Tribe of Los Angeles

Happy Thanksgiving, and Remember "Buy Nothing Day" is Coming...

Everybody:

Have a great Thanksgiving, but be sure to mark you calanders to my favorite new holiday, "Buy Nothing Day" this November 26th...

Make the busiest shopping day of the year a day of "culture jamming" and of just enjoying not buying stuff. Make it an 24 hour experiment, a fast from "consumerism" or a act of protest. But try it out.

This is an international holiday that has gone on for the last 15 years, where all you have to do is not finiancially consume stuff.  Don't buy gas. Don't buy a track off iTunes. Don't buy a stick of gum.  See what it feels like and what fills the space.

As it says on the above stencil, which you can download free here, "Draw Something, Sew Something, Cook Something, Sing Something, Make Somthing, Buy Nothing...November 26th!

Here are some user created posters from the Buy Nothing Day blog...

Black Rock City 2005

Satellite Image of Black Rock City, 2005

If you get the highest resolution image and look really carefully, you can see Playa Con Dios' trailer.  It's the little white dot at 4:20 and Catharsis, a little above the triangular road and Ubie...

(Why do I have to wait 9 more months to go back...?)

--jg5

Texas Town Adopts Corporate Name for Free TV

What people will do for free HBO. For a decade.

Who needed the name "Clark, Texas" anyway?

Pray for Rebecca and Family

As Hank just sent out to the email list:

As you may or may not have heard, Rev. Rebecca's father passed away this week. Their family will be gathering in Colorado this Tuesday for the funeral. They have asked if our prayers would go out to them...This also means that the McSparran family will not be in town for Tribe this weekend...

A Thought Experiment

Okay just a little experiment:

Pat Robertson (still fresh from his advocating assasination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez) just made this statement regarding Dover residents who voted several school board members out who supported the teaching of Intelligent Design in local science classes.

"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover. If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don't wonder why He hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for His help because he might not be there."

Here is the experiment: Just for a second think about the "pIcture of God" that Robertson is painting to the world with this.

• Small and weak, capable of being "voted out" of town
• Kinda petty and vengeful, willing to stand by and willing to abandon a city of people to disaster over a school board vote
• An absent God, not caring for people asking for his help

Later, after this quote was picked up by the press, he issued this "correction" that if you really read it, doesn't correct much:

"I was simply stating that our spiritual actions have consequences and it's high time we started recognizing it. God is tolerant and loving, but we can't keep sticking our finger in His eye forever. If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin…maybe he can help them."

Again with the "don't call on God," or "I recommend they call on Charles Darwin" lines... and note, the treat of God's curse is still in there:  "if they have future problems in Dover..."

In Scripture Christians are called "God's Ambassadors" and are told that when we talk to the world it is "as though God were making his appeal through us."

That is a crazy heavy responsiblity, and I'm sure I fail at it in a lot of ways.

But I see the peevish, weak, bitter caricature of a god in statements and re-statements today from Pat Robertson, I realize what damage we can do when with that responsiblity.

- Tim

"Gobsmacked"

I haven't used the word "gobsmack" in a sentence ever, till now.

Here goes. I am "gobsmacked" at what issues the Church as a whole chooses to speak out on, and the issues that it chooses to be mostly silent on.

Here is a key, key, key one that I feel very passionately about:

We are at a critical window, a time when our culture is deciding how to define the lowest low end, the bare minimum expected ethical treatment of political and military prisoners. In essence, we are defining what we as Americans is and isn't torture.

It astonishes me that the Christian voice is not more clearly vocal here.

Especially when Jesus himself spoke very directly about our treatment of prisoners as a specific metric to our relationship to Him. In a parable Jesus talks about the end of time, when those right with God ask Him:

'When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

And the King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

That is pretty serious stuff. Whatever we do to our prisoners we have done to Jesus. To me, that needs to be the baseline on the Christian communities voice on this matter.

(And you have to admit, it isn't like we as a Church have had the best history on the subject. We should have learned by now)

I'm further gobsmacked (see how I worked that word in again) by the Church's mostly silence, since this isn't even a partisan issue. It doesn't land as a "liberal" or "conservative" issue.

Republicans like Senators John McCain, Chuck Hagel and almost every other senator has voted for language clearly defining torture, forbiding "cruel and inhumane or degrading" treatment and limiting interrogation techniques to what is in the official Army manual. This passed 90-9 in the Senate.

But this language (which was attached to a military spending bill) has been threatened to be vetoed by the Whitehouse and has been actively lobbied against by the Vice President. Cheney is seeking an exemption be added by the House to allow the CIA to practice "cruel and inhumane" treatment that goes beyond the army field manual.

One exception to the Christian silence on the matter is Sojourners. There may well be others, I hope so.  If so, please post to the comments.

Here is an online petition from Sojourners on this topic to Speaker of the House Hastert asking that he support the bipartisan Mcain ammendment without any exceptions.

-- Tim

Lost Things

Lost things....

This has been a hard a season for myself many of my friends as we've seen in some while. I'd seen a number of stories of Tribe folks this last month over the email list.

We'll be happy to chat about our story with folks more personally (rather than on an impersonal open internet) but suffice it to say both Laura and I have had our personal, painful losses this last month as well. We're doing really well as a couple going through this shared loss, but when cherished hopes die, saying "it hurts" is as much an understatement as I can imagine.

As Laura and I -- and many of our friends -- go through what I'd call textbook examples of minor depression over these kinds of lost things, one thought came to me that seemed likely worth sharing:

It's that we all carry around these lists of cherished things, lost to us. All of us.

Maybe we can be defined as people as much by our cherished losses -- by what things are on that list -- as much as we are what we have, or hope to have as cherished possessions.

Things on these  lists are not things to be ashamed of, but maybe symbols of who we are, what we value, what and whom we mourn for. Things that in a safe place -- like Church should be -- we can share with one another to help heal the losses.

God seems happy to be defined by His cherished losses too...  Caring for us, and Jesus seemed to go way out of His way to dream up various stories to illustrate that love for cherished losses - lost coins, lost sheep,lost jewelry, lost children.

- Tim

Kind Words

A circular reference to be sure, but thanks to Karen Ward at the Submergence blog for pointing folks our way, she writes:

"the vibe of tribe --
my favorite emerging church in los angeles is tribe of l.a. (with pastor rebecca ver straten-mcsparran). if you are in the l.a. area DO visit them as they are awesome, and a sister church of COTA (along with Moot in london). i just found out that tribe has a new community blog. so check out tribe's website and their blog..."

Certainty Mangement (Postscript)

A quote I wish I found before finishing up the previous series of posts on certainty management:

"...the emerging generation does not find certaintist expressions as amenable as less certaintist expressions — even when the same thing can be said in different ways. Certainty denies the frailty of humans, the limitations of our own minds, the need for conversation and relationship and communal growth, and it sets itself up for collapse the minute a more complete grasp of knowledge is found."

-- Author/Blogger Scot Mcknight

"Immovable Objects"

I love this quote from Bono from this month's Rolling Stone interview:

"I'm the sort of character who's got to have an anchor. I want to be around immovable objects. I want to build my house on a rock, because even if the waters are not high around the house, I'm going to bring back a storm. I have that in me. So it's sort of underpinning for me....It's a plumb line for me. In the Scriptures, it is self-described as a clear pool that you can see yourself in, to see where you're at, if you're still enough."

- Tim