Do you live in the Boston area?
I'll be there later this week. There's a public lecture Thursday night on Beacon Street in Newton Centre, Mass. I hope you'll come! You'll find info here.
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Processing Palestine … Guest blog from Greg Barrett
I'll have a lot more to say (and do) in the coming days and months regarding an experience in Israel and Palestine that I shared with a wonderful group of pilgrims. But in the meantime, here's another insightful guest blog from Greg Barrett, continued after the jump. Well worth reading!
Sifting fact from fiction on holy ground
In the ten days in January that I toured the Holy Land and attended lectures alongside Christian/spiritual authors, artists, activists such as Brian McLaren, Shane Claiborne, David Wilcox and more than a dozen other North Americans, Palestinian scholars and clergy kept asking us to focus on “the facts on the ground.” The request was repeated like a talking point or mantra. It’s been said of Israel that it fabricates “the facts on the ground” by constructing Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land, and then making claims to the land in the name of God and/or the Ottoman Empire.
But when Palestinians today talk about “facts on the ground” they are referring to something else entirely. They are asking (pleading) for objectivity. They want our conclusions (and their sovereign boundaries) to be drawn from the visible evidence and decades-old international law. Apparently, politics yoked to Zionist policies can murky the otherwise clearly stated laws on human rights and land occupation. [continued after the jump]
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Are you a fundamentalist? A one-question quiz
Quiz:
When I am presented with a new idea or proposal, my first question is more likely to be ...
___A. Is it acceptable to my religious/ideological community or belief system?
___B. Is it possibly true, valuable, and worth exploring?
If you chose A, you're probably a fundamentalist, and probably shouldn't read my new book because it will only get you in trouble. If you do decide to read it, don't let your fundamentalist friends know. Hide the book in a brown paper bag, and only read it in private.
If you chose B, you're curious, and I think you'll enjoy my new book.
Here's Seth Godin talking about fundamentalism and curiosity. (Thank to Mike Todd for this link.)
'curiosity' from Nic Askew on Vimeo.
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Countdown Day 8
The new book releases a week from tomorrow! If you haven't checked out the Thinkfwd video interview with Spencer Burke, you can watch it here or here. (You'll find a lot of other great stuff at both sites, and I'll have a new channel at theooze.tv starting next week... I hope you'll consider subscribing.) Here's today's quote:
In fact, during the exile, the dream of a peace-making kingdom becomes even more radical and all-encompassing. It now finds expression less in the language of land or space and more in terms of a day or a time. It morphs from a promised land to a promised time, the Day of the Lord, when oppressors will be overthrown, when corruption and infidelity will be replaced by virtue and integrity, and when the blessing, justice, and shalom of God flow like a river and fill the earth as waters fill the oceans. (59)
From A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith (available February 9, 2010)
"Very rarely a book appears that houses the power to change a generation. A New Kind of Christianity is nothing less than one of those moments."' (-Peter Rollins, Ikon)
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Countdown Day 9
If the first narrative situates us in God’s good, evolving world that has been marred and scarred by human evil, the second narrative situates us in humanity’s oppressive, resistant world in which God is active as liberator – freeing us from external and internal oppression and forming us as the people of God. (58)
From A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith (available February 9, 2010)
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