3 Day Vegan Chili

I have found a new store that I am in love with, Crystal and Spice Shoppe in downtown Belleville, IL. In fact the owners, Gloria and Rod Smith accused me of stalking them yesterday, and said they were going to talk to the bank about an addition so I could just move in. Their shop is part of a spice co-op and sells fresh dried herbs and spices at incredible prices, and at quanties as small as the quarter ounce. I bought 4 ounces of Smoked Durango sea salt for under $4.00. That same salt would have cost me $15+ on Amazon. That does not even take into consideration the quality and freshness of their spices, which makes the value all that much greater. So as I ramble on, you can see my passion, and the reason behind the stalking joke.

The point of posting, is not to sell you on visiting Crystal and Spice, although if you live locally you'd be silly not to. Instead I wanted to share this unbelievable Vegan chili I made using their wonderful spices. It has a deep rich texture and smoky flavor, I'd challenge anyone to tell me they miss the animal flesh in this terrific pot of autumn goodness. I know, I know I'm a little early. Best of all, all the ingredients in this dish are shelf stable and it would be a fabulous set of ingredients to keep around the house in case of an extended emergency. It's slow food, so it won't be ready today, but here goes, and trust me it's worth the wait.

Staple Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup green lentils
• 1 cup Red kidney beans

Crystal & Spice Ingredients:

• 2oz Bacums (Bacon Flavored tsp)
• 2oz Vegetable Soup Mix
• 2oz Tomato Powder
• 1 tsp Durango Smoked Salt
• 1 tsp Chili Powder
• 1 tsp Cumin
• 1 tsp Chipotle Powder

Lentil Preparation:
Day 1 - Start Lentils: The lentils will need to soak in filtered water overnight. Place your 1/4 cup of lentils in a full cup of filtered water. Leave to sit overnight.
Day 2 - In the morning,drain your lentils, rinse them thoroughly, and place the rinsed lentils wrapped in a kitchen towel into a bowl. Repeat rinsing procedure late evening and wrap in a new clean kitchen towel.
Day 3 - This morning you will rinse one final time and wrap in a clean towel. By this time your lentils should have tails and be easily chewed.

Kidney Bean Preparation:
Day 2: Soak 1 cup of red kidney beans overnight in 4 cups of filtered water.
Day 3: Three and a half hours before you are ready to eat drain and rinse beans.  Place beans in an uncovered pot with 4 cups of water.  When water comes to a boil add Smoked Salt, Bacums, and Chipotle Powder.  Reduce heat and simmer, covered for 3 hours, checking water occasionally.

Final Chili Assembly:
When beans have finished simmering it's time to make the chili.  In my case all my water had boiled down so I added 3 more cups of water to the pan.  Return to a boil, then add Vegetable soup mix, tomato powder, chili powder and cumin.  All these ingredients will absorb a lot of your newly added water, simmer the mixture for another 15 minutes to set the flavors. The last step is to just boil off any remaining water till you have a nice think chili consistency, I did not have any remaining water.  Finally, after removing chili from heat, mix in your  sprouted lentils, cover and let set at least 10 minutes before serving.

It is an amazing chili, and well worth the 3 days of work to make it.  It is packed full of nutritious whole food plant based ingredients, and the spice combination packs a knockout punch.  If you're ever going to be in the area, let us know a few days in advanced and we'll cook up a pot for us all to share!

Wikileaks, Manning and the #WLVoteYes vote

Sgt. Bradley Manning committed treason, that is assuming he is the person responsible as currently charged. Bradley Manning violated the oaths he took in his office as a soldier to this country and will pay the legal consequences of that. I believe that our government has a responsibility to execute criminal prosecution against Sgt. Manning, those involved with him in this theft, and those participating in similar acts of sedition and treason against the intelligence of this country. So it may surprise you, being that I support the governments prosecution against Sgt Manning that when I think about Wikileaks and their journalistic work, I believe it exists as a great testament to the US Constitution. Having journalist that are using their freedom to challenge the actions of government are as important to the governance of this nation as the prosecutors compiling their case against Sgt. Manning.

So you may be thinking that perhaps I should have written this blog a few months when the story broke, rather than now months later. I admit that you are perhaps right. I have actually sat down to write a blog like this several times, but knowing that my opinion will alienate people on every side of the discussion, I have deleted these drafts and left my blog unpublished. Discussion about this is so charged with passionate energy. This means for me that my support of the US Government's case against Sgt. Manning and my support of Wikileaks opens me up to being a target by both sides of that passionate energy.

However tonight as of one hour ago Wikileaks asked the world a question.

Global vote: should WikiLeaks release all US cables in searchable form? tweet #WLVoteYes or #WLVoteNo Why:

This got me to thinking that I wanted to answer that question. It can not for me be answered in 255 characters.

My tweet response to this question is #WLVoteYes. I do believe that Wikileaks should publicly release the full unredacted text of the entire database in a publicly searchable format. There is no longer anything to protect. Those parties with a malicious intent already have the full database at this point, and so all that remains is for this information to be used by the people of United States to hold their government and it's agents accountable for actions that do not promote the amazing ideals of the American experiment.

I do understand that Sgt. Manning's actions will put U.S. interests and personnel in danger, however that damage is done no matter the outcome of such a vote. This is a question of availability for those who wish to protect the actual ideas of the Declaration of Independence. This is no longer about the overt sedition and treason of Mr. Manning. This is about the back room manipulation and abuse of power by those charged with protecting the American ideal. This is about the sedition against the American people by the government officials and corporate power brokers who stand at interest of their own profiteering over the interests of "We the People." This is about a form of treason that can not be prosecuted, but can still be exposed and stripped of it's influence.

Wikileaks should make this information public, as an act of patriotism, and protectors of liberty, as those who believe this is America; land of the free with justice for all.

Listening To Pain

I have a story to tell, I do not have permission to tell it publicly, but here I proceed anyway. It is a story of love, pain, learning and unlearning.

This weekend was Art On The Square here in Belleville where we live. It is a big deal for a small city to have such a highly acclaimed event with such talented artists. So with the children spending the evening with my parents, the woman I love and I went to go see the art. As with any event of this type, there was art I liked and art I disliked, there were high points and low points; which admittedly would have changed based on style and preference.

After an evening of great art and good conversation with several of the artists we wandered into the booth of Ron Phillips. Phillips is an amazing artist who uses his media to both tell the story of his people and to inspire hope for a better story future generations will tell.

As we were both gushing over our favorites of his pieces he pointed out a particular piece he wanted to show us. This picture was a timeline of the atrocities against and accomplishments of blacks in America set on a USAmerica flag. The piece had photos of the colonial slave ships and whites only signs. It had pictures of heroes like Fredrick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, Malcom X and Barack Obama. I commented that it was an amazing piece and captured the timeline well.

The artist then pointed to a photograph within the picture and asked me if I knew who the person was. I did not, so I responded, "No, but I can identify most others." Phillips proceeded, "That's Emmett Till." I answered back, oblivious to what was taking place outside myself, "No, don't know him but I do see..." and I began to proceed to identify a few of the works subjects.

As I rattled off my repository of useless trivia I was interrupted to be taught a lesson on listening to pain. This woman I love spoke over me to the artist, "Tell us his story." I silenced myself and listened as Ron shared the details of the tragic death of a little boy named Emmett Till. As Phillips finished his story my wife put her arms around him and just cried mourning the disgraceful brutal end of this boy's life. I watched as her and this artist, this stranger, shared the pain of the sickening curse poured out on this boy.

When the two of them broke their embrace Ron told her, "That was the highest compliment on my work I received tonight." No one would have believed it not true.

I am in debited to them both for what I learned in those moments.

Ash Wednesday - Lenten Burning

A Lenten oblation has been very difficult for me to decide this year. Most everything that came across my mind seemed like a trite exercise in self control, rather than an actual sacrifice which would relinquish control and challenge me to endure suffering. So last night, as I was riding the train between work in Chicago and home in St. Louis I was being intentional to find the kind of self abnegating act I was looking for. One surrender came to mind repeatedly, but each time, I dismissed it, explaining away the impracticability and impossibility of the act. As many times I justified the act away, I became more and more aware of my need to make this my lenten offering. So last night, as I stood outside alone in the cool air, I made my commitments to die to this liberty.

So here today, this new day, the launching day of lent; I burned. I don't mean I failed a little. No I blew out in a Hindenburg explosion of my will, my situation, and my sacrifice. WOW! Now I have "fallen off the wagon" in other Lenten sacrifices. I have found myself a few weeks into lent, and either by failure of will, or forgetfulness I have resumed my regular life leaving behind my earlier commitment. This was unrelated to those, this was a failure, that as I stood in the ashes of the explosion I knew, this task would make me burn, this test would cause me to die, this is not a souvenir this is a graveyard.

Ash Wednesday, today, is a celebration of death. The grave looms, like God's own self, both immanent and transcendent. Interment is the most inevitable reality of living. That which lives will die, and today the tradition of the liturgical calendar is to embrace the return to dust and ashes that form us. Living is chronic condition. We accept our proximity to death, so that we can experience the abundance of living. We look into the ugly emptiness of the unknown to embrace the beautiful fullness of living.

In the ashes of today's failure, I look at the death I create everyday and I remember the lesson of the forest fire, that from death and ashes, from the soil burned and destroyed, comes emergence, come new vibrant life. I embrace my death, in order to birth life.

"All along I thought
I was learning how to take
How to bend not how to break
How to live not how to cry
But really
I've been learning how to die" - Jon Foreman

HUQueerPress & Loving Like Jesus

At one time in my life I would have thought by the time I was 35 years old I'd be a Harding Alumni. You see I grew up in the Church of Christ in the midwest, and was in a church where everyone graduated high school and went to Harding. In fact, I had one of my senior pictures taken in full Hardng University attire. Yet, I have a fairly strong rebellious streak in me so I bucked the tide of following like another lemming off the HU cliff and chose to attend York College, the "liberal" school.

My own experiences at York College are one reason I take the issue of the HUQueerPress so seriously. My best friend my freshman year at York was gay. Even at the "liberal" COC college I went to, I wittnessed first hand this was not Ok. He did not return after that first year, it seemed to him to embrace "coming out" meant leaving YC. You see counselors, professors, and students claimed to love him, yet it is hard to feel love from a person who thinks you need to be fixed.

As I followed the @HUQueerPress feed today I could not help but see ruminations of a debate very similar a generation before at Harding. "If you don't like how Harding treats Black students you are free to go elsewhere." I know the black eye and continuing consequences that racial segregation has wrought on the Churches of Christ. I could not help but be proud of these new voices who stand against such sexual biogtry, and challenge the university to do better than it has.

My hope is that a surge of student allies will rise up and shape a better response than the response of Harding University president David Burks did in chapel today. My hope is that there are Harding students ready to follow the Jesus path, to be persecuted for loving and supporting those the "purity police" deem unclean. My hope is that the love embodied by Jesus will break down EVERY barrier of segregation and opression at Harding, in the Churches of Christ, in Christianity at large, and in all the world.

We have been working on the new house for two months now. We have moved to St. Louis, and though we are not living in the new house yet, the kiddos are enrolled in school and making friends in the new neighborhood.

The house is beginning to come together and look like a house that we can live in. In a few more weeks, we will be ready to call the place a home. In a few more weeks all the unnecessary walls will be removed, new fixtures will be in place, the original beauty of the floors will be restored, and the house will begin to shine again with the beauty, love, and hospitality of a place occupied by a family.


Hope is growing in the little house.

Work of The People

As my last post stated, we are moving to the St. Louis area. It feels even more official now. Last weekend we went down to the area to find a place to rent, and instead in a whirlwind decision bought an old 3 story 6 bedroom house, sight unseen. It was a wonderful deal, and a perfect match to our wishes. The house is located in an multi-ethnic under-resourced neighborhood, only about 10 minutes from my family. Boy, does it need A LOT of work!

The house has been closed up for the past three years and is most definitely not ready for occupancy. It needs new floors on the main floor. New bathroom fixtures will be necessary in many places. Our basement, which is currently two of the bedrooms and storage space will have to be gutted and redesigned as 3 bedrooms. At this point we have no plans to address the problems (other than broken pipes if necessary) on the top floor. We have mold to remove, walls to paint, and a kitchen to re-imagine. It is not an understatement to say our work is cut out for us.

Yet, we are inspired. This has been a dream of our for a long time. We believe in the CCDA's 3Rs (Relocation, Redistribution, Reconciliation). We believe our children should be raised in an ethnically heterogeneous environment. Our dream is to be a people of love, grace, and hospitality in the abandoned places of empire.

It did not take long before we heard the "warnings." "Do they know what neighborhood that's in?" "Franklin is a rough school." "That house is in downtown." "Those old houses are nothing but problems." Each comment designed to remind us of how "wrong" this decision is. On one hand, I repeat to myself the quote I recently heard, "If your Christianity doesn't look scandalous you are doing it wrong." On the other, I am such an ingrained part of this I do feel the discontent of walking in a path that is not "safe."

We are comforted, following in the lead of other friends who have walked this path before us. Our friends Will & Lisa Samson inspire us. Others too, have cut a trail that makes this seem much more imaginable, and we are thankful for them.

Two years ago, we started a journey toward Africa, that was not to be at this time. In many ways though that was the first step toward this dream that is swirling in our heads today. It reminded us that we are part of a story not of an empire people but of a wilderness people. We are not a people of ivory towers, but a people of meals, beds, people & dirty hands.

We have work, but we are excited to embrace it!

Moving To St. Louis

For some time now our family has been debating the idea of moving down to St. Louis. Family is very important to me, and a move there puts us much closer to both sets of grandparents while also staying in a major metropolitan area. In St. Louis, where my parents already live, the kids will be immersed in a much more holistic family environment than we are able to provide as a family island here in Chicago. Additionally, we will be able to see my wife's family with much greater regularity being only a few hours from Nashville. So although this is a blessing on many levels for our family, we have not taken the plunge until now. It has for us however become evident we as a family are standing at a crossroads of several events professionally and personally that make it clear, now is the time for action.

So on December 18th a mere 46 days away, we will make the move to the St. Louis area. To tell you the truth, we need your help. Simply speaking, we need friends here in Chicagoland to help us load the truck, and we need friends in St. Louis to help us unload the truck. I need IT consulting work. If you are connected to a small business or non-profit that currently outsources your IT I ask that you would talk to the decision makers about giving my services a chance. I have 9 years experience in small business IT. Working in a small business environment I am proficient both as a web-application developer and as a network / PC technician.

To those of you here in Chicagoland we will leave behind. We will miss you! Many of you are dearly loved and we hope you will make our home a stop on your journey when you are passing through St. Louis. To those in St. Louis I am looking forward to rekindling old friendships and making new ones as well, so I hope you will make time soon to come share our table and see what community we build together.

Blessings and Peace!

My 2010 Ballot

It's election time, so I thought I'd throw out what my 2010 ballot will look like. It's quite a mix of parties and candidates, but it is consistent with my wishes to choose the best candidate based on an overlook of their entire platform.

Governor - Rich Whitney - Green - (http://www.whitneyforgov.org/)
Attorney General - Steve Kim - Republican- (http://stevekimforag.com/)
Senator - LeAlan Jones - Green - (http://lealanforsenate.org/)
House - Ben Lowe - Democrat- (http://www.loweforcongress.com)
State Senator - John Millner - Republican - (http://www.johnmillner.org/)
State Rep - Michelle Mussman - Democrat -(http://www.votemichelle.org)

Peter Rollins - We are Bound to Each Other

Christianity is where we are loosed from the need to believe in some God who guarantees that life is meaningful so you can sleep well at night. So that you can say, "I know it's all going to be OK when I die, and everything is going to be great; and it doesn't really change who you are it's a belief that just makes you just function, and you are blind to the other.

But actually, God is nigh in the depth of being self. That you find God in nothing more than giving water to those who are thirsty, giving food to those who are hungry, to giving clothes to those who are naked, visiting those who are in prison, standing up for justice. Giving yourself utterly to love. You know, living by that sword, and dying by that sword. Because we all know if you live by the sword of love, you die by the sword of love & so we are now bound to one another.

- Peter Rollins

From the Sermon at RevolutionNYC, "Why the New Atheist Don't Go Far Enough"

A Comment On The Cross

The Sacrifice of the Cross is not about mere animal pain that is meant to assuage the lust of a sadistic, blood-thirsty, parochial god. It is about the revelation of the nature and meaning and way and power of a Divine Love that saves from an Enemy and a menace that the darkest phenomena of history can only but hint at. To consistently dismiss and to structurally ignore major facts in the God-given revelatory memory is to assure that little of what God intended to be communicated by this costly revelation will be communicated by it.

- Emmanuel Charles McCarthy

Return Email Unread To A Single User

This week I had a person very close to me start receiving abusive emails from a family member. This friend asked me if there was a way to block email from that particular user without changing the email address completely. Although I first told the person, "no, it's not possible." After a little work inside the powerful Gmail program by Google I was able to relieve this person with the information that blocking mail from a single user is possible. I wanted to detail the process below, to allow others to use this amazing feature without giving up their current email address, even if they are not currently Gmail users.

If your email address is already hosted by Gmail skip to step 4.

Step 1 - Signup for a Gmail account. If you have a smart phone and your current email is with your ISP (@comcast, @att.net, @sbcglobal.net) this process will add a second benefit to you by enabling IMAP which is better understood as email synching.

Step 2 - In Settings dashboard of your new Gmail account go to the accounts tab go to the row titled 'Check Mail Using Pop3' and click on "Add a mail account you own" button to enter the account information for your current email address.
Step 3 - While still remaining in the accounts tab of the Settings dashboard find the 'Send Mail As' row and click the 'Send Mail From Another Address' button to complete the steps contained there to enable you to continue sending mail using your existing email address.
Step 4 - Change the settings in your email client (Thunderbird, Outlook, etc) and on your phone to check Gmail rather than checking your ISP directly.


Now we are ready to setup the mail return inside Gmail.

Step 5 - Under the Labs tab in the Settings menu enable "Canned Responses." After hitting the radio button to 'enable' make sure you navigate to the bottom of the page and save changes.


Step 6 - Using the 'Compose Mail' button open a new mail pane. Do not worry about a To: or a Subject: since you are just using the type to create the text of your response to the offending email sender. I used "Your message has been returned unopened. This user is not accepting messages from you at this time." as the automated response, but you can type any text you would like here.
Step 7 - Use the 'Canned Responses' button that has now appeared under your subject box to 'Save New Canned Response.' Give this response a name in the dialog box that opens and choose save. Exit 'Compose' window by using the 'Discard' button.

Step 8 - Near the search box at the top of the page use the link to 'Create a Filter.' This opens the 'Filters' tab in the Settings dashboard. Select 'Create a Filter.' In the From: box add the offending email address. If the offending party has multiple email accounts enter each in the From: box separated by an OR in caps. Proceed to next step by clicking the 'Next Step' button.

Step 9 - In this final step you will tell the Gmail filter how to respond when an email arrives from the chosen From address(es). You should check the box to 'Delete It' and the box to 'Send Canned Response' selecting the response created in Step 8. Select Create Filter and you are finished.


I hope that this tutorial helps others in the way I was able to help protect my friend.

Red State / Blue State Divorce Email

I received the letter below as an email this morning.



Besides it's smug arrogance and ignorance of fact, which is par for the course in our 21st century political discourse, there was a more minacious thread running insidiously through the letter

We'll keep capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal-Mart and Wall Street. You can have your beloved lifelong welfare dwellers, food stamps, homeless, homeboys, hippies, druggies and illegal aliens.

You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we'll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us.

We'll keep the SUV's, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.

You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors. We'll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right.

The reader is also left to assume that all these previous quotes hang on the writers demand to also keep, "our Judeo-Christian values." I wonder if the writer and those who choose to forward this email have any idea their "Judeo-Christian values" and "Jesus" have nothing in common. Sadly while these people claim their value system is rooted in the person and teachings of Jesus it seems they have NO knowledge at all of his radical humanity centric message.

"Judeo-Christian values" wants no part in poverty, priding itself as a homecoming for the greedy and powerful. "Judeo-Christian values" wants nothing to do with peace, priding itself as the sword and hammer of the world. "Judeo-Christian values" create accomplish nothing more than to make Jesus emasculated eunuch for the empire by making his admonishments to "sell everything and give to the poor" or too "Love your enemies" metaphorical concerned only with a person's "heart condition." "Judeo-Christian values" teach one to aspire to acquire before you expire with no regard to how that exploitation impacts either the creation, the created, or the creator. These "Judeo-Christian values" are a FARCE.

The time is NOW! Christianity is under an imperative to give up these "Judeo-Christian values" with their tribalistic, empire endorsing, materialistic, consumerist personal "god" for the God made manifest by a community of people addressing the human needs present now in the abandoned places those people are vested into while remaining responsible for the consequences their decisions have in impacting the greater community of the world.

These "Judeo-Christian values" are a blight, a societal cannibalism which like any parasite will destroy the host it feeds off. Frankly, from where I sit, you can keep your "Judeo-Christian values"

Can "Damn You" be Good News?

On Friday night I spoke at a 30 hour famine event using the "beatitudes" from Luke 6. However for the sake of emphasis I used the scholars version rendering of the text, because of it's "shocking" words.

Congratulations, you poor!
God's Domain belongs to you.
Congratulations, you hungry!
You will have a feast.
Congratulations, you who weep now!
You will laugh.
Congratulations, to you when people hate you, and when they ostracize you and denounce and scorn your name because of the son of Adam.
Rejoice on that day, and jump for joy!
Just remember, your compensation is great in the place of God's dwelling.
Recall that their ancestors treated the prophets the same way.

Damn, you rich!
You already have your consolation.
Damn, you who are well fed now!
You will know hunger.
Damn, you who laugh now!
You will learn to weep and grieve.
Damn you when everyone speaks well of you!
Recall that thier ancestors treated the phony prpohets the same way.

But to you who listen I say, love your enemies...

On the way home my lovely wife asked me, "Where was the good news in that message?" She was concerned that the teens of our audience would have left feeling more judged and more hated by a God who has been constantly misrepresented already. Although I think that the transition to salvation as transactional between God and man clouds the ability to "hear" the good news, I will not go into that for the purpose of this post. Instead I want to focus on the text itself, and draw out the "Good News" that is very present in this text, even for the oppressor (the rich, the well fed, the laughing).

To begin, I want to ask the reader to take off any lens you have as you come to the text that inclines you to hear the text in an individualistic way. This is hard in the western culture of America, since we are a culture of rugged individualism. However I think it is necessary to understanding that this message, as well as the totality of scripture is directed to communities rather than individuals.

So the text compares two communities, the oppressed community and the oppressor community. To the oppressed community Jesus admonishes them, "your weakness is strength" to the oppressor community Jesus warns them, "your strength is your weakness." Jesus reminds those who have been scorned that they are loved by God. Jesus warns those who have perpetuated that scorn that they are loved by God.

"WAIT," you might be thinking, "he told the oppressors "Damn, you" are you missing that is not an encouragement but a scold?" I did not mistype. Jesus expresses love to this group by foretelling to this group where the institution of oppression leads. History is full of examples of as society's rise up, and then eventually collapse in revolt at the hands of the oppressed.

Let me have you read a story by Clay Shirky:

In 1988, Joseph Tainter wrote a chilling book called The Collapse of Complex Societies. Tainter looked at several societies that gradually arrived at a level of remarkable sophistication then suddenly collapsed: the Romans, the Lowlands Maya, the inhabitants of Chaco canyon. Every one of those groups had rich traditions, complex social structures, advanced technology, but despite their sophistication, they collapsed, impoverishing and scattering their citizens and leaving little but future archeological sites as evidence of previous greatness. Tainter asked himself whether there was some explanation common to these sudden dissolutions.

The answer he arrived at was that they hadn’t collapsed despite their cultural sophistication, they’d collapsed because of it. Subject to violent compression, Tainter’s story goes like this: a group of people, through a combination of social organization and environmental luck, finds itself with a surplus of resources. Managing this surplus makes society more complex—agriculture rewards mathematical skill, granaries require new forms of construction, and so on.

Early on, the marginal value of this complexity is positive—each additional bit of complexity more than pays for itself in improved output—but over time, the law of diminishing returns reduces the marginal value, until it disappears completely. At this point, any additional complexity is pure cost.

Tainter’s thesis is that when society’s elite members add one layer of bureaucracy or demand one tribute too many, they end up extracting all the value from their environment it is possible to extract and then some.

The ‘and them some’ is what causes the trouble. Complex societies collapse because, when some stress comes, those societies have become too inflexible to respond. In retrospect, this can seem mystifying. Why didn’t these societies just re-tool in less complex ways? The answer Tainter gives is the simplest one: When societies fail to respond to reduced circumstances through orderly downsizing, it isn’t because they don’t want to, it’s because they can’t.

In such systems, there is no way to make things a little bit simpler – the whole edifice becomes a huge, interlocking system not readily amenable to change. Tainter doesn’t regard the sudden decoherence of these societies as either a tragedy or a mistake—” Under a situation of declining marginal returns collapse may be the most appropriate response”, to use his pitiless phrase. Furthermore, even when moderate adjustments could be made, they tend to be resisted, because any simplification discomfits elites.

When the value of complexity turns negative, a society plagued by an inability to react remains as complex as ever, right up to the moment where it becomes suddenly and dramatically simpler, which is to say right up to the moment of collapse. Collapse is simply the last remaining method of simplification."

As Shirky foretells the fall of complex society, Jesus in this text also warns of the downfall of living atop the oppression food chain.

Jesus illuminates that both sides of the oppression equation, the oppressor and the oppressed, are caught in slavery to the violent system that oppression is. Jesus tells both groups that they are loved by God, by planting the very seed of hope needed by both groups. Jesus is not condemning the individual, instead he condemns the societal grouping, the institution, that enslaves each community.

To put this another way, in a way I know might offend many of you but captures the gist of Jesus' words with contemporary relevance, the text could read, "Damn you America your military corporate imperialist machine will crumble." Jesus can condemn the institution of American exploitation and oppression. This is not a condemnation of the individual but rather, as with all others on both sides of the oppression equation, a recognition that slavery to that machine is damaging to the humanity of it's persons.

The slavery to oppression is a cruel master no matter which side of it's violence you are seated in. So Jesus offers the only alternative to violence to everyone willing to hear the alternative, "Love your enemies." By embracing the shared humanity of all persons the cycle of violence is broken. The oppressed can see the humanity of the oppressor and therefore feel his oppression. The oppressor can see the humanity of the oppressed and therefore feel her oppression. Enemy love is the great radicalizer. It frees all to stand in freedom; freedom with God, and freedom with fellow humanity.

The invitation to embracing uncompromising love makes Jesus' "Damn You" an invitation to freedom. Enemy love ends the cycle of violence, though often it's participants feel the burning from both sides of the cycle. Enemy love joins all once divided by social fences back to oneness. Enemy love is the mystery through which creation reconciles back to God. Enemy love is not transactional, it is the relational cradle of new life. Enemy love is the extremist act whose seditious ripples topple the violence of oppression. Enemy love is Good News and all structures and institutions that prevent one from experiencing it be damned!

Jesus: The Pascal Mystery

As I was preparing to write my thoughts for this Good Friday I wanted to do a little reading to prepare myself. I had some unique observations last night as we ate a ritual meal with friends that I was wanting to share. I will not write those thoughts, well not exactly. As I was reading and preparing I came across a speech by Richard Rohr from 2005. In 1 paragraph during the speech he succinctly, and with far better words than my own put these thoughts together. So instead of my own thoughts, I feel much more compelled to just give you that paragraph.

The Pascal mystery might not be a phrase that is familiar to all of you; it is a phrase that was coined by Augustine as he was trying to describe the Christ mystery. The mystery is that life and death, loss and renewal are the two sides of everything and you dare not separate them. If you do, you have reality falsely defined. If you have reality unfairly defined, it will not lead to enlightment, it will not lead to truth. For Christians the Christ mystery of “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again” is a mythic acclamation that describes that transformative movement from death to resurrection. I hope I’m not being too cynical in saying this, but I don’t think we really want to walk that mystery ourselves, so we worship it in Jesus. Now let me explain that. This theory is exemplified in the recent movie the Passion that’s gained so much notoriety and fame. You know, Jesus never once said, “Worship me,” he said, “Follow me.” One of the cleverest ways to avoid following someone is to worship him, it really works, it's very clever. You just put him on a pedestal, you make God out of him and you pay all kind of homage to this God figure and then you don’t have to do what he did. All he was doing was walking the journey of a good and full- blooded Jewish man into love and he died a good full-blooded Jewish man on the path of love and when you love that is where it is going to lead you. You’re not going to fit into the system as it usually is structured which is not usually in the direction of love. It is usually structured in the direction of power (and not necessarily in any kind of descent, certainly the Roman empire would have been structured in the ways of ascent). There is no way he was going to fit inside of that world and inside of that culture. We use Jesus to answer a problem.

If you would like to read the enitre speech you do do so by following this link - http://kbow.us/2ULu.