Surviving America

On Language and Transcendence

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 06:48:00 +0000

This is just a quick post, but is a snapshot of a massive thought I've been pushing into.

I've talked a lot lately about love - the kind of love that Jesus described when he said "Love your neighbor as yourself." I often say that it means caring for another person the same way that you care for yourself. I say that it's the foundational virtue, that it's the greatest commandment, that God is love.

I'm always thinking of new ways to describe it because I build understanding through description. The other day I was describing what I meant by love and found myself using the term "transcendent." Love, I said, is transcendent; its goal is for someone to transcend himself so as to see himself and others in their natural equality. And having said it, I was a little taken aback at how 'eastern' I sounded.

Transcending the self is of prime importance in Hindu and Buddhist traditions. In my understanding, "Nirvana" can be passably defined as transcending the self. And here I was describing Jesus' teachings in the same terms, and being very impressed by well how those terms embraced his message.

In fact, my current favorite description of love is: the transcendent virtue. To love is to act upon the observation that those around you deserve your care as much as you do. Love is transcendence.

If transcendence, the means and ends of much eastern religion, is so similar to love, the means and ends of much western religion, I wonder how many other similarities we aren't seeing. I wonder how many of our differences, which we feel must be solved through persuasion and debate (or worse), could be aptly overcome by a good translator.

A house burning

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 08:57:00 +0000

The beginning of a song I started writing a couple days ago:

There's a house burning across the street
I think I hear people dying
And I watch its glow upon my feet
And wonder why I'm not crying

These lyrics surfaced on my consciousness while driving through Balboa Park earlier this week. I wasn't trying to create at the time - they sang themselves to me.

One week ago I got news that a man I used to work with in northern Uganda was brutally murdered. Though I was not especially close with him I did appreciate him, and the news affected me deeply. It sat me down and laid out before me, once again, all the disparity between our wealthy homeland and places like northern Uganda, the great gap between our opportunities and theirs, between our vast array of choices and their imprisonment in cycles of poverty and violence.

Sitting here in San Diego I am impotent to address this tragedy; I can not offer comfort or commiseration, peace or vengeance. I can not be there to celebrate his life or help lay him in the finality of the open earth.

One thing I can do is live my life with constant remembrance of our suffering neighbors in Uganda, in Sudan, Congo, and Somalia, in Sierra Leone and Cote d'Ivoire, in Burma and North Korea, and in hundreds of other locales throughout the globe, letting our common humanity and innate equality inform my choices.

I realized last week, though, that I haven't been doing this. Many of my decisions have the oily sheen of self-absorption, even though I know better than most how little I need my own concern, and how much others might rightly benefit from it.

Moreover, I realized again that my empathy is extremely limited (empathy in this case synonimizing with love or selflessness). Though I have seen great suffering around the world, my attention seems so easily lulled away from anything of consequence. Hence, I believe, the song lyrics that my subconscious delivered up to me: "I wonder why I'm not crying."

Perhaps these are the growing pains of a heart. More to come on these themes.

Experiments in Creative Action

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Thu, 29 May 2008 00:22:00 +0000

Monday evening, Memorial Day evening, I sat with an older couple whose vitality blurred the marks that times leaves on most people. He’s around 80, I think, and she’s probably a bit younger. He was a pastor for decades. I listened as he voiced a dissatisfaction with the American church, and specifically his local church, that was strikingly similar to what my friends and I have been discussing.

And I listened as he said that, in his decades studying the church from all angles, he had not come across anything much better than what this local church had to offer. He had not found a good model of what faithful community should look like.

80-years-wise and what was this man’s response? Try something new. Start something outside of the box.

 Creative Action!

I’ve heard it now from every generation – we are not satisfied with the easy demands of Sunday morning church. We can see that people living the way Jesus taught would create a strikingly different kind of community, and it’s clear that if the story is true at all then it calls us to follow that way with vigor. And the church has taught us to trust the story.

But we haven’t seen what this different way of life or its community looks like, at least not firsthand. We haven’t seen it modeled. We can read about it in Acts, and we can follow different experiments that are emerging around the country and the world. But eventually we come to the edge of what we know, what we have seen, desiring the next step but left without a clear path.

The way forward is creative action: to embed the principles that Jesus taught as deeply as possibly in your paradigm – love for God, love for neighbor, generosity, hope, service, equality, etc. – and to remember the best of what we’ve seen, then create things to do that seem to follow and fulfill those principles and examples.

Do experiments in love; do experiments in generosity; do experiments in hope. Test everything. If it works, repeat it with improvements. If it doesn’t figure out why not and try something new. Test, learn, apply, repeat. Create new ways of loving God and of loving the people around you. Try a new way of serving the poor. Test a new way to apply the idea of equality. Give someone something you’ve never thought to give, or give to someone you’ve never given to. See what happens. Write it down.

And tell me how it goes! I want to know. I’m going to be sharing and discussing different stories of creative action, wherever they happen. Send me stories that you find, or stories that you create. And I’ll share mine as well.

 Let’s figure out how to live.

Jason Schwartzman Ponders a Trip to Burma

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:25:00 +0000

I've been a little slow on the blogging lately (many (many!) thoughts to come). For now, though, I saw this video with Jason Schwartzman on the US Campaign for Burma website. It's too the point, but funny! Most of the videos from their 30 day campaign have been lackluster, but this I wanted to share:

30 Days, 1 Million Voices

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Mon, 12 May 2008 07:35:00 +0000

If you're not already watching the 30 Days For 1 Million Voices campaign for Burma, check it out. The US Campaign for Burma is putting out one short video every day for 30 days to rally 1 million people to speak out about the genocide in Burma.

Burma (also known as Myanmar) is a country next to Thailand in Southeast Asia that has been ruled by a military junta for the past 19-years. The ruling party is wiping out many of Burma's ethnic minorities, committing several genocides at once, with international impunity because it is acting within its own borders. There is much that can be done, though, from serving Burmese refugees to pressuring China to stop supporting the military government. Sign up for the US Campaign for Burma and keep a hand ready for action.

Six Words for This Morning

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sun, 04 May 2008 18:37:00 +0000

Beeep! Snooze. Beeep! Snooze. Beeep! Snooze.

The Socially Proactive Stamp

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sun, 04 May 2008 07:34:00 +0000

I just read Seth Godin's latest post about "green marketing," and how it stands to be misunderstood or abused. That is, until someone can put a number to it. Once you can see the impact of your choices on a scale from 1 to 100 you'll make better choices, and the companies that offer those choices will prosper.

It's like the "fairtrade" stamp. Before that stamp your average consumer had no way to verify whether workers were being paid enough for their work. Now, at least we know that someone is looking into it, even if we don't know all the criteria that the fairtrade stamp represents.

Same with the "organic" stamp. I don't know exactly what it takes to grow organic apples, nor do I know all the ways in which they are better for me and for the world than regular apples. But I know that someone knows, and that they stamped it.

As the practice of social business takes off, in all its various forms, there is going to be a lot of confusion. The mixed motives of profit and compassion make for murky mission statements. I've seen it myself in building Acholi Beads, my first socially proactive business. The models of non-profit and for-profit are so firmly entrenched in consumer mentalities that they will gladly buy from a company that makes no claims as to how it treats its workers, but will thumb their noses at one that promises great things for the poor. Because there is no stamp to prove it.

As with "green" marketing, there is ample opportunity for companies to neglect or abuse the concept of social business in order to make a buck. So if we are going to make this thing as powerful as it can be, we need to start working towards that stamp. People need that stamp, just like I need the organic stamp.

My friends Aaron, Daniel, Derek, Ben, Kevin and Clayton are all experimenting with socially proactive business models, and I know there are many more out there looking to do the same. Together we're going to learn how to do this right.

Try Harder...

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sun, 04 May 2008 04:22:00 +0000

My buddy Daniel came by our Acholi Beads locale at a local music festival today. The guy drips web savvy - you can actually follow the trail. Today the trail led back to his new blog "Try Harder to Suck Less." He kindly posted a video of a quick interview we did.

Check it out here.

Six Words for May 1, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Fri, 02 May 2008 16:26:00 +0000

Walked where San Diego meets Africa.

Six Words for April 23, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:17:00 +0000

Standing here, leaning into the future.

Six Words for April 22, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 04:49:00 +0000

Transition: A life in the re-making

Six Words for April 19, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 05:08:00 +0000

Sudanese kids, Ugandan beads, and me.

Six Words for April 17, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 05:35:00 +0000

Creative Action. Creative Action. Creative Action.

Life, captured in a short sentence

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 23:23:00 +0000

Like the new six word adventure? It was inspired by Smith Magazine. They held a contest for memoirs. Writers could use only six words. They could not use five. And they certainly could not use seven. So they had to be creative. Check out the video linked here. Life stories in only six words. Turns out, they say a lot.

Like Microsoft Word for the Human Machine

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 06:08:00 +0000

Community: the killer app of humanity.

[Update: I've changed my mind. I think love is the killer app of humanity. Community is what love looks like broadly lived.]

On television, creativity, and adventure

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 05:28:00 +0000

I was watching the debate between Obama and Clinton tonight and saw ads for upcoming television episodes: "This Thursday on Grey's Anatomy..." followed by references to past and upcoming fictional drama.

So many people are invested in these shows. They wait for the writers to dictate their emotions, to dream up their adventures and script their happy endings. When such passion awaits your passivity at the end of the day, it's much easier to live the life of the American consumer.

But what if we turned off the TV? What if we had to create our own stories? What if the only drama and comedy and adventure that we felt were for real, created and pursued by us, in the real world around us? What if sitting on the couch was the least interesting part of our day?

Oh what a world it would be. And I'd like to build it. I'm not very good yet at creating adventure, at coming up with the situations that we need for fulfillment, that will replace TV. But I know some people who are. Let's make that happen. Let's create our own lives. Let's live adventurously. Let's be the show. And let's invite everyone to join the cast.

Six Words for April 16, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 05:09:00 +0000

Ate lunch quietly in the sun.

Six words for April 15, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 07:30:00 +0000

Building a rocket? Or another wagon?

It's for everyone

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 06:07:00 +0000

What percentage of people in America can work for a non-profit? If everyone gives 10% to non-profits, and 90% of that should be used for programs, and only 50% of what's left is used for salaries, then at most, one half of 1% of people can work for a non-profit. And that's being generous.

100% of people can work for socially proactive businesses.

The Hard Work of Community

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:57:00 +0000

We're so good at making money. Or so good at trying, at least. We work more hours per week than any society on earth, ever, so that we can bring home the paycheck. The principle of hard work for hard-earned cash is sunk deeply into our paradigms even before we can pronounce 'paradigms.'

But here we are, checks banked, enough money to buy all that we need and more, and not satisfied. Here we are, distracted and isolated. Here we are, lonely. So terribly lonely.

Loneliness, I've recently discovered, is nothing more (or less) than the desire for community. Some will tell you that it's the need for romance or marriage or sex. But it's not, not this deep, pervasive loneliness, the one that feels like the inexpressible inside of you is shouting silently. That one is the desire for a rich, vibrant, deep community.

This community only exists when a group of people decide that they are going to love each other. That's what the church is. Remember what Jesus said about spotting his followers? You'll know them by their love for one another.

But this kind of community doesn't come easily. Most people seem to think (I know I did) that if they're relatively nice, normal, perhaps even interesting people then community will rush along and embrace them and they will be satisfied. But it doesn't come. It's never as rich as they know it ought to be, as they need it to be.

That is because, just like working year after year to build wealth, it takes sacrifice and commitment to build community. It takes a thousand little tasks - scheduling time to converse, asking questions, washing someone else's dishes, giving rides to the airport. And it takes major paradigm shifts - I'm responsible for your well being, your needs are as important to me as my own. And until we are ready to do the hard work of community we will remain rich and lonely, wondering why our paychecks can't hold a decent conversation.

For those of you who have agreed that the church as we see it on Sunday mornings is not all that it could be, I have no proven answers. What I do have is a direction that I'm headed, and that I'm confident will lead us closer to the lifestyle that Jesus taught. And that is the direction of deeper, more committed community. The direction of more love for one another. I don't presume to know what that looks like in all contexts, or your context, or even my own half the time. But I challenge you to begin doing the hard work of community. I have a hunch it's going to pay off better than any paycheck I've ever gotten. (Though that's not saying much.)

Six words for April 14, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:38:00 +0000

"... as centuries, loaded, fragrant" and tiring.

- from a favorite Emerson quote.

Six words for April 13, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 04:27:00 +0000

[Hemingway was once challenged to tell a whole story using only six words. His offering: "For sale, baby shoes, never used." I'm going to try recapping my days using six words. Just for fun.]

Drove from Phoenix, no air conditioning.

Those who sweat together...

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:18:00 +0000

I'm on may way out to Phoenix for the weekend for my friend J-Sad's bachelor party. Ironically I'm also on a parasite-killer medication that forbids me alcohol. So it'll be a fun weekend of drunk-watching.

Following on the Dear American Christian Church post and discussion, I'm working on a post about "the hard work of community." Community, in my mind, ties together a lot of the truth that I've learned about God, love, and humanity, and is a key to making some necessary changes in how we live faithful lives. I'm looking forward to hearing all of your thoughts!

Subscribe to my feed to the right to keep up to date.

"Don't tell people how to live their lives. Just tell them stories."

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 05:58:00 +0000

Quote from Dr. Randy Pausch. See his "Last Lecture" here. Worth every moment.

Dear American Christian Church,

noreply@blogger.com (James) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 23:34:00 +0000

- Putting a fish on the back of your SUV does not justify your excess.

- Caring for the poor, the sick, the widows and orphans, will always be more important than your new building project.

- Stop making watered-down versions of the things that the secular market is really good at. Trust in who you were meant to be and do what only you can do. If you don't know what that is, then stop everything and figure it out.

- You can be edgy, but your edge is a totally different edge than theirs.

- No number of NOTW stickers will make Christianity cool.

- I should know that you're a Christian by your love, not by your (choose one:) bumpersticker, t-shirt, CD collection, favorite books list, etc.

- Jesus didn't come so that one day all his disciples could live in really quiet, comfortable suburbs. Jesus didn't even have a house.

- Jesus didn't teach us how to be good CEOs. That's what business schools are for. Jesus taught us how to be good people.

- Spiritual growth comes from doing things, not from reading them.

- Jesus never said to his disciples: "Cultivate in yourselves a mindset such that if God were ever to call you to do something, you would be willing to do it." No, he said, "Follow me." Now.

- "Because Jesus is the only way," is not an appropriate answer when asked why you think that every other religion is wrong. Think about it.

- This whole Sunday morning thing has to stop.

- Or at least get an extreme restructuring.

- The word "communion" comes from the same root as "community" because it was meant to be a social affair, not a "be quiet, look at the floor, and eat this wafer" affair.