You won't want to miss the great profile of our friend Shane Claiborne and the New Monastics in Huffington Post's Religion section. HuffPo's religion editor Paul Raushenbush tells the story of Shane and his brothers and sisters in The Simple Way spiritual community in Philly.
Raushenbush writes:
"I often say I was drafted by injustice," explains Shane Claiborne, one of the founders of The Simple Way, a Christian community located in North Philadelphia. Tall, thin, with dreadlocks and a ready smile, Shane shares with me the religious experience that changed his life.
In the late 1990s, a group of homeless families squatting in an abandoned cathedral in Philadelphia were threatened with eviction when the local diocese decided to sell the property. The homeless community hung a banner outside the cathedral that asked: "How can you worship a homeless man on Sunday and evict him on Monday?"
To be a people marked by the faith of Mary is to be a people, who say, "Ok, I don’t understand what’s going on and I know that my life isn’t going to end up looking like one I would choose out of a catalogue but I trust that God is at work in all of it."
Blessedness is being used for God’s purpose more than it’s getting what I want or things being easy.
Christmas itself isn’t about getting what you want, or making sure you’re giving others what they want. To experience Christmas is to trust that God can do this thing again. God can again be born in me, in you, in this broken mess of a gorgeous world.
In the 4th century St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote, “What was achieved in the body of Mary will happen in the soul of everyone who receives the Word.”
See, God is at work in you in much the same way God was at work in Mary. (Not necessarily in that the Holy Spirit’s going to knock you up.) But I do think that you carry in your body the blessing of God and having faith like Mary means allowing yourself to trust that.
Shoppers at Lancaster, Pennsylvania's Central Market got a festive surprise Saturday when a flash mob of more than 125 people broke into the "Hallelujah Chorus" by the bread aisle.
And watch the flash mob from the heartland inside...
Senior citizen flash mob performs Glee's "Last Christmas" at Target, Sir David Attenborough narrates "What a Wonderful World" to clips of nature, Christmas decorations seen as tributes to the Pagan Sun-God, Banksy's latest satrical sculpture on the church, Jesus visits the Denver Broncos, a bread nativity scene, year in review lists, and Teddy the talking porcupine wishes you all a very "Merry Christmas."
Dissident has been defined as “one who challenges the established doctrine, a person who openly defies what has been set as standard or defined policy.”
Many would say that a dissident is the one who is the loudly clanging gong in a world already clamoring with dissonance, another voice we would simply like to be rid of or ignore.
For Vaclav Havel, it most certainly was not this way.
Yes, his words marked the world by challenging its mores. Moving people. Altering lives. Changing the world's map. All this was done with the engaging smoothness of a velvet approach. And this, among a host of many other attributes, will be why he will be so deeply missed and the loss of his life so greatly mourned.
The nation of Czechoslovakia has instated three days of national mourning for the man with the engaging smile. This time of imposed sadness – while a fitting tribute – does not seem nearly enough for a man who made it his purpose to reform hearts.
Editor's Note: Rob Bell, 41, the founding pastor of Mars Hill church in western Michigan, bid adieu to his congregation in a 5,000-word epistle about grace and peace, which he preached on Dec. 18 to thousands in the converted strip mall that has housed the "Jesus community" for a decade. He said, in part:
"this church, this place, this community, was once simply a
hunch. a dream. a vision. a picture in the mind of a new kind of church for the new world we find ourselves in. a church that was fearless in confronting the injustices and systems of oppression that lurk around every corner and at the very same time deeply committed to the personal, intimate experience of following Jesus, of experiencing the joy and peace that transcends space and time. a church that found the stale, old categories of liberal and conservative boring and irrelevant because we'd experienced resurrection, which includes and affirms anything and everything that brings liberating, new life wherever it's found irrespective of whatever labels and categories it's been given because of an abiding conviction that the
tomb is,
after all,
empty.
a church where the main thing was actually the main thing."
The first time I heard Jason Harrod sing was more than 20 years ago at a coffee house at Wheaton College outside Chicago where we were both studends at the time. He sang Neil Young's "Sugar Mountain," and his tenor voice was so pure, so perfect and sweet and heartbreakingly earnest, I ended up crying in my mochachino.
We're both now in our 40s, Jason is stil singing like an angel, and I'm still listening (occasionally in tears) along with many other fans who have discovered the unique charm of Jason's Smokey-Mountains-meets-Brooklyn-subway sensibilities and ever soulful wordsmithery.
Jason and his former musical partner in crime, Brian Funck, recorded "Lion Song" on their self-titled second album, Harrod & Funck that, while not a Christmas song per se, has always felt like a winter tune and tale to me. Seeking shelter from the cold and finding it. Getting lost and being found. The great gift of grace in all of its myriad forms — in relationship, in a light in the darkness, a glimpse of the horizon in the storm, or in the first toddling steps taken by a baby boy sent as a gift (to ALL) to heal and reconcile the world.
God, winter is so beautiful and the wintry portions of my life are those which often give birth to a deepr understanding of who you created me to be, O God. Give me time to explore, to reach out, to find that ripple of hope within my soul. Amen. - Penny Tressler
"Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away the judgements against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more." - Zephaniah 3:14-15
"What we do is very little. But it is like the little boy with a few loaves and fishes. Christ took that little and increased it. [Christ] will do the rest. What we do is so little that we may seem to be constantly failing. But so did [Christ] fail. [Christ] met with apparent failure on the Cross. But unless the seeds fall into the earth and die, there is no harvest." - Dorothy Day