft further and found a store selling a similr botl fr 3 bux. i bought it to replace th othr perfctly good one and wish we had a system less wastefl.
no i haven't been livign undr a rock, i just forgot, bt can't we do betr thn this?
-----
i told my wife about it, and she said life ir a comedy fr those who think, a tragedy fr those who feel. i miss those pre-feelin days.


pax hominibus,
joel

Th solid block of grey bks r th Collectd Works of Mahatma Gandhi. (note I've since actually added the picture that didn't get sent from the phone, as expressed in my comment.)

.










i have no idea how this set of songs ended up being my "25 most-listened-to" songs, but i think its a real hoot. when i was young, my family would all sit around the tube in my grandparents' living room and watch lawrence welk, hee-haw, barbara mandrell, dolly, probably sonny and cher as well. that, to me, is country music. i really don't listen to much country music anymore, and its an anomaly of the first order that dolly's "best of" would be here. oh well.


lyrics:
skinny puppy - "death" and "candle"
tori amos - "pretty good year", "god" and "bells for her"
"Can't stop loving
Can't stop what is on its way
And I see it coming
and It's on its way"

colors: blue-green, salmon, beige, and grey

mood: dumpy, i was dumb and got a sore throat over the weekend, and am mostly recovered, but feel like the weekend was almost for naught.

chant/prayer/mantra: preparation is the order of the day.


pax hominibus,
joel

there is an artist who has made a diamond encrusted skull. it cost approximately a score million bucks to make it, and its likely to sell for triple.

lyrics:
"you can't be happy with the simple things in life like love."
elizabeth schaefer, easter sunday lament

colors: back to rainbows.

mood:
And they knew it was much more than a hunch,
That this group would somehow form a family.
That's the way we all became the Brady Bunch.
The Brady Bunch,
That's the way we all became the Brady Bunch.
The Brady Bunch.

chant/prayer/mantra: i am so tired from wrestling. silent love, and loving out loud from now on.

pax hominibus,
joel

just a short little post to post a little something after that last post i just posted....


yep, i'm just catching up with myself lately.... wrestling with some issues really.

in the meantime, do you know what i think might be a very good and lucrative idea? for someone to make a wireless cablemodem/router combo that comes with a (swappable) hard drive inside the router's physical housing, and sits within the walls of the router's virtual firewall, but outside of any computers in the network, essentially acting just like a (file/back-up) server for yr entire network. that may allow the style of working i use to become significantly more facile.

lyrics: "the world is, the world is, love and life are deep, maybe as his eyes are wide. exit the warrior, today's tom sawyer, he gets high on you, the energy of the day, gets right on to the friction of the day." - Rush, Tom Sawyer

I strip away the old debris, that hides a shining car
A brilliant red barchetta, from a better, vanished time
I fire up the willing engine, responding with a roar
Tires spitting gravel, I commit my weekly crime...

Wind in my hair --- Shifting and drifting ---
Mechanical music --- Adrenalin surge ---
- Rush, Red Barchetta

colors: none. i mean, "red barchetta" red.

mood: no idea. really, just catching up.

chant/prayer/mantra: from the perspective of a lutheran minnesota youth: "dear god, please make this world right. whatever it takes, all that i am is yours." oh shucks, i hope i'm not fux0red for that.... :)

oh, and on a political aside, i think we should start passing around petitions for the removal of the bush/cheney administration from office, a la gray davis in california.

pax hominibus,
joel

yo.

tell the world, tell the wind, tell the women, tell the men.

"this is what i'd do if i was in yr situation," (with a little bit of nice slow 'n easy bass and jazz trap set beating out a slow and easy-groovy tempo...)
and then see what it says back for yrself -- both as yr personal director, and also as a benevolent dictator fr th gaia.

yr conception of the nature of divinity is yr message about the model of the metaphor, for how you are attached to creation.

give a benevolent dictation

when yr angel writes books to you, all you need do is listen.
if that's the case, write it, spill it like wine with a fine time
and fine dining, casual dress.

kiss th wrld,
with words of strength and compassion,
reassurance, accuracy, and the ultimate passion.
wave monopoly money in the air, land on GO!,
ask "how's $$$ work?", say "it's so?"

so remember, lightning strikes when universal compassion rears its lovely head and asks "what's up?" to a silent cold-compassioned plutocracy.
kiss with compassion, acknowledge yr station,
hug 'em up and down, until yr knees get a good workout

do yr yoga,
kiss yr sister
wherever you find her
tell her you've missed her.
tell them all..."'The Divinity' says hello hello hello..."
drink a little wine
drink in a puff
say enough for a while, and move on.

tell the ladies that they're so very lovely, "let's walk and hold hands. no i know i don't know you yet, but you should know i'm an honorable man or gentlewoman when holding hands.
i just want to hold your hand. tell the ladies to start running things, they'd do such a better job, and its

tell the guys that they're so very handsome, "have a brewski, or martini, or whatever it is guys like you drink nowadays in the earliest part of the mid 21st century C.E."
we'll have a barbecue,
like hank hill, or norm from cheers, or terry bradshaw
we'll go bowling, like lebowski, or go skiing, skydiving, weightlifting maybe,
or we could retrieve our sense of being males with honor and dignity,
and feel as if being the universal good guy may be actually possible again one day.

kiss the curtain,
set upon the place like a flood from within a matchhead.
hear the beatniks, the dadas, the hippies, the 70's stoners, the punks, gothic lolitas, new waves, no waves, the recently retro, the angels, and all,
all waiting so loudly while the world keeps on spinning

some say, "just a pack of matches in an angel's pocket,"
well nothing could be closer to the truth my friend.
"christ alive," someone whispers, a sound like thunder.
and then everybody looks all serious and gives a gesture like the finger,
and then laughs erupt like another flood

oh 'n go ahead and write down the seven thunders:*
(*pick up from where revelation chapter 10 left off. i'm serious. no actually, i'm totally not serious. no seriously, i'm serious. i'm not serious, really. seriuosly.)












the first, the thunderous flood of (un)anticipated laughter within this and the previous verse

the second, a flood of thunderous laughter out of nervousness that we've reached the eschaton, the now.

the third, the flood of sound like thunder at the recognition of reality as consentual somehow.

the fourth, the flood of sound like thunder at the thought of reality as becoming merely conceptual somehow, with nothing visceral to speak of at all.

the fifth, the mighty flood of sound of all in all arm in arm, exclaming "we are!" in unison every weekend.*
(*why not assign two days every week to be sabbath, so we remember to take weekends off?)

the sixth, the silent weeping in remembrance of the dishonourable behavior in humanity's history that we now're seekin' to bejeezus to avoid.

seventh, the giant beatific sweepingingly dreamy dream in honor of, oh... dream up your own, something for joy. a picnic in late-May maybe.



okay, oh, and wish them all to enjoy their weekend, to love their neighbor, and to be kind.
listen to lullabye baxter trio.

--
pax hominibus,
agape to everyone,
joel


http://revjd.blogspot.com/

Once in a while, the time will come
To surrender everything you have to give
Once in a while, the time will come
To surrender everything you have to give
-Flaming Lips, "Superhumans"

Enlightenment means choosing to dwell in the state of presence rather than in time. It means saying yes to what is.
-Eckhart Tolle

All formal dogmatic religions are fallacious and must never be accepted by self-respecting persons as final.
-Hypatia of Alexandria

.
As I was preparing my powerpoint presentation for class, I realized that since it was a class about "arts ministry," I really wanted to have more personalized slides than the templates, so I scanned in a bunch of my art from about a decade ago, to use as backgrounds. I haven't drawn a whole lot since, but I've had next to nada for those types of mystical experiences the last few years either.

Anyway, over the course of the next several blogs, I'll probably toss a picture in here and there, so you, dear reader, will have something to look forward to here.

Note that it really isn't too difficult to use any image as a background in a .ppt, you just need to resize it large enough so it goes out to the edges on all sides (if that's yr aesthetic), and push the image behind the text by right-clicking and choosing Order->Send to Back. Also, since yr not using a solid color background, be sure to use appropriately colored typeface, with a shadow or glow if available.

Anyway, here's the first pic.

It's called PTF Study #1.

PTF is short for "Prismatic Tambourine Factory." It's where halos are made. Don't ask me why halos would be made to sound or look like tambourines, I just work here, or rather, used to work there. :)

I do wonder, however, what is going on inside of that shack. I guess that's why I'm in seminary?

lyrics: In the CD-changer right now: Marvin Gaye's greatest, Eurythmics greatest, The Smiths - The Queen is Dead, Lullaby Baxter Trio - Capable Egg, and Gene Autry's greatest. Choosing from them for today: "Love is a Stranger" by the Eurythmics.

"And love love love
Is a dangerous drug
You have to receive it
And you still cant
Get enough of the stuff
Its savage and its cruel
And it shines like destruction
Comes in like the flood
And it seems like religion"

colors: whatever comes out of the tube. i guess i learned something a few years back about toothpaste watching an artist get paint onto his palette. he was near the end of the tube, and I guess I never realized you could still squeeze so much paste/paint out after it seems "empty." I bet theres about an ounce of toothpaste wasted per person per year. This guy actually used a vice-grips to get the last of the paint out. While paint can be WAY more expensive than toothpaste, its also not used quite as ubiquitiously, so those numbers add up. Let me pull up the calculator: one ounce per person times ~50,000,000 Roman Catholic practitioners in America is over 3 million pounds or 1,500 TONS of toothpaste wasted per year just in that little segment of the world's population. I suppose there are more important justice issues to be taken care of first, but this one fits on the list somewhere. First, let's see how we can use what's left of democracy in America to declare the Bush administration to be operating in bad faith, and have a recall election forthwith. BTW, I never did quite follow how they were able to ramrod a recall election through against Gov Gray Davis in California. Can someone enlighten me there?

mood: sleepy.

chant/prayer/mantra: "ere thrice the sun hath done salutation to the dawn..."


pax hominibus,
joel

some of my fellow seminarians were asking for a soft-copy compiled list of the books from my powerpoint presentation in class, so rather than just emailing it around (and leaving unavailable to my non-seminary friends), i figure i'll post it here with a link from email. enjoy.

2007:
•Proverbs of Ashes – Rebecca Parker
•The Writer as an Artist – Pat Schneider
•Islam for Dummies – Malcolm Clark
•The Second Greatest Story Ever Told – Gorman Bechard
•Webmastering for Dummies
•Review my Care Through Touch materials
•The Foucault Reader – Michel Foucault
•Breathe! You Are Alive – Thich Nhat Hanh
•Parallelities – Alan Dean Foster
•Recovering the Scandal of the Cross - Joel B. Green and Mark D. Baker
•A Chosen Faith: Intro to UU – John Buehrens and Forrest Church
•Structure, Style and Usage: Rhetoric and Reasoning – Hulon Willis

2008:
•The 3-Dimensional Voice – Joni Wilson
•The Early History of Heaven – J. Edward Wright
•George Lakoff – Metaphors We Live By
•Faith Without Certainty – Paul Rasor
•On Liberty – John Stuart Mill
•JPod – Douglas Coupland
•Stony the Road we Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation – Cain Hope Felder
•Set Your Voice Free – Roger Love
•Becoming Christ: Transformation through Contemplation - Brian C. Taylor
•Daily Life at the Time of Jesus - Miriam Feinberg Vamosh
•Washington and Rome: Catholicism in American Culture – James R. Kelly
•The Diamond Age – Neal Stephenson

2009:
•A Testament of Hope – The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr.
•Leaves of the Heaven Tree: The Great Compassion of the Buddha
•Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought - George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
•Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate – Naomi Klein
•The Coming of the Cosmic Christ – Matthew Fox
•God’s Politics – Jim Wallis
•A Marxist Looks at Jesus – Milan Machovec
•Faith of a Heretic – Walter Kaufmann
•Liberating Eschatology - Letty M. Russell and Serene Jones
•Towing Jehovah – James Morrow
•The Kin of Ata are Waiting for You – Dorothy Bryant
•Speak to Influence: How to Unlock the Hidden Power of Your Voice – Susan Berkley
•The Lotus Sutra
•Godel, Escher, Bach – Douglas Hofstadter
•Saccidananda: A Christian Approach to Advatic Experiences – Abhishiktananda et. al.
•Blink – Malcolm Gladwell
•World Without End: Christian Eschatology From A Process Perspective - Joseph A. Bracken
•The Bondage of the Will – Martin Luther

2010:
•Thinking for a Change – John C. Maxwell
•She’s Come Undone – Wally Lamb
•A Path with Heart – Jack Kornfield
•The New Human Revolution – Daisaku Ikeda
•Selections from Emerson
•Review Care Through Touch materials
•The Postman – David Brin
•Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity – Bruce Bawer
•The Heart of Buddhist Meditation: Satipatthna - Nyanaponika
•The Music of the Primes – Marcus du Sautoy
•The Political Realism of Reinhold Niebuhr – Colm McKeogh
•The Ancient Wisdom of Origen – John Clark Smith
•The Culture of Make-Believe – Derrick Jensen
•Dawn - Octavia Butler
•Pedagogy of the Heart – Paolo Freire
•The Souls of Black Folks – W.E.B. Du Bois

2011:
•The Man Who Loved Only Numbers – Paul Hoffman
•The Qur’an
•Tools for Speaking and Singing – Gertrude Wheeler Beckman
•Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind – Shunryu Suzuki
•Hands of Light: A Guide to Healing Through the Human Energy Field – Barbara Ann Brennan
•The Gospel According to America: A Meditation on a God-Blessed, Christ-Haunted Idea – David Dark
•America’s God – Mark A. Noll
•The Life of God (As Told by Himself) – Franco Ferrucci and Raymond Rosenthal
•Understanding the Bible – John Buehrens
•The Amazing Laws of Cosmic Mind Power – Joseph Murphy
•City of Quartz – Mike Davis
•There is a Balm in Gilead: The Cultural Roots of Martin Luther King, Jr. – Lewis V. Baldwin
•Drumming at the Edge of Magic – Mickey Hart and Jay Stevens

2012:
•The Gospel According to America: A Meditation on a God-Blessed, Christ-Haunted Idea – David Dark
•America’s God – Mark A. Noll
•The Life of God (As Told by Himself) – Franco Ferrucci and Raymond Rosenthal
•Understanding the Bible – John Buehrens
•Seven Years in Tibet – Heinrich Harrer
•The New Ambidextrious Universe – Martin Gardner
•The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ – Nicolas Notovitch
•Plants of the Gods: The Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers - Richard Evans Schultes, et. al.
•Afterburn: Reflections on Burning Man – Lee Gilmore, Et. al.
•Strange Birds from Zoroaster’s Nest – Laina Farhat-Holzman
•Confuscius – The Analects
•A History of the Devil – Gerald Messadie
•Saved – From What? - Early Ashby Johnson
•After Christianity – Gianni Vattimo
•Reinhold Niebuhr and Christian Realism – Robin W. Lovin

2013:
•The Constitution of the U.S.A.
•Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the U.S. from Washington to Kennedy
•Ishmael – Daniel Quinn
•All Men Are Brothers – Mohandas K. Gandhi
•Fasting Girls: The History of Anorexia Nervosa – Joan Jacobs Brumberg
•Peace is Every Step – Thich Nhat Hanh
•Planet Drum – Mickey Hart and Fredric Liebermann
•The Mystery of Quaker Light – Peter Bien
•In Search of the Christ Sophia - Jann Aldredge-Clanton
•A History of Collective Joy – Barbara Ehrenreich
•Sikhism: Its Impact – Mehervan Singh
•The Ecology of Commerce – Paul Hawken
•The Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future – Bill McKibben
•Universal Salvation: The Current Debate – Robin A. Parry
•Einstein’s God: Albert Einstein’s Quest as a Scientist and as a Jew to Replace a Forsaken God - Robert N. Goldman and Albert Einstein
•Behind the Eurocentric Veils – Clinton M. Jean

2014:
•Review Resources from Care Through Touch materials
•James Cone – The Spirituals and the Blues

2015:
•Inferno - Dante
•The Dead Sea Scriptures
•Walden & The Essay on Civil Disobedience – Thoreau
•Rome in America: Transnational Catholic Ideology from the Risorgimento to Fascism – Peter R. D’Agostino
•Great People of the Bible and How They Lived
•Bridges to Infinity: The Human Side of Mathematics
•Purgatorio - Dante
•What’s So Amazing About Grace? – Philip Yancey
•A Sound of Thunder – Ray Bradbury
•On the Road – Jack Kerouac
•Soul Work: Anti-Racist Theologies in Dialogue – Marjorie Bowen’s Wheatley and Nancy Palmer Jones
•Paradiso – Dante
•The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky

2016:
•Footprints of a Dream: The Story of the Church for the Fellowship of all Peoples – Howard Thurman
•The Woundedland – Stephen R. Donaldson
•The Republic of Plato
•The Bhagavad-Gita
•Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card
•The One Tree – Stephen R. Donaldson
•The Teaching of Buddha – Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai
•The Late Great Planet Earth – Hal Lindsey
•Steppenwolf – Hermann Hesse
•Uprooting Racism – Paul Kivel
•White Gold Wielder – Stephen R. Donaldson
•The Jazz of Preaching: How to Preach with Great Freedom and Joy – Kirk Byron Jones
•Love Meets the Dragons – Tom Owen-Towle and Reed Farrington
•Transformer (Lou Reed) – Victor Bokris
•The Dancing Wu Li Masters – Gary Zukav


ALSO, the name of the software I used to make that diagram for the presentation is called "Freemind" which is available from http://freemind.sourceforge.net. And its provided free of charge, donations appreciated however. Another piece of similar, and likely more powerful software, is called Inspiration, which costs $70, but is more powerful (than Freemind beta 0.8). For me, its overkill, since I just need something to map my mind, and the tight form of Freemind's default diagramming saves me a little time. In the parenthetical statement above, I mentioned the Freemind is a beta version. It never crashed on me, and other than needing to install a Java runtime library prior to using it, it was simple and easy to use.



lyrics: "Dance of the Mad," by Pop Will Eat Itself. Lyrics worth reading. Much of their music I don't get crazy about, but the single this song was on, which also includes "Preaching to the Perverted," has a strong upbeat vibe worth listening to, if you can find it.

colors: same as before I guess.

mood: same as before.

chant/prayer/mantra: so many books, so little time.


pax hominibus,
joel

Labels: book list

if you've been reading, you know i work at the library at my seminary. while working there, i write down in my PDA the titles of books that attract my attention. all of the books on this list are books that i would like to read, or at least peruse and ponder. i know that i would never be able to read all of the books on my list, so if i can spend 30 minutes to an hour on most books, just to discover the tasty nuggets within that inspire, i'd consider that better than par.

some of these books, i'd like to read as a matter of cultural relevancy, some for personal inspiration/development, some to better the depth and breadth of my theology, and some for other reasons, or just because it looked interesting. here's the list:

1. th scroll of th war of th sons of light and th sons of darkness. - yadin
2. storm warning - billy graham
3. seeing children, seeing god: a practicl theo of childrn & poverty - pamela couture
4. mapping paradise: a history of heavn on earth - scafi (bL 540 s23, size 2)
5. salvation & suicide (jonestown) - chidester - bp 605 p46 c48
6. shaman's path - doore
7. techgnosis: myth, magic, & mysticism in th info age - davis
8. maría's metaphysical anthropology - lópez-morillas
9. dharma art - trungpa
10. postmetaphysical thinkin - habermas
11. th voyage of no return: ibn arabi - addas
12. talks on beelzebub's tales - bennett
13. soul, body, and survival: essays on th metaphysics of human persons - corcoran
14. godlust: facing th demonic, embracing th divine - walters
15. drones, clones, & alpha babes: retrofitting star rek's humanism, post 9/11 - relke
16. those preachin' women - mitchell
17. th eschat econ: time & th hospitality of god - knight
18. fr th healing of nations. th bk of revelation in an age of cultural conflict - gonzalez
19. shoes tht fit our feet: srcs fr a constructive blk theo - hopkins
20. why r we deaf to th cry of th earth? - mcdonagh
21. th hum: call & response in af-amer preachng - crawford
22. cognitive neuroscience: th biology of th mind - qp 360.5 g39 2002
23. th cherry tree - ikeda/wildsmith (pz 7 m4784133, size 2)
24. discover yr conflict mgmt style - leas
25. th bible frm scratch: a lightning tour from gen-rev - jenkins
26. th power of th poor in history - gutierrez
27. pendle hill pamphlet #289: quakers & hindus - bx 7615 p39 v.280-289
28. tattooed walls - (size 2) nd 2638 n4 r67
29. th origins of om manipadme hum -studholme
30. th doctrinal theo of th evangelical luth chrch - heinrich schmid
31. my ministry - goodell - bx 8333 g6 m88
32. blasphemy: art that offends - (size 2) n 72 r4 p53
33. reviving ophelia: saving th selves of adolescent girls - pipher
34. imagery of lynching - apel
35. jesus' strayegy fr social xformation - nacpil - bx 8349 s65 n33
36. *distributive justice - rescher
37. th faith of 50 million: basebal, relig, & amer culture - evans/herzog
38. purity & danger - douglas
39. a thoughtful soul: refl frm swedenborg: bx 8711 a7 d65
40. th art of crossing cultures - storti
41. dirt, undress, & diff: crit persp's on th body's surface - masquelier
42. th elem forms of relig life - durkheim
43. an alternative future fr america II - hn 65 t44 1970 - theobald
44. institution of th xtian relig - calvin
45. history & th triune god - moltmann
46. thbible tells me so: uses & abuses of holy scripture - hill/cheadle
47. bible of th oppressed - tamez
48. th psychology of relig - bL 53 p825
49. homo deva: evolution's next step - belknar
50. mass leisure - larrabee
51. money & power - ellul
52. colour & healing - mayer - rm 840 m39
53. elecric liturgy - benson
54. a psych study of relig conversion - jones
55. dostoevsky's concept of sporitual rebirth - khrapovitsky
56. xtianity, poverty & wealth - taylor
57. our pro-socialist churches - bx 6 f4 j65
58. basic principles of monastic spirituality - merton
59. th interrogation of joan of arc - sullivan
60. th intrareligious dlg - bL 87 p26
61. th queer god - marcella althaus-reid
62. radhakrishnan: th profile of a universalist - b 5134 r34 h3
63. i am that - muktananda
64. th god that failed (on soviet communism) - hx 59 c75 1963
65. th muqaddimah: an intro to history - ibn khaldun (xlated frm arabic)
66. *fritz eichenberg: works of mercy - ne 1112 e32 a4
67. three essays on universal law: karma, will & love - singer
68. agnosis: theo in th void - pattison
69. realist xtian theo in a po-mo age - patterson
70. *ethics: th fundamentals - driver
71. parables fr our time - oldenhage
72. th homiletical plot: th sermon as narrative art form - lowry
73. put on yr own oxygen mask first: redscovering ministry - easum

lyrics: from "the ridge" by Information Society,
Now she's walking slowly onward
Through the garden you can't know
Her dance so beautiful so twisted
A spinning madness in the snow

She's got a black hole in there with her
She's got the sun all in there too
They're her partners in her eternal dance
She's not aware of time moving past her
She's not aware of getting any further

She walks the ridge
So glassy sharp
You can't find her now
You can't speak to her now

colors: green and gray, with rainbows.

mood: psychically crushed, but surviving

chant/prayer/mantra: bring it on, but not just yet please.


pax hominibus,
joel

Labels: book list