We released this in 2012. I miss the live iterations of this project, which included visual art and movement. I miss working in the studio. I miss some of my best friends.
The intro track is available on Bandcamp, but the the rest of the disc is where the real art is.
(From The Displaced Person)
Fight error with courage and kindness. Look around you and see the injustice that chains so many people. Take time for quiet prayer. Know your faith and let that knowledge burst into flame in your heart. (St. Anthony of Padua)
They say that knowledge born of experience is mechanical, but that knowledge born and consummated in the mind is scientific, while knowledge born of science and culminating in manual work is semi-mechanical. But to me it seems that all sciences are vain and full of errors that are not born of experience, mother of all certainty, and that are not tested by experience, that is to say, that do not at their origin, middle, or end pass through any of the five senses. . . .(Leonardo Da Vinci)
This scene from the 1995 movie starring Ben Kingsley as Moses.
Because of important things happening where I live, I’ve been thinking a lot about Christians who have relationships of trust with politically and economically powerful people of faith, and and how the former can best connect the later to community constituencies with far less (if any) access. Certainly, Christians who operate across these spheres are called to be bridge-builders, but to build good bridges, I suspect we must know both shores of the chasm. It’s not enough for Christians of privilege to connect Christians of greater privilege with these constituencies by edict. It seems to me that however well we know the rich, we’re called to know the poor better, to know the poor more.
In some senses, bridges and chasms are failures of language. In Christ, we’re called into the bleed of Venn circles, to the realization that we’re all in this together. Sometimes, that’s hard to remember.
This morning, I led the discussion in the Adult Education hours at church in place of the traveling John Franke. I wanted to explore the relationships of Hebrew prophets to power and consider how best we, as Christians in Allentown called into the bleed, can be most faithful. Last night, I read this passage from Pete Rollins before bed.
Don’t read Pete Rollins before bed. Do read Pete Rollins, though. How does “Finding Faith” land for you? I closed the early session by reading this story as a devotion with this disclaimer: “there’s no right or wrong way for it to land. It kept me awake last night and I wanted to share it with you.”
And I want to share it with you.
I’m very grateful for the opportunity I had to share the message at First Presbyterian Church yesterday at the 8:45 and 10:10 alternative services. Thank you!
I used social media to frame part of the message, saying that Pinterest had bucked conventional wisdom because it’s a platform where people share inspiring and uplifting things. By offering a new kind of experience and an environment where generative things are shared and curated, Pinterest now drives more traffic to external sites than Twitter.
A bit of meta fun before I hit the hay:
Blessings, all, and peace.
St. Patrick’s U2Charist
7 PM
Zion’s Reformed UCC
620 W. Hamilton Street, Allentown PA
Sponsored by the fellowship group New Thing in a Church Basement and Zions Reformed UCC, Allentown’s first-ever U2charist takes a page from similar worship gatherings held across the country in recent years, adding its own Celtic twist in honor of St. Patrick Day’s and U2’s Irish origins. Put simply, a “U2charist” is a worship service that uses the music and rich spiritual imagery of U2 as liturgical guides. Calls to worship and responsive readings often reference the Biblical allusions of U2’s work, and the music for this liturgical hour will be taken from U2’s catalogue and re-imagined with an acoustic, Celtic style. Echoing the band’s long-stated concerns for social justice, this gathering will also highlight unique issues of equity and avenues of help in our local setting.
Parking at Zion’s is widely available in the County lot directly adjacent to the church and at a lot off of Church Street just between Zion’s sanctuary and Walnut Street.
I spent most of the day working on a message inspired by 1 Corinthians 1:18- 25. In that passage, the apostle Paul says that the cross and the message it sends are foolishness to the self-styled wisdom of convention, but to those who “are being saved, it is the power of God.”
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the ways the life of Jesus bucked convention. His birth and upbringing, his passion, death, and resurrection. let alone his passion, death, and resurrection. Te irony, subversion, and poetry of Christ’s story is precisely what I find so compelling.
Last night, while I watched Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith throw down about the trade rumors swilring around Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo, I did a little reading up on lifelong Celtic forward Paul Pierce. It’s not often that professional athletes quote Mark Twain and Blaise Pascal on the front page of their website, but as Shaquille O’Neal will tell you, “Paul Pierce is the Truth.” As Pierce’s website reminds any nonbeliever: After a Lakers’ victory over the Celtics in 2001, O’Neal pulled a Boston reporter over and gestured toward his notepad:
“Take this down,” said O’Neal. “My name is Shaquille O’Neal and Paul Pierce is the [%*$&ing] truth. Quote me on that and don’t take nothing out. I knew he could play, but I didn’t know he could play like this. Paul Pierce is the truth.”
Compare that wit the first three verses of the apostle Paul’s letter to the Corinthians:
“Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
My name is Paul and this is how it is with Jesus.
My name is Shaquille O’Neal and Paul Pierce is the truth.
Sometimes that’s how I feel about the poetry of Jesus’ story. Whatever else, that poetry’s the truth.
“Fiction is bound by possibility,” Pierce quotes Twain as saying, “the truth is not.” Pascal adds, “we know the truth not only by reason, but also with the heart.”
Chris Cocca 