Seven

Seven is commonly understood to be the number of completion, at least in Christian mythos. Fitting, as this day is the beginning of the New Year. Which, come to think of it, is why the arbitrary choosing of the New Year is a week after the for-whatever-reason choosing of December 25th for Jesus' birthday.

Or maybe it's the other way around. Maybe since they needed to Christianize Winter Solstice celebrations, they decided to make the Christ Mass then. But since January 1st is a fixed date, that would be the beginning of the new year. Rather than Christmas being ten days before the new year (on solstice), it would be seven days. Thus the 25th.

Obviously I'm stretching. But I really haven't heard any theories to explain these rather random placements of these holy dates that quite satisfies me.

However, I'm starting to think the choice was a good one. Winter Solstice is an acknowledgment (well, in the Northern Hemisphere) that the sun is coming back, that the days are getting longer, that hope is alive, that things WILL get better. The Christ Masses made a point to emphasize that Jesus' birth signified light coming into the world, a new dawn has appeared, a new hope is on the horizon.

And isn't that what New Years is really all about, Charlie Brown? A time to collectively mourn, reassess, and reconsider and all that last year had for us and regroup and generate new hopes for the next year?

I pray that we can garner new hope as this new year begins and work towards meaningful and lasting and maybe even substantial happenings in our lives.

Here's to you!

Hey, Man! Leave Those Atheists Alone.

To be honest, I find the New Atheist movement flippin' annoying. It's like dealing with hyper-fundamentalists all over again - very reactionary, very ideological, very little grounding in fact. Much yelling, screaming, flying accusations and dishes... It reminds me too much of home...

But enough about me. What I do understand about the NAM is that -- on the occasions when they are flying off the handle -- they are reacting to something that is very threatening. Take for instance the reaction to the ads going up countrywide, as reported in the New York Times.

A clash of beliefs has rattled this city ever since atheists bought ad space on four city buses to reach out to nonbelievers who might feel isolated during the Christmas season. After all, Fort Worth is a place where residents commonly ask people they have just met where they worship and many encounters end with, “Have a blessed day.”

“We want to tell people they are not alone,” said Terry McDonald, the chairman of Metroplex Atheists, part of the Dallas-Fort Worth Coalition of Reason, which paid for the atheist ads. “People don’t realize there are other atheists. All you hear around here is, ‘Where do you go to church?’ ”

But the reaction from believers has been harsher than anyone in the nonbeliever’s club expected. Some ministers organized a boycott of the buses, with limited success. Other clergy members are pressing the Fort Worth Transportation Authority to ban all religious advertising on public buses. And a group of local businessmen paid for the van with the Christian message to follow the atheist-messaged buses around town.

The Christians' response (not to be confused with the Christian response) would make sense if perhaps the ads were being belligerent (like the ones in New York declaring Christmas to be a myth. Which, in a sense, it can be described of as in a fairly accurate way. But that doesn't seem to be the case here). The pastors who sponsored the bus answer that they're just trying to tell people that God loves them.

But that's the problem with much of contemporary Christianity. We talk a whole lot about love, but we don't seem to know how to practice it with people who are different from us. In fact, our love is pretty shallow, at least collectively. I'm sure some people are genuinely loving toward atheists, gays, and Muslims in person, but if you ask the typical non-Christian how they feel about Christians' response to them, you (if you were a Christian who thought the world loves Christians, that is) may be surprised. Well, it's because we're not very nice people. We're that annoying couple who come first, jabber in everybody's ear about our precious children and show dogs and jobs, and leaves hours after everybody else, and then thinks we were the life of the party. We're the muscle-necked kid in middle school who forces everybody else to be our friend, but then wonders why nobody signs our yearbook pics, or comes to hang out during the weekends or summer.

Those visuals are incorrect, though. They imply that we should be making friends. That's not a Christian's job, according to Jesus.

A Christian's job, according to the Bible and Jesus himself, can be summed up in three, interconnected parts: Love God; Love Others; Make Disciples. By being the majority bullies that we are - by not allowing others to disagree or think differently in peace - we're ignoring that second creed (ironically by saying that we're doing the second creed). Additionally, if we don't love others, we can't truly love God. And if we can't convince people that there is anything lovely about the Gospels (yet there is. We've lost that in much of our practices), what is there to attract them to it? Most of new converts would be just more fake friends, faking their way through their co-dependency, trading in one broken life for another, more dependent one. And that does nobody any good.

Where's the Thanks?

A recently-ended siege in India ends after over 170 civilians die. A post-election riot in Nigeria kills over three hundred. A temporary Wal-Mart worker gets trampled to death underneath a shopping mob right here in the US of A. And the economy is in the tank pretty much everywhere. What is there to be thankful for?

Seriously, count your blessings:

Jesus (beautiful, wonderful, majestic, love, self-sacrificing, teaches me how to be the image of God, how to be a father, how much God loves me)
God the Father (one with Jesus and the Holy Spirit, righteous judge, everlasting love / wisdom / shalom / justice, sanctified and sanctifying, the Father from whom all other fathers derive their name)
God the Holy Spirit (one with God the Father and Jesus, peace, comfort, guides into all truth)
Wife (generous, considerate, activist, Jesus-loving, green and gorgeous-eyed, wide-smiling, funny)
Daughter (joyous, inconsolably cute, attentive, curious... did I mention really, really cute?)
Extended family (three of them! that's three times the fun!)
Home
Affordable rent
Love
Available internet
Sonseed
Clothes, lots of clothes especially for the baby. So many clothes that we trip over them in our room.
Coffee
Flavored creamer
Steady, free, clean, delicious water
Plenty of food (this may go into negative pile, too)
BubbleLand, (decent) Bank, and Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins right across the street
Christmas
Wonderful friends (from current and past churches, in community, friends of family, friends of friends,
Facebook (which allows us to keep in contact with friends and family)
The funny
Classic Al Green; and neo-classic Al Green
Readily available public transportation (we live not far from downtown; we live a block away from a train station, we live off three major arteries - Fullerton, Milwaukee and Western) and now, thanks to our friend Roland, we have use of a car (and we live a mile from a major interstate)
Living in the Golden Age of Comic-Book-to-Movie adaptations
A working, cozy kitchen
The English language
My small group
The New York Times online
The kick-off of Nexus Foundation (more on that later)
Short, sweet, well-crafted one-liners
Turkey meats
Being paid for writing (hopefully, more of that later)
Pizza
Being insured again
Wife's new full-time job
Finding free and affordable (but guilt-free) music, including long out-of-print albums I used to own (on cassette, of course)
Good health
"Let's Spend the Day in Bed" by Over the Rhine
Trip to Colombia this year
Education
Our church
Zooropa
Available money
Drastically lowering debts
0% APR introductory rates for credit transfers (heck, anything lower than 24.99%) into our own bank
"Sentimental Heart" by She & Him
Obama as president (a black man as president. Someone who's actually been and worked with/for the poor in the White House. Yes, I'm excited)

What else?
I'll keep updating as I think of more. But, please, feel free to put a list of your own as well in the comments.

Happy Casimir Pulaski Day, Comrades!

The first Monday in March is known to schoolchildren and teachers all throughout Illinois as a holiday that nobody understands.

So, thanks to Asthmatic Kitty Records for doing much indepth investigation on the man, the myth, the Casimir. As well as for posting an early demo of the Sufjan Stevens song.