you don't have to live like a refugee

We're not used to the phrase "refugee" being used to describe people in the U.S..

That happens mostly to people "over there." People not like us. People who are not "gawd fearin. People - who - if the truth were known - are probably gettin' what they deserve - you just can't always get the truth from this here liberal news media..."

All that's changed. Perhaps forever. Right here in river city (literally).

Disrupt the social fabric - pull the covers back just a little - and you see people acting like - well - "people over there." It's been there all along - it just takes a disaster, or a Rodney King, to reveal it.

Equally tragic are those who still have electricity and homes in which to live - who daily act like refugees. Haughty, high and mighty perched atop their judgement seat prounouncing edicts in a world court of their own making in which they are chief justice.

They are refugees of a differenct kind.

Dislocated from reality - disoriented in their global thinking - desperatly searching for (more) food and (more) shelter...

The gospels recount for us that Jesus knows what it's like to be a refugee. And in his teachings - essentially - tells us - we don't have to live like one...

Elvis has left the building

Notes from my west loop loft terrace in Chicago:

As the sun sets in the west it does so behind the spire of a church building established in 1869. At one time, I'm guessing, it was the highest pinnacle in this part of the city. A lone cross sits atop one part of the building. A silent yet solid reminder of the dominance of 19th century "church culture."

The sun rises behind a wall of high rises. There's the Sears tower - still the tallest building in the U.S. A little further north is the headquarters of Boeing - the largest aereospace company in the world. Moving still further north is the Hancock buidling - the world's tallest condo's. Other archectural gems dot the cityscape. Noticeably absent however, are any crosses. None are needed.

Sometime in the last quarter of the 20th century, "church culture" became merely one more booth at the carnival of the absurd - having been moved off the main stage it enjoyed for centuries.

Adherents of "church culture" have not quite got over it. Witness the anger that is way too close to the surface when anything in Pop culture does not go their way.

It's time to replace the anger with the only genuine expression of the cross there ever was - loving God through loving your neighbor as yourself. Even the neighbor who never knew the day "church culture" reigned.

It's time to get over it - the sun has already set on church spires with crosses that were tallest thing in town.

stewardship in california

Plastic surgeons and plastic money.

Maybe "The Graduate" was right - the future is plastic.

No more plastic Jesus though, He's the Jesus who condones conspicuous consumption and allows alterations of anything anatomically alterable.

Talk about using financial resources in a way that benefits others and you leave yourself open to open contempt. After all, the only stewardship verse most people know is "don't let the right hand know what the left hand" is doing - and they know that one out of context. Eyes must be closed wide shut when paying plastic bills or visiting Dr. Plastic.

In the end, plastic body parts and plastic money is artifical. Never quite as good as the real thing.