Tis The Season for Trite Tidings

I apologize to the "three" people that pay attention to my thoughts on this blog, for I have not posted anything since Cambodia. I am currently in California and writing in the shadow of my parents rather large rubbery plastic tree with a clear view of the very man-made Lake Mission Viejo in the distance. I have nothing more to add than my own wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Here are some lyrics from one of my favorite Christmas ballads:

She was his girl; he was her boyfriend
She'd be his wife and make him her husband
A surprise on the way, any day, any day
One healthy little giggling dribbling baby boy
The wise men came, three made their way
To shower him with love
While he lay in the hay
Shower him with love love love
Love love love
Love love was all around

Not very much of his childhood was known
Kept his mother Mary worried
Always out on his own
He met another Mary who for a reasonable fee,
less than reputable was known to be.

His heart full of love love love
Love love love
Love love was all around

When Jesus Christ was nailed to his tree
Said "oh, Daddy-o, I can see how it all soon will be
I came to shed a little light on this darkening scene
Instead I fear I've spilled the blood of my children all around"

The blood of my children all around
The blood of my children's all around

So I'm told, so the story goes
The people he knew were
Less than golden hearted
Gamblers and Robbers
Drinkers and Jokers, all soul searchers
Like you and me
Like you and me

Rumors insisted he soon would be
For his deviations
Taken into custody
By the authorities less informed than he.
Drinkers and Jokers all soul searchers
Searching for love love love
Love love love
Love love was all around

Preparations were made
For his celebration day
He said "eat this bread and think of it as me
Drink this wine and dream it will be
The blood of our children all around
The blood of our children's all around
The blood of our children all around

Father up above, why in all this hatred do you fill
Me up with love, love, love
Love love love
Love love was all around
Father up above, why in all this hatred do you fill
Me up with love, fill me love love love
Love love love
all you need is love
you can't buy me love
Love love love
Love love
And the blood of our children's all around

-DMB

A Prayer for the Khmer (and the world)

Peace on Earth

Heaven on Earth
We need it now
I'm sick of all of this
Hanging around


Sick of sorrow
I'm sick of the pain
I'm sick of hearing
Again and again
That there's gonna be
Peace on Earth


Where I grew up
There weren't many trees
Where there was we'd tear them down
And use them on our enemies


They say that what you mock
Will surely overtake you
And you become a monster
So the monster will not break you


And it's already gone too far
Who said that if you go in hard
You won't get hurt


Jesus can you take the time
To throw a drowning man a line
Peace on Earth


Tell the ones who hear no sound
Whose sons are living in the ground
Peace on Earth


No whos or whys
No one cries like a mother cries
For peace on Earth


She never got to say goodbye
To see the color in his eyes
Now he's in the dirt
Peace on Earth


They're reading names out
Over the radio
All the folks the rest of us
Won't get to know


Sean and Julia
Gareth, Ann, and Breda
Their lives are bigger than
Any big idea


Jesus can you take the time
To throw a drowning man a line
Peace on Earth


To tell the ones who hear no sound
Whose sons are living in the ground
Peace on Earth


Jesus in this song you wrote
The words are sticking in my throat
Peace on Earth


Hear it every Christmas time
But hope and history won't rhyme
So what's it worth


This peace on Earth
Peace on Earth
Peace on Earth
Peace on Earth

-U2

Godly Green Revolution

A week ago, I visited a village in southern Cambodia roughly 20km from the Vietnam border. I was given the opportunity to visit with the village chief and other community leaders to hear about their experience as participants in community development projects.

We sat underneath a family’s home for about two hours and discussed a wide range of topics including: their families, agriculture projects, cow and rice banks, schools/education, health, and even the religions of represented in the village.

One interesting topic came up during the course of our conversation which was how many Christian families there are currently in the village vs. how many Christian families were present when Food for the Hungry began community development projects there. According to the chief, there are now 30 Families who follow Jesus, whereas before there were none.

The immediate reaction to this is one of excitement/encouragement/joy for seeing this many families in such a remote village choose to follow Jesus. One can even stop there and forget about what else was learned that day from the village leaders; however, this would be a grave mistake and cheat one’s self out of a much deeper understanding of Christ’s Kingdom and our place in it as citizens.

While there are 30 families who follow Jesus, there are 254 families eating each day, due to appropriate agricultural techniques that do not disrupt the environment or the wildlife, but yield greater quantities for families to sell in the marketplace and put in their historically empty bellies. Many families now have cattle, from which they can make other products to sustain and give proper nutrition to their children. Many families now save up money from larger harvests to invest in the building of a local school which will meet the standards of the government (which in turn will send the village appropriately trained teachers for free). They also saved and are currently building a village hospital to take care of health needs in the community. The physical body of the poor is found being redeemed and renewed in this small village in southern Cambodia. It is precisely this which defines the Kingdom of God.

Salvation does not come to people so that they can go to heaven alone. Salvation comes in the form of holistic redemption of mind, body, and soul! Yes there are families who follow Jesus, but just as important as that is the fact that there are families (whose potential and right to live life had been marred by the brokenness of poverty) who are now moving towards restoration and livelihood!

The idea of development, when coming from the Christian practitioner, is not to see people arrive at a goal, but to move them towards the process/journey of seeing their personal/family/community’s physical and spiritual needs met by implementing projects based upon the principles of the Kingdom of God! This is the vision of Food for the Hungry, and this vision has been seen and attained in this particular village which no longer needs our work.

Immense and Intense Incense

(writing from Phnom Penh, Cambodia)

The other day I sat and had lunch with one of Food for the Hungry’s staff here in Cambodia. He was nine years old during the Pol Pot/Khmer Rouge/Killing fields’ era, when his family fled to a refugee camp. During the time in the camp, circumstances separated the family from each other. While I do not remember a great deal of the details of his story (due to the language barrier), I found, in his story, something very interesting.

Paulo Friere wrote a book titled, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. While there are great deals of complex thoughts and propositions put forth in this book, at a very basic foundational level, the book discusses issues with oppressed peoples. Friere proposes that throughout history those who have been oppressed, when freed, become oppressors themselves (for they know nothing different).

This is seen in much of the Cambodian culture which is filled with corruption, the sex trade, and wide spread crime. This is of course an overly simplistic explanation, but bear with me.

This FHI staff member has not fallen into the cycle that much of his country and even many in his family have. It was a church which reached out to this man and changed his ideas and perceptions with the Kingdom of God. It was this transformation in his life that he was able to end the cycle of oppression and speak out with the peaceful words of Christ!

While Friere’s study of the oppressed can be seen in a dim light, the answer, to ending these cycles of generations growing up with no other knowledge than that of violence and oppression, is the transforming power of the Kingdom of God! For the gospel is not some simplistic salvation message for an individual to go to heaven but a very powerful force filled with grace and peace which can transform people and redeem all of the broken aspects of life!

God: holy and wholly different

The Hollow Men

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

~T.S. Eliot (1925)

Reason, Rhythm, and Rum

For a long time now, I have been labeled as something of a Christian "liberal". This can be largely attributed to my stance against war, my passion for the poor, my decidedly undecided way of voting in elections, my passion to write every congressman and senator about all issues, my open stance on heavily polarized "hot bed" issues in the realm of politics, etc...etc. However, I find it disturbing, in the quiet moments I have with my God, that my stances are anything BUT liberal! My stances are at the root fundamental; and I use such a word here in an attempt to rescue it from the likes of Christian "Fundamentalists" who have come to be hated by much of the world which struggles day in and day out just to survive. My stances are fundamental to what it means to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God; but I am, and joining humanity in being, a huge hypocrite. For, my stances may land consistently on the side of the rudimentary foundations of the Kingdom of God, but my life rarely reflects such stances. I live in the tension that the Kingdom of God calls me to something that is so Upside Down from the paradigm that the world and much of the church has taught me to live. I am to love the unlovable, I am to take the bullet to defend the powerless rather than kill the powerful, I am to be actively involved in my government while maintaining that my expectations of them should rise no higher than that of any other broken system, and, in light of the last remark, I, personally, am responsible to the poor around the world, but am to live out of a paradigm that allows me to react and bring the Kingdom as a solution to the world's brokenness because God is worth it (NOT because I have to, to gain His favor). What does it look like to live as a citizen of the Kingdom of God, to live like Jesus? I think the answer is found in thinking backwards from all you’ve been taught. It is a scary thing to realize that more often than not, Jesus stands with the very groups we like to disassociate ourselves with.

Check out Donald Miller's (Author of Blue Like Jazz and Searching for God KNows What) podcast on iTunes. He and Derek Webb (former lead singer of Cademon's Call) discuss, in detail, so many of these ideas, and what it means to see Jesus and the Kingdom as it truly is by not conforming it to our desired imagery.

Peace of Christ to you!

Disgraceful Bearers of Imago Dei

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

Jesus, Gin, and Juice

All too often, we place God in a box. We bring God on our side of a debate. God is a Democrat. God is a Republican. You've seen legitimate followers of Jesus yelling at each other from opposite sides of the fence throughout history. Whether this is for self preservation, out of shere ignorance, or both, I'm not sure. What I do know is that we are more often wrong about God than we are right (and I am pretty sure God is sick of His name being taken in vain for the sake of our personal debates).

In an email I wrote from Southeast Asia a year ago, I began with the words, "The more I travel, the bigger my God gets". Am I making a call for moral relativity? Certainly not! Am I saying that all religions lead to heaven? By no means. And to prove my point of boxing God in, the last two questions and their answers made many sigh with relief and others get angry. This blog is meant to reflect a story/journey/movement towards finding the image of God in all things, in all people (even Right Wing Nut Jobs and Flaming Liberals...just to name a few dichotemies we have created). The title reflects the nature of the written word in these pages, for the goal of my journey is to free God from my restraints and allow Him to show me how to live as a citizen of the Kingdom here and now.