Posted by Tripp Hudgins 1 year 3 weeks ago
This weekend, if you can believe it, marks the 20th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots that followed the verdict in the Rodney King trial that acquitted four police officers of any wrong doing. Maybe some of us are old enough to remember the beating that King took as he was being arrested.Maybe some of us are old enough to remember the violence that followed. Fifty people died in the riots.Why do we bother to honor such memories? Why do we hold them up? St. John of the Cross, the Carmelite mystic, writes of a temporal veil that separates us from God. It's an unavoidable separation, he said, that every creature encounters.We live in time. God does not. He also said, however, that by grace that veil can be torn, time and memory collapsing in upon one another and we are no longer separate from God.
Posted by Tripp Hudgins 1 year 5 weeks ago
In City Journal, Pascal Bruckner has written an interesting essay critiquing "secular elites" and their (our?) predilection for an apocalyptic vision without redemption. He calls it the apocalyptic daze, a love for the cataclysmic and states that it's shaping our politics. Interesting stuff to read as Earth Day approaches. He writes: My point is not to minimize the dangers that we face. Rather, it is to understand why apocalyptic fear has gripped so many of our leaders, scientists, and intellectuals, who insist on reasoning and arguing as though they were following the scripts of mediocre Hollywood disaster movies.His is not a critique of the science of environmentalism but one of the rhetoric of the politics surrounding it.
Posted by Tripp Hudgins 1 year 5 weeks ago
I've been navel gazing again and wondering how we come to know ourselves. I wonder what that right balance is between our inner-barometer of self-knowing and that external one that people reflect back to us. "Ubuntu," (I am because of who we are) or all the various "I am..." statements: "I think therefore I am" (Descartes) or "I am what I am and that's all that I am" (Popeye)...What statements might we add to this list? Bishop Desmond Tutu expands the notion of Ubuntu thusly: One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu – the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can't exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can't be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole World. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.I'm trying to wrap my mind about how we construct the self. Judith Butler, Catherine Bell (ritualization) and others inhabit my mind lately. Ritual, tradition, story, identity... the list goes on and on ...
Posted by Tripp Hudgins 1 year 6 weeks ago
Yesterday the Lord Awoke. You see, God had been sleeping. Entombed again. How long, O Lord, must we sing this song of You Entombed? We bury you again and again. We crucify you again and again. Then, when you show us (again and again) that death cannot contain you, we run away. We're afraid. We cannot imagine a world in which Death has no sting. We cannot imagine a world in which Death does not hold the last word and our ability to deal in Death doesn't empower us.
Posted by Tripp Hudgins 1 year 6 weeks ago
Good Friday. Is this something we can understand? What makes it so "good?"Sure, we have theologies about this moment in history. We have systematic notions about why who and what. We tell the story every year. Some traditions reenact the tale more than once a year. If you attend a church from one of the "liturgical" traditions, you here the story told during the Eucharist every Sunday. "Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again." It's the Paschal Mystery told again and again. I also know some baptist preachers who tell the story of the Passion of Christ every Sunday. It is the Gospel, after all. This story, the Passion, is The Gospel for many of us Christian preachers. And to not share the Passion is to not share The Gospel. If their sermons don't end with the proclamation of the sarcifice of Jesus, well, then it just isn't Church.I'm still sharing that e-unspoken part of my faith again. This is not new. Nor is it unintegrated with the rest of my Christian spirituality. It's actually essential to it. So, in the spirit of clarity, I'm sharing this stuff with you.I have no idea what Jesus meant by giving himself over like this. We read the scripture last night at the Maundy Thursday service at First Baptist. "Not my will but your's." Lord, have mercy. Someone asked the question as someone does every year, "Why would God want Jesus to die? If it's God's will...Why would God will this to happen?" I have some practiced answers. This year I offered them as I usually do. "First, let me tell you what the tradition says..." I give a theological gloss and watch their eyes glaze over. Right. Of course. This isn't an answer any more than a stump speech is an indication of what will actually happen if one of these people in the news are elected to public office. So, I move on.
Posted by Tripp Hudgins 1 year 8 weeks ago
Perhaps you have read Rachel Held Evans' post titled, "15 Reasons I Left Church." With over 800 comments, it has clearly struck a chord with some people. Similarly, Christian Piatt's post on God's Politics, Four Reasons Why I Came Back To Church, has been making the rounds on Facebook. Well, I posted it, at least. They are both about the authors' experiences of being a young adult in relationship with institutional Christianity. It's a difficult topic to write about ... there are trends, of course, but in general the journey is so particular that one cannot really generalize. I think both authors do a good job simply offering up their testimonies, affording the readers an opportunity to make whatever connections we find.
So, in the spirit of connecting the dots, I offer this song and a wee bit of testimony.
Posted by Tripp Hudgins 1 year 9 weeks ago
I'm on the flight home now. "Home." It's a curious idea, really. Home. As children we might make a game of it. You know, like when you play tag with your friends and you create a safe place where you can't be tagged. Even when we play games it's important to have a place to be safe...a "home."When we played this game as children, however, we had another rule. You could not stay at home forever. You had to venture out. Sometimes the rule would be that you could stay home for 30 seconds and no more. Home. It's safe. You can't be tagged there. But you can't stay forever, either.
Posted by Tripp Hudgins 1 year 14 weeks ago
"I have found great beauty in religion and religion has shown me great beauty in myself and in the world," Tripp says, as he reflects on the 11 years since he's had a drink. "I'm still not sure I know what being beloved means. Somehow we forget that we are beloved....Today is the 11th anniversary of the day I was told who I was. It's a good day."
Posted by Tripp Hudgins 1 year 16 weeks ago
Krumbine posited a question, a quandary about how we go on "when the honeymoon is over." How do we sustain love? What do we treasure and how do we sustain the affection and even the excitement? This morning's First Thoughts is about Gratitude. As usual, your video responses and comments are needed to flesh this thing out. I'm only starting a conversation.Watch Tripp hash it out inside the blog ...
Posted by Tripp Hudgins 1 year 18 weeks ago
"Wisdom wants to be free. As a Christian, I believe there is actually some theology to this....Wisdom is a woman and she stands at the gates of the city and she cries out to the people, 'Be free. Be free to love and be free to share.'...What if we understood creativity to be wisdom?"Watch Tripp's v-log on SOPA, creativity, freedom and wisdom inside the blog...
Posted by Tripp Hudgins 1 year 18 weeks ago
I know it's late. I know you are done with the guy and the Broncos' season is over. Still, I have a question for you.
Posted by Tripp Hudgins 1 year 19 weeks ago
Cee Lo Green got himself in some pop-culture hot water on New Years Eve when he changed the lyrics to John Lennon's "Imagine." You would think he was changing the Bible or something, but no, it was much worse. He changed the lyrics to a John Lennon song. "No religions" became "all religions" and all hell broke loose....Suffice it to say that people were put out. They defended Lennon's unchangeable artistic canon. Green's supporters suggested that all art can be reinterpreted...even John Lennon's. Personally, I didn't find it offensive at all. Instead, I thought it was a thoughtful (if momentary) update to the iconic pop song. Given the religious strife in the world, expressing a love for humanity through all the world's religion was generous and very appropriate for a New Year celebration.Alas, no. We're beset by fundamentalisms of all kinds (Lennonists?) and on all sides in this nation of ours. We're sufficiently afraid of religiosity that we've turned anti-religiosity into a religion and musicians become gods and their three minute songs become scripture...unchangeable holy writ.We're afraid and that fear strips us of our compassion.
Posted by Tripp Hudgins 1 year 24 weeks ago
Jim Henson spent his life, like Mr. Rogers (a Presbyterian minister), trying to say to us and our children, "Hey, you're special and you're good." How is this a bad thing?
Posted by Tripp Hudgins 1 year 29 weeks ago
We're in this thing together or we're not in this thing at all.We should all be marching in the streets.We are the 100 percent.We are poor. We are well-to-do. We are those somewhere in the middle. We are aware of the struggles and unfairness of this world and for this reason we are sensitive to one another's needs. So, we love our neighbors as ourselves.
Posted by Tripp Hudgins 1 year 32 weeks ago
"'The fruit for which your soul longed has gone from you, and all your dainties and your splendor are lost to you, never to be found again!' The merchants of these wares, who gained wealth from her, will stand far off, in fear of her torment, weeping and mourning aloud ..."
-- Revelation 18:14-15
Posted by Tripp Hudgins 1 year 33 weeks ago
Part of a university education is learning how to navigate the complicated and often competing value systems of different social groups.
Posted by Tripp Hudgins 1 year 34 weeks ago
The Gate of Forgiveness, Jerusalem. Photo by Deror Avi.
