Shawna R. B. Atteberry

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.

At God’s Politics Becky Garrison interviewed Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb, a Palestinian pastor. He is the senior pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Christian Church in Bethlehem.

The conflict in Gaza is a very difficult one. People now are convinced that we are dealing with so much politics, but there is no concern for the “polis,” for the city and community … and that there is too much religion in Palestine and yet too little spirituality. We have too many peace-talkers and only a few peacemakers. Our mission is therefore about caring for the community not through words but deeds. Our mission is to introduce a different kind of spirituality that gives people room to breath. Here at our center we show the potential for our people and country in a way that people can touch with their own hands. It’s all about giving a foretaste of the kingdom to come here and now and in the midst of a difficult context.

In Razzmatazz or Ragamuffins two non-Christians have been paid to visit churches in Toronto. Here are some of their thoughts:

The paid church visitors also made a stop at the Sanctuary, a downtown congregation with deep involvement in the community—particularly with the homeless and poor. The Sanctuary provides free meals and cloths as well as medical care to those in need. One visitor’s first impression was telling:

I could tell then and there we had found what this experiment was set out to accomplish, a church that saw past the money, power and the heighten sense of moral superiority that we have grown accustomed to. Charity, real charity. About time.

He continues…

I was floored, for close to a month now I have been told of all the wonderful things the Christian church provides without any physical evidence of its truth, but here it is, in the flesh. I have to smile, we have traveled to the city’s massive churches where thousands worship and yet we find what we are looking for in a turnout of 35 on Sunday.

This is the only Church where the majority of time, finances and energy is NOT spent on the Sunday service. At Sanctuary, it actually would have been unfair to only score them on their Sunday service, the smallest part of what they do.

At Theolog’s Blogging Toward Sunday, William Willimon wonders why the prayers we pray in church are so different from the way Jesus taught his followers to pray.

In most churches I visit, a time of prayer is often preceded by a time of “Joys and Concerns.” I notice that in every congregation, the only concerns expressed are concerns for people in the congregation who are going through various health crises. Prayer becomes what we used to refer to as “Sick Call” in the army. Where on earth did we get this idea of prayer? Not from Jesus. He healed a few people from time to time, but he doesn’t pray for that. He prays for the coming of God’s kingdom, for bread (but only on a daily basis, not for a surplus) and for forgiveness for our trespasses. It’s curious that physical deterioration has become the contemporary North American church’s main concern in prayer. Jesus is most notable for teaching that we are to pray—not for recent gall bladder surgery—but for our enemies!

Here are a couple of short hops to start your week out with.

Savior of Torahs seals deal with God is the story of Rabbi Menachem Youlus who for the last twenty years has traveled all over the world saving Torahs (the first five books of the Bible) that had been left neglected or damaged and restoring them.

Each Torah contains 302,000 Hebrew letters, and every one must be inked by hand with a kosher quill. Perfectly. Restoring an old Torah means matching the ink, the font and the parchment on which it was written—a tricky task when you’re repairing a centuries-old Ugandan Torah in a suburban Maryland workshop.

After months of work, Youlus and his foundation settle the Torahs in schools, synagogues and Jewish community centers around the world, often for considerably less than the minimum $18,000 each takes to restore.

Debbie Blue has another thought provoking Blogging to Sunday at Theolog. She wants to know why we always jump to “prostitute” when we think of the sinful woman who anointed Jesus’s feet in Luke 7:36-50. She thinks we need to take Luke calling her a sinner a little more seriously and fleshing out what that could mean—not only for the woman, but for us.

I think we need to take Luke seriously when he says she was a sinner. We probably wouldn’t have liked her or been at all attracted to her. And Simon may have been great and beautiful and kind. When he thinks to himself that Jesus must not know who this woman is, maybe he wasn’t being an obviously horrible judgmental prig. Maybe he knew how she beat her children or poisoned little kittens. Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners. Tax collectors weren’t just “good” people that the world ostracized. They worked for the Roman Empire and extorted money from the poor. They did things that hurt people.

In Blogging Toward Sunday at Theolog, Debbie Blue looks at Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31. She offers a very different way of seeing God and Wisdom than we are normally used to seeing.

Over at God’s Politics Diane Butler Bass offers some insights she received while watching the Miss Universe Pageant in A Post-Colonial Pageant. Yes, I did say the Miss Universe Pageant.

There are many reasons why Keith Olbermann is one of my TV boyfriends (Jon Stewart being the other), and here is the most recent one: The entire government has failed us on Iraq.  Jesse Jackson Jr., also has a consice and articulate column in The Chicago Sun-Times: Congress has failed our troops.

Lynne Duke has an eye-opening and gut wrenching article on slavery in The Shackles in the Shadows of History (Hat tip to Duane Shank). Here’s the opening paragraph:

In 1619, 12 years after Jamestown’s settlement, two British privateers sailed into the James River with African captives for sale. The Africans had Portuguese names; they apparently knew Christianity, according to John Thornton and Linda Heywood, a husband-and-wife team of Boston University historians. Those first Africans came from the kingdom of Ndongo, now Angola, which had been penetrated by Portuguese missionaries and traders who soon stopped praying with the Africans and started selling them.

What are reading that is making you stop and think? Breaking your heart? Making you see the world in a different way?

Sally was kind enough to list me as one of the bloggers who make her think, and I am now posting a blog in response:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).

Here are five blogs that make me think:

The Dude Abides by Kathleen Falsani. I’ve enjoyed Kathleen’s writing since I moved Chicago last year. Her book, The God Factor, had just come out, and I read it and loved it. I also always catch her column is the Chicago Sun-Times. I love how she weaves together religion and faith with pop culture. For you nature lovers out there, Kathleen is in Montana working on a book, and she’s posting some fabulous pictures.

Sally of Eternal Echoes–I have a soft spot in my heart for Sally. I have clinical depression and have struggled with it for years while going through seminary, ordination and then on into ministry (sound familiar Sally?). She’s really inspiring me to start writing up my own experiences with depression. I plan on doing that once I have the book proposal on spiritual direction done. It’s also very obvious the influence her posts have on me as I am regularly referring you to her blog.

the merge, or as I know him Eric. Eric and I went to seminary together and worked together as well. We’ve been buds a long time. Eric is a church planter and has excellent posts on being a leader and planting churches. He also passes on great articles and resources when he finds them. But my favorite posts are about his daughter: she wants to be President one day.

Junia’s Daughter is Mother Laura’s blog. She is insisting on following her call to be a priest in the Catholic Church, and I have a great deal of respect for her. Sometimes it’s hard enough being an ordained minister in a tradition that has been ordaining women for 103 years (like the Church of the Nazarene, although for a time we forgot about our history of incredible women pastors, evangelists, and teachers), but to be doing what she’s doing in the Catholic Church just leaves me in awe. She always has thought provoking posts, and she has written some incredible stuff on redeeming the sexual abuse she endured. I probably should be referring you to her as often as I do to Sally!

Hugo Schwyzer who always makes me think whether I want to or not. Hugo covers everything from sports to teaching to feminism to men who are feminist, and always seems to be able to be theological about all of it.

I’m not going to “tag” anyone, but I’d love to know what blogs influence you the most. If you’re comfortable sharing with us, then please share!

I’m sure most of you have heard about the special the Discovery Channel will have on a tomb found that could be the tomb of Jesus and his family. Ben Witherington has a series of posts on why this probably isn’t the tomb of Jesus and his family. He starts his critique of the special with this:

First of all, I have worked with Simcha [Jacobovici, one of the producers]. He is a practicing Jew, indeed he is an orthodox Jew so far as I can tell. He was the producer of the Discovery Channel special on the James ossuary which I was involved with. He is a good film maker, and he knows a good sensational story when he sees one. This is such a story. Unfortunately it is a story full of holes, conjectures, and problems. It will make good TV and involves a bad critical reading of history. Basically this is old news with a new interpretation. We have known about this tomb since it was discovered in 1980. There are all sorts of reasons to see this as much ado about nothing much.

Ben goes on to list those reasons in The Jesus Tomb? “Titanic” Talpoit Tomb Theory Sunk from the Start.

He has also posted two other posts as more evidence has come to him: Problems Multiply for Jesus Tomb Theory and The Smoking Gun—Tenth Talpoit Ossuary Proved to Be Blank.

The picture is from The Discovery Channel.

Jendi Reiter has a beautiful excerpt from Walt Wangerin Jr.’s reflections on his cancer that is very different from how we normally look at diseases like cancer.

This beautiful prayer is the Sunday prayer from RevGalBlogPals:

If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning. –Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

Life-giving God, we give you thanks and praise for your abundant grace. With a mighty hand you parted the waters and provided a band of Israelite slaves with the gift of exodus—a way out. In the same way, O God, grant safe passage to all who need it today—passage through the turmoil of illness, grief, and despair; passage through poverty and oppression; passage, perhaps, through toils and snares of our own devising. Where chaos swirls around us like mighty waters, lead us by your Spirit. Let us find solid ground in our walk with Jesus Christ, our guide and friend. On this weekend of remembrance we give thanks for the life of Martin Luther King Jr., his prophetic witness, his courage, and his faithfulness to the gospel. May we be so prophetic, so courageous, and so faithful.

Powerful God, in the desert you smashed apart dry stones and made waters to spill out, enough for everyone. Forgive the times we do not trust you, when we demand miracles on our own timetable. You provided water in the desert, and manna sufficient for all; forgive us when we hoard and store up your abundant gifts for our own use. Give us the courage and faith to speak out for those in need of liberation and justice. Give us the words also to witness to your life-changing gospel in a thirsty world.

We thank you, resurrected God, that you rolled away the stone of the tomb, and a new creation poured forth. Justice and mercy roll down now and forever; peace and hope reign always. Help us to claim this new reality, in our lives and for this world. We pray in the name of Jesus, the risen Christ. Amen.