onehouse

We're 1/1000 better than you are.

I enjoy watching sports of all kinds. I puzzle over the skills, the history of many of the sports (personally I think skateboarding should be in before BMX), and the destruction of the human body through injury, drugs, and prolonged agony displayed directly alongside the promotion of the body's incredible abilities. I think some of our Canadian announcers and athletes are aware of how sports parallels both the human story and the mythological hero's journey. The displays of nationalism I could do without even as I find myself succumbing to some kind of bizzare pride in my country because we can hit a puck hard or we picked up a few medals somewhere.

George Orwell, "The Sporting Spirit" (1945):

I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations, and that if only the common peoples of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the battlefield. Even if one didn't know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles.

Nearly all the sports practised nowadays are competitive. You play to win, and the game has little meaning unless you do your utmost to win. On the village green, where you pick up sides and no feeling of local patriotism is involved. it is possible to play simply for the fun and exercise: but as soon as the question of prestige arises, as soon as you feel that you and some larger unit will be disgraced if you lose, the most savage combative instincts are aroused. Anyone who has played even in a school football match knows this. At the international level sport is frankly mimic warfare. But the significant thing is not the behaviour of the players but the attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators, of the nations who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, and seriously believe -- at any rate for short periods -- that running, jumping and kicking a ball are tests of national virtue.

Taking stock: the wide field

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.

Rumi

Religion for a captive audience

I had a choice to leave this kind of thing. I'd hate to think of being forced back into another few years of adolescent spiritual practice and fake behavior modification in order to guarantee myself a second chance at life or just a better place to go to the bathroom. I'd be pretty peeved to know my tax money was going into this ... umm...what is it called.. oh yes.. "faith based initiative".

In early 2003, Americans United for Separation of Church and State joined with a group of Iowa taxpayers and inmates to challenge the InnerChange program in federal court.

In ruling on that case, Judge Pratt noted that the born-again Christian staff was the sole judge of an inmate’s spiritual transformation. If an inmate did not join in the religious activities that were part of his “treatment,” the staff could write up disciplinary reports, generating demerits the inmate’s parole board might see. Or they could expel the inmate.

And while the program was supposedly open to all, in practice its content was “a substantial disincentive” for inmates of other faiths to join, the judge noted. Although the ministry itself does not condone hostility toward Catholics, Roman Catholic inmates heard their faith criticized by staff members and volunteers from local evangelical churches, the judge found. And Jews and Muslims in the program would have been required to participate in Christian worship services even if that deeply offended their own religious beliefs.

and

“The state has literally established an Evangelical Christian congregation within the walls of one of its penal institutions, giving the leaders of that congregation, i.e., InnerChange employees, authority to control the spiritual, emotional and physical lives of hundreds of Iowa inmates,” Judge Pratt wrote. “There are no adequate safeguards present, nor could there be, to ensure that state funds are not being directly spent to indoctrinate Iowa inmates.”

World Aids Day

I envision the year when every Canadian will see December 1, World AIDS Day, as a day when they work not for themselves but for the broader human family.  On that day, each Canadian will give up their income to help combat HIV infection around the globe.  Surely we can each give up one day a year for those who battle courageously each day of their lives to see their families survive and thrive.
- Dr. Jane Philpott, founder of Give a Day.

Days like this are truly a gift. If you spend any part of your life trying to listen, to pay attention to the kind of love that is being whispered into the world, this kind of focus can really help to put a sharper point on your crayon of choice.

My friend Deegy has said it better than I ever could:

Ulitmately, I would like to have a better grasp of what is happening in Africa around this pandemic.  It is an issue, like many daunting world issues, that seems so distant to my everyday life here in North America.  Although I have increasingly met more and more young clients at the shelter who are affected by AIDS, which helps bring it into clearer focus for me by putting a face and name to the struggle, I still wrestle with apathy around the cause, perhaps because of the sheer magnitude of the issue, but more precisely because the pain, suffering and stigma of the disease remains largely hidden from me.

So what can one do?  Much of what I've learned the past few years has begun wth listening.  Listen to those who are afflicted with the disease; listen to the family members, friends and front-line workers who engage on a day to day basis with AIDS patients; and listen to the heart of God which longs to beat with ours in care and compassion.

I encourage you to read his post and add your bit of color to the (RED)emption campaign just for the sheer joy of it. Tell 'em Onehouse sent you. If you've already donated, put another $10 in the pot in honor of this day. Choose your color from the crayon box and scribble all over the place.

A Muslim Leader in Brooklyn

The New York Times article on a 37 year old imam called, A Muslim Leader in Brooklyn, Reconciling Two Worlds

Imam:

The word means invitation. It refers to the duty of Muslims to invite, or call, others to the faith. Unlike Catholicism or Judaism, Islam has no ordained clergy. The Prophet Muhammad was the religion's first imam, or prayer leader, Islam's closest corollary to a rabbi or priest; schools like the Dawah are its version of a seminary or rabbinate.

Making time to listen...

I have just finished listening to The Massey Lectures with Stephen Lewis. I cannot emphasize enough how we should be passing this link around, getting the book or CDs' and listening to them in groups. It is a challenging listen and will stretch both brain and heart. For those of us who skirt around this giant word "Africa", wringing our hands and vascillating between helplessness and self-righteousness, it is a good place to begin for a more informed response.

There is no better day than this one, dedicated to Remembrance of horrors past, to be reminded of our duties to one another as human beings sometimes lost in the gears of machines run by tiny men under the guise of an "international community" whose voices should not be bigger than our own.   

Desperately Seeking Relevance.

Hurray for Darren Hughes' brilliant blog post on relevance:

I've cherry-picked comments here, but "relevance," it seems to me, has become evangelical slang for "familiar comfort." And, to be blunt, I can't think of a more damning critique of the church. It's the type of relevance that leads to books like The Maker's Diet and Wild at Heart, books that capitalize on "secular" trends (the Atkins craze or Mars/Venus pop philosophy) by refinishing them with a sanctified varnish. I mean, do I need Relevant magazine to tell me The Da Vinci Code "meets all the expectations of a great suspense novel without being formulaic or predictable"? Can't I learn the same thing from a quick glance at the Best Sellers list?

It's hard to claim "spiritual insight" into culture while holding up the Matrix and bands like U2 as the end of the culture discussion. We are too lazy if we wave charges of "elitism" whenever challenged to read, watch and listen beyond our comfort, our mere entertainment zone. We end up looking like idiots talking about top ten this and that. We have no eyes and ears for the wide sea that is surrounding our shallow little puddle. We're only showing love for our own reflection.