Vessel

I’ve graduated - that’s one thing - so what am I doing now?

I’m still doing chaplain work at the Veteran’s administration hospital. That’s in Kansas City for another month.

I’m getting my Master’s of Leadership from Meadville Lombard in Chicago, so I’ll be back there on July 8th. I’m trying to bring my daughter with me during that week!

I’m interning with International Bridges to Justice, an organization that works to prevent torture.

I’m also hoping to work for the international office at my denomination, and have applied for that. I’ll hear back in a couple of weeks.

I’ve applied for a grant to start an organization to help prevent torture, writing the programming from the ground up. I’ve got organizations committed to this project, and I’ll be peppering your social media webs about that soon.

Mostly, I hope to calm down, be with my family, and read books that have nothing to do with seminary! I feel called to do social justice, and that’s precisely what I’ll be doing.

If you’re in Louisville, KY, I’ll be there at the end of June for a conference, then Chicago in July, and then in Portland, Oregon in October. Hit me up!

Graduated!

Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

aeongrey:

Words of influence.. #rainermariarilke #quote #poet #poetry

Mary’s postpartum inspection, The famous Proto-Gospel of James, allegedly written by Jesus’ half-brother (Joseph’s son from a previous marriage) tells a tale of the midwife who attended Mary after she had given birth to the Son of God. She, the midwife, does not believe that Mary has given birth and remained a virgin, and so she gives her a vaginal inspection, only to find that her hymen is still intact. God punishes the midwife for her doubt — making the offending hand burn — but the infant Jesus heals her, the first of his many great miracles.

Joseph and Mary: The Generation Gap, Joseph is always portrayed as an old man in the medieval paintings of Jesus’ nativity (this supposedly explains why he never had sex with Mary). But just how old was he? According to a relatively unknown Gospel called The History of Joseph the Carpenter, Joseph was fully 89 years old when Jesus was born, whereas Mary was all of 15. The account goes on to describe the death of Joseph some twenty-one years later, told in the first-person by his most famous “son,” the Son of God himself.

Jesus the mischievous Wunderkind. Jesus may have been a miracle-working Son of God as an adult, but what was he like as a kid? That is the question answered by the amusing Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which regales readers with tales of Jesus’ miraculous activities between the ages of five and twelve. As it turns out, Jesus was a mischievous young fellow and had a bit of a temper. Whenever someone irritates him — a rough playmate or a strict teacher — he uses his supernatural power to wither him on the spot. Eventually he gets his mood, and his power, under control, and becomes a remarkable young man to have around the carpenter shop and home.

Jesus and sacred sex. In modern novels (The Da Vinci Code!) Jesus is said to have had a sexual relation with Mary Magdalene. Even stranger tales of Jesus, Mary, and sex were told in ancient Gospels; by all counts the strangest was The Greater Questions of Mary, now lost but quoted once by an early Church Father. According to this tale, Jesus took Mary alone up onto a mountain, and as she watched, he pulled a woman from his side and began to have sex with her. What happens next is even stranger, as it involves a case of divine coitus interruptus and the consumption of semen. Mary, not surprisingly, faints on the spot.

The Giant Jesus and the Walking-Talking Cross. Remarkably, the Gospels of the New Testament do not tell the story of Jesus emerging from the tomb on Easter morning. But the Gospel of Peter does. In this text, discovered near the end of the nineteenth century, Jesus comes out of the tomb as tall as a mountain, supported by two angels, nearly as tall themselves. And behind them, from the tomb, there emerges the cross, which has a conversation with God in heaven, assuring him that the message of salvation has now gone to those in the underworld. How a Gospel like this was ever lost is anyone’s guess.

Pontius Pilate the Christian Convert. Pilate is usually portrayed as one of the real bad guys of the Gospel and, in fact, of all Christian history. But in a number of books, often called “Pilate Gospels,” he is exonerated for having Jesus executed, and in some traditions he not only repents of what he did, but actually converts to become a believer in Jesus. In parts of the church, Pilate came to be canonized as a Christian saint. A saint? Yes, and the reason is clear. The more innocent Pilate is, the more guilty the other enemies are — the Jews. These are Christian Gospels written in the context of rising anti-Jewish sentiment, a nefarious underside to many of these otherwise interesting and entertaining accounts.

lol

Chalice lighting…

kateoplis:

“Everywhere I look I see fire”

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

People who don’t have kids telling people with kids how to parent

Right before I had kids friends of mine gave me “From Diapers To Dating” which gave me the best piece of advice ever: the No rule.

This rule is that if someone says no, you must stop. There are exceptions, of course, if the child’s life in is in danger, but the most practical use of the No rule is during every day interactions.

If the child does not want to be tickled anymore and says No, even in jest as you think they like it, you must stop. You must get explicit consent before resuming tickling.

If your kid is doing something you do not like to you or to the house, you say No. Chances are that if you follow the No rule for your child, your child follows the No rule for you.

If you are putting clothes on the kid and they say No, I do not like that outfit, then do not put that outfit on them. If you ask them to kiss grandma and they say No, then you tell grandma your child doesn’t want to kiss. Any touch at all the child says No to, you should obey most of the time. (Exception for me personally was when my son was getting his vaccination shots. Also, my daughter wanted to give up Tae Kwon Do we had to talk about commitment and follow-through, which is pretty tricky. Sometimes they don’t want to wash their face and hands, but I explain to them why it’s important, I don’t forcibly wash their face and hands.) If your child starts annoying their sibling through teasing and the sibling says No or Stop then the other child must stop. If another kid starts some sort of ‘harmless’ agression like copying another kid or trying to peer pressure them into something they don’t want to do and the kid says Stop or No or I Don’t Want To then you as the adult must stop the peer pressure.

This is so important for many reasons. It teaches children that their words have power. That they have a right to their bodies and a say in how their bodies can be touched. It teaches that their words have power even over adults, as you, the parent, do not touch your child when they say no. It teaches them that they can not be bullies and that they have to stop when someone else says no. It shows that they can depend on you to stop peer pressure and that their happiness is more important that what other think of them. It stops bullying, teasing, and other forms of ‘harmless’ agression. If someone does make them feel uncomfortable, they know that they should talk about it.

If you work in a school, are a parent, or in another setting where you’re responsible for kids, start out by telling them the No rule. It will decrease bickering, teasing, and bullying and make it a more safe space for the kids to be in.

My house isn’t a perfect house of peace after practicing in this rule, by no means! My kids still argue. We still roughhouse, tickle, and chide each other. We just stop when someone asks us to. If someone does not want to eat peas they do not have to eat peas. Outside of our family, we ask before we touch anyone else - “Can I give you a hug?” It teaches respect. The No rule has taught me to respect my children, which is the biggest gift I can give them for later in life, when they are being pressured to do something they do not want to, when they see they can take advantage of someone but they don’t because that person said No, or when they see someone else being hurt that needs their help. If someone says Stop You Must Stop.

seriouslyamerica:

TW: domestic violence

quickhits:

You can stop pretending that guns protect women now.

New York Times:

Early last year, after a series of frightening encounters with her former husband, Stephanie Holten went to court in Spokane, Wash., to obtain a temporary order for protection.

Her former husband, Corey Holten, threatened to put a gun in her mouth and pull the trigger, she wrote in her petition. He also said he would “put a cap” in her if her new boyfriend “gets near my kids.” In neat block letters she wrote, “ He owns guns, I am scared.”

The judge’s order prohibited Mr. Holten from going within two blocks of his former wife’s home and imposed a number of other restrictions. What it did not require him to do was surrender his guns.

About 12 hours after he was served with the order, Mr. Holten was lying in wait when his former wife returned home from a date with their two children in tow. Armed with a small semiautomatic rifle bought several months before, he stepped out of his car and thrust the muzzle into her chest. He directed her inside the house, yelling that he was going to kill her.

What saved Holten was not another gun, but a phone. She dial 911, then hid the phone. “The dispatcher heard Ms. Holten begging for her life and quickly directed officers to the scene,” the report tells us.

“For all its rage and terror, the episode might well have been prevented,” NYT goes on. “Had Mr. Holten lived in one of a handful of states, the protection order would have forced him to relinquish his firearms. But that is not the case in Washington and most of the country, in large part because of the influence of the National Rifle Association and its allies.”

I know that the NRA would argue that Stephanie Holten would’ve been better off had she been armed too. But exchanging gunfire with a lunatic does not guarantee success. And since her kids were present, tragedy would be all that more likely. Gun fanatics live in a fantasy world, informed by action movies, where the “good guy” always comes out on top. But in the real world, criminals aren’t automatically incompetent. Justice is a human construct, not a law of physics. In a gun v. gun confrontation, either party can lose. This is why people with guns are more likely to be shot — if I’m a criminal and someone pulls a gun on me, they’re my primary target. And of course, belief in the “good guys always win” theory promoted by the NRA causes people to take stupid risks.

The fact is that there are people who should not have guns. More guns is not the answer here, fewer guns obviously are. There are situations — and this is one — where meeting the NRA’s definition of “pro-gun” is in reality just pro-crime. Cory Holton is obviously scum. He can live without his guns.

And his ex-wife and kids would stand a better chance of living as well. A woman’s chance of being killed by an abuser increases by 700% if he has access to a firearm. That’s just a fact. And it’s a fact the NRA doesn’t want you to know, because they want to be able to sell guns and ammo to criminals like Stephanie Holton’s stalking, abusive ex-husband.

Your information is being catered to your every whim and taste. It’s easy to create a silo around yourself that becomes a house of mirrors. Sure, it’s fun to follow things you like, but that’s not the real world.

Take care to follow things you don’t like. These days you can follow people and learn from people who you wouldn’t normally talk to, safely, and at a distance to understand why it is you don’t like something. That way you can find out if you don’t like them because they’re truly antithetical to your values, or if they simply have a different opinion that’s still worth considering. Many people I never would get to meet in real life I now know much more about because of social media. Their first-person, primary source access is valuable.

This does not quite mean one ought to follow everything they find disgusting. If you have a passion for something, follow its opposite to make sure you know what you think you know. If you want to ban guns, for example, make sure you follow someone or a blog that advocates for gun rights. Take any issue you want to know more about and follow your opponent as well. That’s part of being well-informed and combats polarization that gums up progress.

In short, you can buy one of those microphone echo toys in real life and listen to the sound of your voice reverberate. Why would you do that with your social media?

Well, that made my day! Thanks @UnvirtuousAbbey!

Vessel

Fine Folk

Find Me

What I’m doing

What Didn't Make It Into The Bible?

Want to stop rape? Teach your children the No rule, and follow it

Social Media Silo