Hurricane coverage on Fox

Was flipping through the channels early this a.m. and stopped to watch Fox News for a sec. The blond guy on their morning show was commenting how when there are disasters in the world, the U.S. is always the country that gives millions or billions in aid. I knew what was coming next, the thought making its way from his pea brain to his whiny little mouth and out into the studio...sure enough, he said it. Will those countries help us? I bet they won't, he said.

How arrogant. And how typical. Sure, there aren't many countries that give (or at least, pledge to give) aid like the good old U.S. Then again, maybe if we'd do a few proactive things to address the way we contribute to global warming, deforestation, pollution, etc. we wouldn't be giving so much in aid for natural disasters. Our giving is large, but so is our taking.

Anyway, that smug, smirky Fox News guy is wrong. Other countries will help. We will be surprised, possibly even humbled. Remember, Jesus noticed the poor widow who gave all she had, not the wealthy ones who gave more and made a big show of it.

OK, this is kinda trippy!

In doing some web searching I came across this virtual reality site produced by the University of Arizona computer science department. Click on any of the views of the link, then use the tools to scan up, zoom in and out, etc. Somehow I got going around in a circle, then ended up looking down at the floor from a ceiling view. It's cool!
San Xavier del Bac Mission, Tucson, AZ

Venezuela slams Robertson over remarks

Wow, the full irony of Pat Robertson didn't really hit until I read this story. Still a bit slow from the Jimmy Buffett concert on Sunday night, I guess....

Think about it this way. If a prominent religious figure in, say, Iran, or Syria, or Bin Laden, for that matter, called for the assassination of George Bush, we would associate that with terrorism. Yet, at best, Robertson just gets treated like some crazy uncle (one with millions of dollars and his own TV network).

So is the lesson here that there really is a great distance between religious fundamentalists of all stripes and the moderates of their faiths, and so we ought to not get our knickers in a knot when we hear Islamic fundamentalists? Or, is the lesson that terrorism is terrorism, even when advocated by a good ole Virginia boy like Robertson? Either way it ain't a pretty picture.

Starbucks Everywhere

There are better things one could have as a mission...but there are also worse. Here's a guy who's been on a quest since 1997 to visit every Starbucks in the world (minus corporate-owned ones, for reasons he explains on his web site). With the number of them being built, he's going to have to retrace his steps.

There's also a lawyer/filmmaker who is making a documentary about this guy.

Here's a link to the AP story about that, posted on DisciplesWorld under "Offbeat News"

Incident at Crater Lake

We didn’t hear about the shooting until the next day, when I saw the front page of the Oregonian in the newspaper box outside of Denny’s in Roseburg. “Violence shatters Crater Lake calm,” the headline read.

We had just come back from there – Crater Lake - about two hours east of Roseburg. The night before, after dark, we had wandered out, but not too far. Just to the edge of the parking lot. We looked up over the trees at the dark sky, lit by a million stars. The longer you looked, the more stars you could see. We didn’t stay out long because it was cold.

The next morning, we went for a walk early, but we took a left at the end of the road instead of walking toward the campground – the way I had wanted to go. On our walk we saw thousands of moths, about the size of your fist, on the light pole and the ground and covering the campground gas pump. “They’re Pandora’s moths,” the maintenance man told us. “Every morning we have to sweep them up." Some were just dazed, and would rise from the pile and fly away. Most did not survive.

If we had gone to the right, we might have seen the camp site, still cordoned off with yellow police tape. Two nights ago, a park ranger had shot a man there, killed him. There had been a domestic dispute. Someone had called the ranger. Down at the amphitheater the campers gathered for the evening sing-along had heard yelling, but they were doing an audience participation number at the time and most thought the shouts of “I am God!” coming through the woods were part of the act.

The report in the Oregonian did not say if the man was on drugs, was mentally ill, or what started the argument in the first place. It said nothing about the woman who was with him. Was she his wife? Girlfriend? Was she okay? Where did she go? Much as I would have like to feel something for the dead man, or the park ranger who shot him, what struck me about it was how a scene that unfolds in daily and nightly in many homes, unnoticed or ignored, spilled over so messily into the public, crossing the imaginary boundaries of the campsite, shocking and frightening those nearby, ending violently. Like a scene from a Raymond Carver short story, only real.

Speaking of Carver, we drove through his birthplace of Clatskanie, Oregon, a nondescript town up on the Columbia river northwest of Portland. Although we saw no sign along the main highway indicating any link between Clatskanie and the greatest American short story writer in the latter half of the 20th century, apparently there is a memorial plaque and a park.

ABC News: Peter Jennings Dies at 67

Sad news. I always liked Peter Jennings. He was a class act - more than just a talking head like so many of today's broadcast news personalities. He will be missed.
ABC News: Peter Jennings Dies at 67

Theologian sees female church leaders as scriptural compromise

And blogger sees 'theologian' as ridiculous.
News from Agape Press

Sky High - The Official Website

If you are entertaining bored pre-teens and trying to escape the heat at the same time, Sky High is a movie that's...not too bad. Billed as a cross between Harry Potter and The Incredibles, it's about a high school for superheroes. It's main character, Will Stronghold, has as parents the best-known superhero duo around (most kids only have one super-parent) but he can't seem to find out what his superpower is, and so he's relegated, along with his friends, to the role of "sidekick". Although the plotline is somewhat predictable - having him find his superpowers and use them, with help from his side kick friends, to defeat the nefarious villain, there are some memorable moments and this great line (delivered by Will Stronghold: "If life were to suddenly become fair, I doubt it would happen in high school."

Linda Carter (former Wonder Woman) plays the high school principal and at the end, she even makes reference to her former role in a joke (that the kids won't get, of course). Stronghold's parents are played by Kurt Russell and Kelly Preston. Great soundtrack of 80s covers too - English Beat, Thompson Twins, Tears for Fears and others. Rated PG for some butt-kickin' but I don't remember any profanity.

One could do worse at the movies....
Sky High � The Official Website

Campbell biography: a good read

Just finished reading Eva Jean Wrather's literary biography of Alexander Campbell, one of the founders of the Stone-Campbell movement which preceded the formation of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Now, that may not sound very exciting to you, and frankly, I didn't expect it to be, either. I was pleasantly surprised - it's a good read that explains Campbell's evolving thought from his childhood until about 1823 (when he is getting ready to launch The Christian Baptist magazine). This is just Volume 1. I started it Sunday and finished it this evening. Credit also goes to D. Duane Cummins, who worked with Wrather prior to her death in Sept. 2001 and afterwards to edit what was almost a lifetime's worth of work - an 800,000 word manuscript.

Others may write about the book in terms of how it compares to other volumes - scholarly or not - on Campbell. I'm not qualified to do that - I'm merely giving the perpective of a layperson/seminary student looking for interesting summer reading.

Wisdom to know the difference?

OK, about an hour after yesterday's post, I realized there might be some irony, or hypocrisy, in complaining about a worship leader not using inclusive language and then, a few days later, getting offended when someone questioned whether Rev. Sharon Watkins' gender had anything to do with my mention of her apparel in a news article during General Assembly. I'm still up in the air...is it a question of 'big stuff' vs. 'small stuff'? A motto of the Disciples of Christ is "in essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity." So was it just a matter of someone else's essentials not being my essentials? Hmm...

On another note, Martin Peretz, editor in chief of the New Republic, has taken a swipe at the Disciples and other mainline Protestant denominations who have taken stands of some form against Israeli policies and practices toward Palestinians. A group of Jewish organizations also sent a letter to Watkins, our new GMP, and to Peter Makari, of Global Ministries. (If you cannot view the whole article by Peretz and want to read it, email me.)

On July 12, the Associated Press reported that an Israeli cabinet minister acknowledged that the wall is meant to ensure a Jewish majority in Jerusalem, and is not just a temporary security measure.

During the General Assembly, protestors stood outside the convention center with signs, waving Israeli flags. I stopped to talk with them. The ones I spoke with hemmed and hawed about their religious affiliation before finally 'fessing up that they were some form of evangelical Christians who came down from Washington state to protest. Then they started quoting the Bible to me, scarily including reminders from the book of Revelation that Israel must be restored before Christ's second coming. I did not argue with them, even when they reminded me that "Jesus was a Jew." I overheard them talking and apparently they knew very little about the General Assembly resolution or the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). I guess all it takes is an email telling you to go and defend the Chosen People (whose quest serves your own eschatology) and you get in the car and go?

Interestingly, the Institute on Religion and Democracy (a misnomer if there ever was one) somehow got involved in the issue and held a poorly-attended press conference. Perhaps they rallied the troops.

I suspect we'll be hearing more about this issue - pro and con.

DisciplesWorld : General Assembly News

Well, we survived the General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Portland. I'll write more about this later, including some adventures after the GA traveling around Oregon, but first, I have to share this email that I received via the DisciplesWorld web site:

Rebecca Bowman Woods,
If a man had been elected to the office of GMP would you have commented on the color of suit he wore? Does the color of Sharon Watkins suit make any difference in who she is?

(name and email address withheld)

This message is in reference to an article I wrote on Monday or Tuesday or the Assembly after Sharon Watkins was elected. It's a perfect indication, in my opinion, of how hidebound by political correctness some folks in the church have become. We saw several other incidences of this during Assembly in plenary sessions. No wonder Watkins, during her sermon at the close of the Assembly on Wednesday night, said we need to learn to cut each other some slack.

Perhaps I'm still a little touchy from the 18 hour days I (and the rest of the staff) put in writing about the Assembly for the past week. A "thanks" would have been nice.

Yeah, yeah, I can already hear you saying, "well, practice what you preach. Cut the e-mail's author some slack!" Ok, maybe she (yes, a women wrote it) was having a bad hair day.... (that's an attempt at humor folks!)

Below is a link to DisciplesWorld's General Assembly coverage. The site stays live until Friday. Hopefully, you'll get more out of it than whether we wrote about Arnold Nelson's bow tie. DisciplesWorld : General Assembly News