Let's Welcome Stan...

So I feel it is my duty to inform all you people living close to Winnipeg that we have a great chance to meet a real theologian. On November 6th at 7pm at St. Margaret's Anglican Church, Stanley Hauerwas will be giving a lecture titled 'Why Most North American are Afraid to Die." In the last years i have been encourage by his honesty. When i was an Resident Assistant at Providence College i read "Resident Aliens" which really helped me along in understanding the church. So if you do have Monday free please attend i promise you won't be disappointed. As for me i am still trying to figure out how to attend as i have Monday evening class and a paper due ..but i am still holding out that i might be able to make it...if not and any of you attend please fill me in on the details of Stan's lecture...

The $ 1.6 Million Christian Concert...

So we had the Franklin Graham thing this weekend..it went by fairly well..still think it is a waste of money. I think if we evaluate it as an evangelistic outreach..it was clearly an utter failure. For the simple reasons that about 85-90% of the audience was clearly christian. So if the purpose of spending all this money was to reach out to people clearly the festival failed. While that maybe more apart of the people in Winnipeg. Also in a class today one of the guys mentioned something that is very true...that truth without love..doesn't hold truth. This was in a response to how Graham communicated the message..he made some remarks that people would call 'bold' or frankly sounding hateful at times. I guess the whole conference doesn't really have a overall ring of sharing the love, which Graham stresses in his speech before calling people murders. but i do hope that people who did respond to the 'alter call' can meet christian that can love them..and bring them up in a loving community....

Well it's finally here...

Well this weekend the Franklin Graham Festival comes to Winnipeg. I think I have mixed emotions about the weekend. I think great things can/are happening through the organization..my only fear is that churches see the festival as the ones doing all the work, that the wok is done after the they leave..people have said the sinner's prayer and are going to heaven...i find this the huge downfall of conferences such as these. As well often that is the message given to people, say these words and life is good no more commitments. I was talking with a deacon at my church yesterday and she asked what the church can do to make people have a 'deeper' faith..and i was responded well there first experience with the gospel they were told basically just say this pray...so its hard now to go back and tell them well actually its a life long thing. Gorden T. Smith in "Beginning Well", does an excellent job in exploring christian conversion and authentic transformation. This book has helped me refine what it means to live the christian life. I know the Grahams and others have always said that they only have one message, but what happens when this message creates a culture where people don't have a great knowledge of the Bible, i think we need to reevaluate what the message we are sending while I think the Grahams do great work, but I just find that there words create a Christians who view the sinners prayers as the end...not the beginning.

A different mood...

This past week...i had one of those strange experiences one that illuminates something special. This week my baptist church had communion, we do it every 4 weeks. I think the odd thing was the mood sort of depressing. As we took the wine and the bread, everyone was told to look inside themselves and remember what Jesus did for them. I think it was odd that basically everyone was told to feel ashamed and grateful for what Jesus had done. I think this is odd or maybe it is a result of a misunderstanding of a word. Often times remembering is seen as looking in our individual self and feel repetitive.

While, i don't think that in itself is wrong, but it turns communion about us, not about Jesus or what Jesus is inviting us to. I feel the root of the baptist form of communion springs from the most problematic nature of Paul’s Eucharist discourse in 1 Corinthians is the Greek word anamnesis. While anamnesis in verse 25 renders “remembrance”, the true meaning behind the word is lost due to the difference behind the English and Jewish meaning of the word. In the twentieth century, “remembering is a solitary expierence involving mental recalling. However, for ancient Jews and early Christians remembrance was a corporate act in which the event remembering through ritual repetition. To remember was to do something, not to think about something.” This fundamental difference gives insight into the ‘do’ nature of Jesus and the early Christians. Modern Christians enjoy the discussion and contemplation too much. Therefore missing out in the Eucharist involvement in of a person’s entire being. So an over individualizing of what taking part of the communion means for the early church distorts the fullness of communion.

In the past year, i have been at odds with the typical protestant version of communion. But, i feel that this past week, this idea of be depressed/ feel bad about yourself during communion should be more celebratory, not you feeling bad, should we be happy that we have part in this life with Jesus and what the blood and the wine transforms us not to think but to act. But, later that Sunday I went to a unique kindof Anglican church, St. Benidicts Table(http://www.stbenedictstable.ca/">http://www.stbenedictstable.ca/). I think i've been desiring to go to St. Benedicts for the last six months, so i was really anticipating going. I would say it is everything i had hoped it would be particulary the communion element of the service. I got a sense that I was celebrating with people not condeming people.  I wonder what the different messages about communion/eucharist is the wine and the bread a call to repentence or celebration. I question if people in the early church would have meet daily to condem and remember there sins or rather celebrate the life Jesus gives us through the blood and the wine...just some thoughts...a rant that i am sure will continue over my life. But, I feel that to feel sad during communion is at odds with the message i see in the Gospel and New Testament.

A Strange Holiday...

So sometimes I hear a thought that rejuvenates a thought that you feel needs to repeated due to its significance. So I was listening to Democracy Now! the other day and much of the discussion revolved around a group of people who are protesting Columbus Day. I found the conversation intriguing on how when certain people in society get idolized that it permeates a thought into society that goes unknown since it so linked to national pride. I believe this is the case of Columbus. Why do we celebrate his day, i guess the standard answer would be since he discovered America, right? Well I guess that's how it is told in History..but is that really what happened and what about this man should be idolized. Well, first off Columbus was a slave trader not exactly a trait we should want to emulate, also by putting Columbus on such a Peddlestool in elementary school it gives off an impression that his action were fine. So the actions of Columbus which can't be seen as anything other than genocide and rape.

I don't think Columbus really liberated the land from the demonized/ barbaric Native people, but was more based out of greed and wanting to oppress a people who were the rightful owners of the great country. I think the lie that is at the root of this story is that all progress is good. It seems that the action of Columbus and the people who 'liberated' this paradise we live in from the evils of Native people. The idea of progress seems to tell us that since Columbus and the 'enlightened' European knew what was best for America. Naturally since they knew what was best for the people, even if that meant killing off the people who were living there peacefully before that is fine. Since, it is all in the name of progress. I guess when we see the history like that, we recognize...i hope, that maybe its not something to be celebrated rather requires repentance. That my status as a European and that i am blessed in my culture is due to people being killed.... it strikes me deep that this status I have is because of the blood of others...needs to be used to restore my brothers and sisters to a rightful status along side me. And all I can really say or ask them is for forgiveness. As we American and Canadians celebrate our holidays, Thanksgiving and Columbus Day, may we realize the atrocities that were committed to our fellow humans. Something we need to deal with and not neglect but a reality of anyone who would have status in this country because of the oppression of other......