bono on the church and the free market

(Note: This is another is an ongoing series...Each week, the “description” line under the blog headline changes. It is usually a line from a song, a quote, or maybe just nonsense from The Office. But, each week, we memorialize the line that is leaving while installing the new one.)

"Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it's to have any meaning in this world - and stop being its apologist."

- Bono

I felt like this quote deserved some more thought. I won't sully it with mine here.

Data.org

recapturing community

The other night, Stef and I were able to recapture a little of what we left behind so many months ago. We sat down, talked, and ate with some friends. We broke amazing cornbread together, sampled some salmon nachos, and genuinely laughed all night. It had been awhile since we were all together - really together. And reunited with a significant portion of our lives, of our community, everything felt right.

living under a flight-path and the wake of our lives

Stef and I have been walking at night lately. We put on our sneakers and just start walking around the neighborhood. It is as much a way to get out as it is exercise. We really enjoy walking at night, as simple as it is, if only because Johannesburg was too dangerous a place to do such a thing.

The neighborhood we are living in is directly in the flight-path of the San Antonio International Airport. More directly, we walk every night under the last few seconds of airplanes' "final descent". People skate right over us in mammoth silver birds. Fathers return from business trips on Continental. Families arrive for vacation on Southwest. Presents and packages sneak into the city on DHL and UPS planes - at the same time every night.

And there is something weird that happens when you walk under planes ripping through the air. First, you can literally hear the air tearing as the planes comes through. The sound is unmistakable and, admittedly, a little eerie. More bizarre still is the sound that pours from the sky a full minute after the plane has passed over. A roaring, ripping noise again pours down from the heavens, almost like all of the displaced air is now draining back into place, tumbling back into the destiny created for it. (From the internet: "As objects travel through the air, the air molecules are pushed aside with great force and this forms a shock wave much like a boat creates a bow wave. The bigger and heavier the aircraft, the more air it displaces.")

The point of all of this is that I cannot see a plane fly over head and not marvel at the enormity of things around me. More importantly, I cannot hear the air roaring through the night without being reminded that everything, even those long since passed, leaves a wake.

In our lives, we roar through, ripping and tearing through the fabric of this world in order to get wherever it is that we are going. We rarely stop to consider the wake we leave. We can live purposefully, though. We can be mindful that every step we take leaves a footprint behind us, a tracer for others to see. We can choose today to live for that legacy.

Another World is Possible.

punching in by alex frankel

I recently finished a book called Punching In by Alex Frankel. The premise of the book is simple - a business journalist takes front-line service jobs and then reports on all that he sees.

Frankel works for UPS during the Christmas season, delivering packages as part of "Brown". He gets turned down for jobs at Home Deopt, Best Buy, and Container Store, as he is unable to convince the online questionnaires for each company that he is a worthy interview. Weeded out, he endures a stint at GAP, which he describes as the most boring job on planet earth. Lots of shirt-folding people. Frankel also sells insurance (err, rental cars) at Enterprise Rent-a-Car, slings coffee at Starbucks, and becomes geek-chic by taking a job at the Apple Store.

Punching In is one of those fascinating perspective-benders that I couldn't put down. Now, I can't see a UPS truck (or my father-in-law) in quite the same way. I feel like I understand the retail world's motivation better, which makes me feel like I can better fight it off.

While trying to finish a different book, this one stole the Kindle screen. Fascinating and a little fluffy...I loved it.

approval and the peace of unconditional surroundings

Coming home has been an interesting experience in any number of ways. What we definitely enjoy the most is the people that made up our community, the people the help us understand the play that we are in just a little better.

I sat down for coffee with such a friend a few evenings back. We laughed about old jobs and life as a Starbucks barista. We smiled as we just enjoyed the presence of one another.

We talked about approval and where the need for such a thing even comes from. We traced the origin of it in our lives and tried to figure out just when that addiction goes away. To some degree, we all live for approval. The question is then whose approval are we after...

After a while, I think we agreed that the antidote to the venom of approval is unconditional love. We roundly came to a conclusion that we, as people, have to surround ourselves with people who will love us despite all of our self-sabotaging ways. We have to have people around us who will love us no more when we do well for them than when we fail them. Only then will the realization come that true love cannot be won or lost - only savored.

the fourth circle: or how i learned to accept free things and embrace the power of community and generosity

At some point in our lives, we catch a break. Sometimes, we get set up with a great gig based only on who we know. Sometimes, we eat ridiculous food because someone else was too busy to eat it themselves. Sometimes, we get...and in the post-karmic stream that we live in we have to find a way to attribute that "getting" to something other than a karmic response to our "giving".

In moving back from South Africa, we have been blessed. In an oft-repeated scene, I'll lean over to Stef and, with hushed voice, tell her that we lead a charmed life. She'll smile and nod her contented agreement.

So, was I the least bit surprised when I was given free music recently? I stumbled onto Enter the Worship Circle's website, looking for some chord charts that I had left somewhere in the African savannah. Once there, I noticed that the group was releasing a brand-new album. Like a giddy school-girl, I clicked download and strangely noticed that the "total" of my shopping cart was "$0.00". I double-checked the contents of the cart - yup, a whole album, 18-songs worth. Still, it looked like they weren't going to charge me.

Sure enough, I checked out, paid nothing, and received a bunch of free (and very good) music. A day or two later, I got an email from the fine Worship Circle folks, explaining that they had inadvertently given music away to quite a few people (me included) and all they asked in return is that we share the music and encourage our friends to check it out. Graceful, eh?

So, check out some great music from some good folks. Experience justice and love. Take a listen. I think I may just pay them anyway - by gifting the music to someone else...

Enter the Worship Circle: Fourth Circle

why aren't you here?

I saw this sticker on a street-pole in Johannesburg. Interesting question...

"Why aren't you here?"