The Corner

if there's ever an answer, it's more love

At our worship gathering at the warehouse yesterday, it was all about love.

it made me think of 3 great bits from lovers I like:

• Jean Vanier, the founder of L'Arche, an international organization which creates communities where people with developmental disabilities and those who assist them share life together, writes in Community and Growth:

It is important that [those] who hear the call of God or of the poor come into community to be there as a sign of the Kingdom, a sign that love is possible and that there is hope.

• my beloved Dixie Chicks say it oh so well with More Love:

• Richard Rohr, the Franciscan priest and writer,

Nothing in this world is an end in itself, including Church, pastors, priests, bishops, popes, laws, Bible—nothing! Only God is an end; everything else is a means. Only God can save us, not the Church and not any formula, technique, or pious practice. The Church is a beautiful gift given by God to preach that word which will set us free. But when we instead preach "Church" itself, we are not necessarily proclaiming the Great Mystery. We often are preaching ourselves. Jesus never preached Israel, he preached Yahweh. He preached the absolute transcendence of Yahweh and fidelity and obedience to Yahweh. At the same time Jesus never put Israel down. He loved Israel. Insofar as Israel was true to the covenant and true to the prophets, Jesus was obedient to Israel, obedient to the priests, obedient to "the Church." But he wasn't afraid to keep knocking on the door. He kept inviting Israel to be true to itself. Jesus taught us to love the unlovely, exactly as it was. If we simply love that which is worthy of love, we will never love at all. The Lord loved "the Church," Israel, exactly as it was. You cannot love the Church as it was fifty years ago. That's a cop-out. The only Church you must love is the Church today.  New Great Themes of Scripture

When you’ve been involved in something like this, no matter how long ago it happened, no matter how long it’s been absent from the news, you’re fated, nonetheless, to always search it out. To be on alert for it somehow, every day of your life.

America America By Ethan Canin

today, live in a moment

yummy web goodness

Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, currently on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab. It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one’s aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you.

in praise of psalms & common prayer

This summer, we visited a few worship gathering at faith communities across the country.  While we were there, I missed our feral community. 

When we returned to that community this past Sunday, I realized how much I have missed reading the Psalms & praying together in common prayer. The Hebrew word ‎, תהילים, or "praises" describes a set of songs & prayers that were bound into a book, providing a common tune & tongue for communities of faith & practice all the way to the time of time of David, the second king of Israel in approx. 1100-900 BCE. 

That is 3,00 years of people singing & praying together, in poetry and mystery - rather than doctrine or statements of fact.  In rabbinical traditions, there is a long history of emphasizing communal prayer - rabbis often say when prayers are offered in a congregation God will never reject them.

velveteen rabbi - aka Rachel Barenblat - points to a gorgeous translations of one of my fav psalms

Yah! You are my light.
You are my savior.
Whom need I dread?
Yah, with you as my strong protector who can make me panic?
When hateful bullies gang up on me, wanting to harass me, to oppress and terrorize me
They are the ones who stumble and fall.
Even if a gang surrounds me my heart is not weakened.
If a battle is joined around me my trust in You is firm.
Only one thing do I ask of You, Yah:
Just this alone do I seek, I want to be at home with you, Yah,
All the days of my life.
I want to delight in seeing You.
Seeing You when I come to visit You in Your temple.

You hide me in your sukkah on a foul day.
You conceal me unseen in Your tent.
You also raise me beyond anyone's reach
And now, as You have held my head high despite the presence of my powerful foes
I prepare to celebrate and thrill, singing and making music to You, Yah!
Listen, Yah, to the sound of my cry
And, being kind, answer me!
My heart has said, I turn to seek you.
Your presence is what I beg for
Don't hide Your face from me.
Don't just put me down, You who have been my helper.
Don't abandon me, don't forsake me, God my support.
Though my father and my mother have left me
You, Yah, will hold me securely.
Please teach me Your way.
Teach me Your way and guide me on the straight path.
Discourage those who defame me
Because false witnesses stood up against me belching out violence.
Don't let me become the victim of my foes.
I wouldn't have survived
If I hadn't hoped that I would see, yet,
Your goodness, God, fully alive on earth.
So I tell you, my friends: you too hope to Yah! Be sturdy!
And make strong your heart. And most of all, keep hoping to Yah.

Psalm 27, as translated by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

happy parents' day

today is parents's day around here - our 13 year-old goes back to her school O Henry Middle School

parents' day - when summer concludes, school begins, routine returns, the world re-establishes it gravitational pull

the experience of parenting a middle schooler is often what I imagine vacationing in the khyber pass region between afghanistan & pakistan to be like - tribal, dangerous, filled with exotic weapons & rumors of insurrection.  something that seems much safer before & after than it does whilst you are in the deep muddy.

on my bike ride yesterday, I realized we have 4 more parents' days. 

man, that just rips my heart out.  in 5 years, my baby goes to college.

this parenting thing is odd - the point is be in relationship, to lift them up & out - and then POOF they go off to college
.

Austin wall art

Under Lamar Street bridge

Did someone say that there would be an end,
an end, Oh, an end to love and mourning?
What has been once so interwoven cannot be raveled,
not the gift ungiven.
Now the dead move through all of us still glowing.
Mother and child, lover and lover mated,
are wound and bound together and enflowing.
What has been plaited cannot be unplaited -
only the strands grow richer with each loss
and memory makes kings and queens of us.
Dark into light, light into darkness, spin.
When all the birds have flow to some real haven,
we who find shelter in the warmth within,
listen and feel new-cherished, new-forgiven,
as the lost human voices speak through us and blend our complex love,
our mourning without end.
- All Souls,  May Sarton

my tweetmap

I gotta get out more !

#IranElection: ma hameh baham hasteem

Naghshe Jahan Sq / Esfehan / IRAN #iranelection

natarseen, natarseen, ma hameh baham hasteem.

be not afraid, be not afraid, we are all together.

extraordinat image from the geniuses @ 37signal

Neat infographic: A beat-by-beat breakdown of a single track by “mashup DJ” Girl Talk.

Shift: An Animated Essay from Heather Arment on Vimeo.

great poem from milton

If you were speaking in parables
this afternoon, would you still talk
about seeds and birds and trees?

You see, what we know of farming
are supermarket shelves of Costa Rican
bananas and Peruvian asparagus;

a flower box of basil in the yard,
summer trips to the farmer’s market.
(Why is it so expensive?)

In our world of uniform tomatoes,
our apples sit, shiny and stacked in rows,
our Blackberries know nothing of time.

We fly so fast down the highway
we fail to see the clusters of muscadine
on the fence line, wild onions in the ditch.

I’m answering my own question. True
theology isn’t thirsting for a technological
upgrade: it’s still God 1.0: Christological kudzu.

Tell me the story again, in this summer
of kale and catastrophe, greens and grace;
and I will do my best to see and hear.

question ~ MILTON BRASHER-CUNNINGHAM

Expialidocious

Grace Pettis @ Journey

Pure South Austin

Perfect Austin bumper sticker

so thankful to be back home

icanread:

(via thisbloghearsmyconfessions)

And In That Moment, I Felt Infinite from Karen Abad ♥s Dinosaurs. on Vimeo.

David Scharfenberg: So maybe the slackers had it right after all

I wonder how long it will be - if ever - until all of us Baby Boomers swarm admit some of the truth of what David Scharfenberg writes about here:

All that job-hopping and freelancing? We were dilettantes, on some level, it's true. But we also understood, before most, that something had shifted - that we were moving to an economy of telecommuters and independent contractors and less-than-loyal employers.

And while the best minds on Wall Street cooked up the real estate mess that destroyed a global economy, we were sensible enough to steer clear of that overpriced condo and move into a dingy, three-bedroom rental with a few of our meathead friends.

You see, while Alan Greenspan and Countrywide Financial were creating a capitalism of disastrous excess, we were busy working on a more workable model. Not without its indulgences, of course. The exuberance of the dot-com bubble was undoubtedly irrational. But we did pretty well, this little slice of Generation X.

We brought you the Internet, worked on green technology, and filled the ranks of Teach for America. We crossed the color line, ate local produce, and bought secondhand clothing. We lived in smaller spaces, drove smaller cars, and took the subway to work.

It all seemed like a quaint liberal fantasy at the time. And on some level it was. But now, with a creaking economy and an overheated planet, it reads more like a survival manual: a guide to multicultural living in an increasingly diverse society, an incubator for the technology that might save the American auto industry, an antidote to our awful adventures in sprawl.

Of course, we could abandon this life as we get older, I suppose. We could grow impatient with our little apartments and cramped hatchbacks. We could set our sights on the kind of suburban existence we've forsaken. But I'd like to think we're smarter than that.

We created something worthwhile - a sustainable neighborhood, a tech future, a life we can manage. And we won't let it go too easily.

At least I hope not. As the nation rebuilds a crumbling capitalism, it could use a little perspective, a little wisdom. Bet you didn't think you'd get it from us.

Perfect Austin bumper sticker

Walk with me just a while, body of sunlight,
body of grass, surface of trees,
head bending to the earth we have tasted,
body of death, surface of leaves.
Sinking hooves in the mud by the river,
root of the live earth, live through my body.
Sinking body, walk in me now.

Walk With Me  Annie Finch

I wish I was at the Bjorcharist

I am fan of U2Charist, a worship form that a buddy of mine Sarah Dylan Breuer helped give birth to a little over 5 years ago.  These gatherings have spread around the globe, inspired by Bono's anti-poverty crusade.

Today, Church of the Beloved in Seattle will be hosting a Bjorcharist, a mash-up of the lovely and inspiring music of Bjork & the Book of Common Prayer liturgy for the Eucharist.    I so wish I could be there.

Björk Guðmundsdóttir is the most fascinating artist I know of right now in culture.  Hailing from Iceland, she has sold 15 million albums worldwide.  Her music incorporates pop, alternative rock, jazz, ambient, electronic, classical, folk and trip hop.  Björk and her partner, artist Matthew Barney, have a daughter, Ísadóra Bjarkardóttir Barney.

My favorite recent piece is Who Is It:

Lisa @ The Wildflower Center

The joys of South Austin

The Loving Kind from Howie Klein on Vimeo.

One of he areas that is the most significant whirlwind of change is the rate of information creation that we are living thru.    Andreas Weigend is a sort of tornado hunter of the information whirlwind - he is the former Chief Scientist at Amazon.com and an expert in data mining and computational marketing. He currently teaches the graduate course Data Mining and Electronic Commerce at Stanford University. 

His post The Social Data Revolution(s) is sensational:

In 2009, more data will be generated by individuals than in the entire history of mankind through 2008. Information overload is more serious than ever. 

The first data revolution came about when web commerce got going in earnest. It arose from the dream of collecting data from consumer decision-making. With the advent of the web, firms pondered whether it might be worth saving the vast amounts of data that customers were generating through their clicks and searches. For consumers, there was no hiding: after all, there is no online equivalent of discreetly checking out a magazine while a bookstore employee is looking the other way.

The second data revolution brought about a new dimension to data creation: users started to actively contribute explicit data such as information about themselves, their friends, or about the items they purchased. These data went far beyond the click-and-search data that characterized the first decade of the web.

In the last few years, users have gone a lot further than contributing metadata to movies and music: in fact, they have taken center stage. The center of the universe has shifted from e-business to me-business. Customers are also starting to discover and interact with each other. Knowing that they are not alone has shifted the balance of power from companies back to consumers. And they have begun to demand transparency. Customers are beginning to have a voice. They are realizing that the data they voluntarily contribute can help them and others with making decisions, providing true value. In turn, they want to be treated fairly as individuals by the companies they pay attention and money to.