Shawna R. B. Atteberry

Cynthia Johansen at Christians Do It Better has listed me in her Top 100 Christian Relationship Blogs (#75 under Christian Values). I think this is the first time I’ve been in a top 100 list. Thank you Cynthia!

Lisa Guyla at Utne Reader’s Spirituality Blog directed my attention to an article in Boston College Magazine written by four female theologians: Lisa Sowle Cahill, Ruth Langer, M. Shawn Copeland, Patricia DeLeeuw, and Colleen Griffith. These five women talk about women in the Jewish and Christian traditions whom they consider to be their foremothers. Here is an excerpt from Colleen Griffith who wrote about Evelyn Underhill:

Perhaps her most enticing and challenging idea was that of “practical mysticism.” For Underhill, who was always less interested in defining mysticism than in practicing it, mysticism implied a life linked to social concerns. It was the art of union with reality. As our union with God grows, so does our identification with humanity and the Earth. “The riches and beauty of the spiritual landscape,” Underhill said, “are not disclosed to us in order that we might sit in the sun parlor, be grateful for the excellent hospitality, and contemplate the glorious view. . . . Our place is not the auditorium, but the stage . . . the field, workshop, study, laboratory. . . . We are the agents of the Creative Spirit, in this world.” Becoming a practical mystic, to her, meant simplifying one’s tangled and cluttered character and training one’s attention. Regular meditation and recollection would help.

Not many people today aspire to become practical mystics, thinking, perhaps, that mysticism remains the realm of the few, the proud, and the brave. But through Underhill, we catch sight of a spirituality of ordinary life, and the possibility of an increased capacity for union with God, the Real. This doesn’t require the abstentions of the cloister, just the virtues of the golf course.

Please go and read the whole article. Tomorrow I will be posting a poem I wrote about the foremothers who have inspired me. Who inspires you?

Over at Lifehack, Dustin Wax does more than go green by buying into all the current marketing hype of “green products.” He gives us foundational principals for being better stewards and more ethical shoppers.

Too much of our world market is out of sight, and therefore out of mind. Since we don’t see the lives of the Bolivian granny who makes our chic shopping bags, or the Indonesian teenager who makes our shoes, or the Chinese mother who assembles our iPods,we don’t think about it. And we don’t think about the tremendous amount of resources it takes to get raw materials from Africa, North America, Asia, and somewhere in the Pacific to some factory in China to put together an mp3 player which will then be shipped (using resources again from all over the world) to some store in Oregon (that is again assembled using materials from all over the world) and into our pocket (of pants made in the next town over from the iPod factory, using cotton grown in Africa and rivets made of steel from Japan on machines made in Europe from materials mined in…).

On the other hand, if you’ve ever had the pleasure of attending a local farmer’s market, you’ve experienced something few of us do these days: an encounter with a part of your community, an actual living and breathing person, who made something for you to eat. There were some global resources used (even organic farmers use tractors, and they needed a truck to bring their stuff to market) but most of the labor and material involved came out of your local area — the soil you’re standing on, the person in front of you. You have a relationship with this person, and with their land. Your land.

In the last couple of months, I came across Pam Hogeweide’s site: How God Mess Up My Religion. She is ruminating about many things in her current post including:

• Is the church like this woman I once knew who was so easily offended? You had to tread lightly around her or you’d set her off and get a scolding. I can be like that myself. At particular times of the month. Is the church like this? Like a woman at particular times of the month? Is she touchy?

• My friend Kim said to me once that the church offers a cultural-like transition, showing people that they need to dress a certain way and talk a certain way. But where’s the gospel? she asked.

Sally has some pretty spring pictures and poetry up on her site.

At Chicago Carless, Mark Doyle is pondering how long do you need to live in Chicago before you are a Chicagoan?

On the other hand, drawing a distinction between Chicagoans by birth and Chicagoans by choice could just be the result of surprise. Let’s face it, how sane can anyone be who adopts as his home a place with a six-month winter? (I always say, Chicago taught me what cold is: in New York, 20 degrees keeps us indoors; in Chicago, 20 degrees opens our coats to the heat wave).

Yet so many are drawn to Chicago and stay. Generations of families, tens of thousands of families, began here with the arrival of immigrant parents from Italy and Ireland and Poland and Mexico. When innumerable Midwestern farm kids and children from teeny, tiny prairie towns go to sleep at night and dream of someday finding fame and fortune in the big city, it’s the Windy City that billows through many young minds.

And very occasionally a New Yorker finds his way here, too.

How long does it take for them all to become Chicagoans? Years? Lifetimes? Generations?

Chuck Warnock has a very through-provoking post up: 10 Marks of the Church-as-Abbey. Here are two of the marks:

Hospitality. The Celtic abbey was open to all who needed its hospitality and help. Monks, even those fasting, would interrupt their discipline to greet and welcome those who came into the abbey’s confines. Welcoming the stranger is a vital part of the abbey’s ministry.

Economics. The abbeys were self-supporting, engaged in cultivating fields, raising livestock, operating public markets, and giving employment opportunities to the community. I read about a church the other day that also operates a farmers’ market, and has been doing so for years. I am exploring the agrarian movement, particularly as it attracts followers of Christ. More on that later.

He also has this post following up on the economics of the church-as-abbey, The Abbey Church and Economics. When I think of the church I want, I think like this. I want a community that is very involved in the larger community. I need to get one of the books he recommends. I already have Thomas Cahill’s How the Irish Saved Civilization (Hinges of History), which I loved (may need to review it). I now need to add George Hunter’s The Celtic Way of Evangelism: How Christianity Can Reach the West…Again.

Julie Clawson has a great post up titled Sexism Sells.

It is hard to avoid given the current political situation, but it serves as a sad reminder of how normal sexism is in the daily life of many people. I’ve mentioned that I am not a Hillary supporter, but I am becoming more and more upset at how she is being used as an excuse to trash women. I am sick of hearing news commenters ridiculing Hillary because she is a woman. I’m sick of hearing, “we can’t have a woman president because then other countries wouldn’t respect us.” (do people realize that most other countries are far ahead of us in electing women leaders!!!). It’s not about her it is about women, she is just an excuse to be sexist on national television.

How many years ago was Margaret Thatcher prime minister of England? The German Chancellor is a woman, and Kenya voted in their first female president last year. Oh yes, so many countries that won’t respect us. Have these people never heard of Golda Mieir, Catherine the Great, or Elizabeth I for that matter? Like Julie this bothers me as well. She goes on to say:

No one would dare call a black man lesser, or make fun of his race, or question if he deserves respect (which is good), but it’s okay for that to happen to women. And then people get upset at you for if you get upset by it - they say you are overreacting, or just roll their eyes and mumble “feminist” under their breath.

This reminds me of all the hot water Joe Biden got himself into when he said Barak Obama was articulate and clean. Yet, we hear none of the same thing when announcers basically do the same thing with Hillary. Like Julie, I am not a Hillary fan, but I am tired of all the sexism and female-bashing going on because she is running.

Sally has a beautiful, haunting poem about The Samaritan Woman up on her site.

Instead of simply celebrating Martin Luther King Day, Dustin Wax at Lifehack has a list of things we can do to continue making King’s dream a reality in 12 Ways to Make MLK’s Dream a Reality. Here are a couple of them:

Re-examine what you “know”: It turns out our minds are full of racist stereotypes, even among the most saintly people. We act every day on things we “know” are true, without realizing that those “facts” are grounded only in stereotypes, not reality. Consider:

• The lowest violent crime rates in the US are found in Hispanic neighborhoods.
• White teens are more likely to use and sell drugs than any other teenagers — even drugs like crack that we associate with minorities.
• Almost all school shootings have been carried out by white students.

None of these facts conforms to our expectations, which are shaped more by the stereotypes we’ve internalized and the sensationalist media than by actual experience.

Think community: Kant’s Categorical Imperative states: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”. What he meant in a nutshell was that you should act the way you wish everyone would act. Don’t just ask yourself if your behavior is in your own best interest, but if it also makes your community better (which, if you think about it, is also in your best interest).

In The Outrage of Outsiders: Why So Many People Dislike Christians (Hat tip to Gord), Journey with Jesus has an article about a three year study that resulted in David Kinnaman’s book unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity… and Why It Matters. He found that an overwhelming majority of young adults view Christianity with quite a bit of hostility. They see us as judgmental, bigoted, and extremely critical and unaccepting. All I can say is can you blame them? When you have people constantly telling you (or yelling at you) that you’re going to hell for one reason or another, I’d have to say you wouldn’t like them. May be the church (particularly the evangelical church) needs to take its cue from Jesus and the Christians in the New Testament instead of the “hellfire and brimstone” preachers of the 30s and 40s revivials.

Following the example of Jesus, the first Christians broke down social barriers. They disregarded religious taboos that judged people as ritually clean or unclean, worthy or unworthy, respectable or disrespectable. They subverted normal social hierarchies of wealth, ethnicity, religion, and gender in favor of a radical egalitarianism before God and with each other: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

In a word, the first believers were generous. They demonstrated authentic transparency, not moral superiority or ulterior motives. Like their Lord, they exuded compassion rather than condemnation. They lived out of gratitude not fear, and had a reputation for empathy rather than fault-finding. The first followers of Jesus were people of self-sacrifice, not self-interest. They insisted that God was like a tender father, not a vindictive tyrant, and encouraged every person without exception to believe what the psalmist said: “This I know, that God is for me” (Psalm 56:9).

Pastor Dan over at Street Prophets reminds the right-wing, anti-immigration crew that they Can’t Fool the Faithful: Immigration is a Moral Issue, Not a Political Football. American Christians are going to have to decide are we going to be Americans first or Christian?

Pastors and people in the pews know that inhumane raids, deportations, local anti-immigration ordinances, and racist sentiment against various groups of immigrants fly in the face of the Lord’s admonitions to not “oppress the stranger” (Ex. 23:9) or “pervert the judgment of the stranger” (Deut. 24:17). Instead, the Lord taught us to “love the stranger as ourselves” (Lev. 19:34), and “allow the stranger to live among us” (Lev. 25:35). Christ’s teachings in the New Testament reaffirm the Lord’s commandments of inclusion by urging us to welcome the stranger. He promises that as we provide for the stranger (or “alien,” NIV), we are serving Him (Matt. 25:35-40). How many of these politicians really want to deport Jesus?

And may be those anti-immigration people need to remember who the illegal immigrants of 300 years ago were. Bet the Native Americans wished they had built a big, honking wall right after we started showing up. (I saw a great cartoon of this, but I don’t remember where. If you know, leave a link in the comments, and I’ll update this post.)

Happy New Year everyone! We had a nice, quiet Christmas at home. Tracy’s liver infection is smaller, and there are no blockages in his liver. His doctors did an endoscopy and MRI on his stomach and upper instestines, and both tests came back normal. So we still do not know what is causing his stomach pain. He will probably be heading back for more testing later this week or next week.

South Loop Grace Fellowship starts this Sunday, and I have started working on my sermon. I have also set up a Myspace page in addition to the Facebook profile. Flyers are being put out and invitations going out as well.

I have added a couple of new categories to the side menu. The first is called Personal Sites and has my personal Myspace and Facebook pages as well as SLFG’s site. I also added in Emerging Church module where you can find links to Emerging Women, Julie Clawson, John Smulo, and other wonderful writers in the emergent movement. In fact, Julie has a great list of books from 2007 that is worth going over and looking at. A very good friend of mine, Bon, has a great post up on the angels’ command to the shepherds: “Do Not Be Afraid.”

I am slowly getting back around to blogs and reading online in general. Here are some of the posts and articles that have caught my eye.

There’s a lot going on this time of the year, and if your mind is cluttered with things to do before Tuesday, then Leo Babauta has an article for you. 15 Can’t-Miss Ways to Declutter Your Mind has several different ways to get things off your mind, so you can have some peace of mind:

Identify the essential. This one is practically a mantra here at Zen Habits. (Can you imagine it? All of us here at Zen Habits, sitting on a mat in lotus position, chanting slowly: “Identify the essential … identify … the essen … tial …”) But that’s because it’s crucial to everything I write about: if you want to simplify or declutter, the first step is identifying what is most important. In this case, identify what is most important in your life, and what’s most important for you to focus on right now. Make a short list for each of these things.

Eliminate. Now that you’ve identified the essential, you can identify what’s not essential. What things in your life are not truly necessary or important to you? What are you thinking about right now that’s not on your short list? By eliminating as many of these things as possible, you can get a bunch of junk off your mind.

Let go. Worrying about something? Angry about somebody? Frustrated? Harboring a grudge? While these are all natural emotions and thoughts, none of them are really necessary. See if you can let go of them. More difficult than it sounds, I know, but it’s worth the effort.

It’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas: Oh no not another war on Christmas! (Don’t people realize that Christmas is NOT the only holiday in December?) One of the battles on the supposed “war on Christmas” is a movie this year. Kathleen Falsani reviews The Golden Compass and comes to this conclusion: Golden Compass Doesn’t Point to War on Christmas.

I haven’t read Pullman’s books, which by all accounts include explicit anti-religious, and anti-Catholic in particular, themes. I have, however, seen the film and if those themes were present, they flew right over my head, not unlike the heroic witches who prophesied the birth of Lyra, a child who would someday decide the fate of the world.

The movie is a jumble of heretofore-unknown characters and existential ideas that don’t quite hold together and that are entirely lost amid the fury of big-budget special effects. The message of “The Golden Compass,” if there is one in its celluloid incarnation, was lost on me. And I would venture a guess that any child who would see the film — and with its PG-13 rating for violence, no young child should — would miss the point, whatever it is, as well.

I agree with Falsani’s assessment of what Christians should be doing:

The Bible tells us that in order to love a broken world back to wholeness, an omnipotent God decides to come to Earth, not as a king or a great warrior, but in the form of a helpless infant born in a stable to an unwed teenage mother from an oppressed religious and ethnic group. There are signs and wonders announcing the Christ child’s birth — miraculous movement in the heavens, angels appearing to shepherds in fields, three mystical magi traveling from the East with exotic gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, and prophesies foretold and fulfilled. Good triumphs over evil and love over hate, all through the birth of one baby boy in a backwater town in the Middle East more than 2,000 years ago.

I defy Hollywood to come up with a more powerful, enduring tale than that one.

Christians would be better served telling and retelling the real Christmas story, without wasting time on brickbats and boycotts. Make big-budget films about it, write powerful books, make beautiful music and create enduring artwork that reflects the spirit of that story, the greatest ever told.

Jesus didn’t get defensive about ideas and stories that paled in comparison to the one he was telling. His followers shouldn’t be, either.

So, next year, when December rolls around and nervous Nellies begin shrieking about the latest Operation Secular Menace threatening to upend Christmas and its true meaning, please stick your fingers in your ears and repeat after me: Fa la la la la la la la la.

Yes! Finally someone has written about this! Ben Witherington questions where Joseph and Mary stayed on that night when Jesus was born in No Room in the What?

When it came time for Mary to deliver the baby, the Greek of Luke’s text says, “she wrapped him in cloth and laid him in a corn crib, as there was no room in the guest room.” Yes, you heard me right. Luke does not say there was no room in the inn. Luke has a different Greek word for inn (pandeion), which he trots out in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The word he uses here (kataluma) is the very word he uses to describe the room in which Jesus shared the Last Supper with his disciples — the guest room of a house.

Archeology shows that houses in Bethlehem and its vicinity often had caves as the back of the house where they kept their prized ox or beast of burden, lest it be stolen. The guest room was in the front of the house, the animal shelter in the back, and Joseph and Mary had come too late to get the guest room, so the relatives did the best they could by putting them in the back of the house.

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Bethlehem was a one-stoplight town, and we don’t have a shred of archaeological evidence that there ever was a wayfarer’s inn in that little village in Jesus’ day. All this silliness about ‘no room at the Holiday Inn’ for the holy family or the world giving Jesus the cold shoulder is not at all what Luke is talking about. It’s a story about no inn in the room! It’s a story about a family making do when more relatives than expected suddenly show up on the doorstep. It’s a story most of us can relate to in one way or another.

Not to mention Mary would have had a little more privacy in the back of the house than in the guest room. People always think it’s so horrible that Mary and Joseph had to be in the “barn” (and let’s face it, that’s the way most of us pictured it). But they were in the home of family or friends. Thank you Ben. I’ve been saying this for years, and Christians treat me like a heretic. Now I can say I’m not the only one who thinks this what really happened and can point them to Ben’s article.