Quisling is Twentieth Century nomenclature for traitor taken from the name of a said notorious Norwegian. A villa was honored today, his former manse, as a place for recognition of oppression of religious minorities. A curiosity I'm finding is that the Church apparently isn't a place for minorities. Of course that’s no real surprise actually the south has codified racism for centuries, the seat of this was in the southern church where pew and bigotry got down to the business of separation. The white folks tolerated the black folks if they kept in their place; the shame of segregation was bridged by efforts of Dr. Martin Luther King, which included spilt blood-his own, and the assassination of his person and character.

I say this because I wonder what epithet the word Christian might become as we ease our way into another century with equal aplomb in the treachery department. When the Nazi's invaded Norway, Vidkun Quisling moved into this mansion and became the self-proclaimed collaborative government of Norway, while the elected officials were in exile in London. This son of a church official pillaged the wealth of the Jewish community and condemned a significant portion of that quarter to death. After the peace was established in the wake of War II, he was summarily executed for war crimes.

I'm curious if some future do-gooders will erect museums or some sort of cultural center for the underprivileged, poor, needy, and oppressed at some of the sanctuaries left vacant by Christians. Christians who had better things to do than consider the undesirables among them because they were busy divvying up the spoils of the culture they were called to love.

John

Southern Gothic author Flannery O'Connor was said to spend three hours in the morning writing and the rest of the day getting over it. Writing is a neurotic enterprise that preys on our souls at times; reading doesn't do us much better it seems. We cast ourselves in a play of three acts and somewhere during intermission the scenic hands put up the wrong backdrop and we do "Hamlet" in a New York walk-up interior. Alas poor John I knew him well.

How do we live in these days where our sense of intelligence comes from a box; our sense period from a grocery store magazine rack where the sperm donor's rogue's gallery of celebrated status stares back at us in glossy inked unreality. Or to the Christian world where we thrive on the do's and don'ts of probity and propriety while life swirls around our ankles with the debris of humanity. Hmmm me thinks the reader is pondering lighter reading or possibly just more coherent. I think the answer while not "Blowin' in the wind" as the song simplistically states may be as down to earth. How do we feel about life, our life, ourselves? Do we read these as indicators of where we are going or just sign posts of our discontent?

We are in a place of need I find in our world, a need not for clarity as much as a need for faith. Faith? What faith? What do we put our trust in; to what do we owe our allegiance to outside of ourselves? We need to trust our relationship to the Father through Jesus. Don't have one? Or has religion supplanted your relationship, the rigor of a reality based on performance instead of the reality of performance based on relationship. We do because of our who. We rest in our isness. I've found a truth in life that has done me well of late-there have been no mistakes in creation made by God and that is particularly true of humans. Now we may need growth or any number of other things but the artwork is fine and it ain't paint by number.

Jesus asks us this question from time to time which I think is telling, "Who do men say that I am? And who do you say that I am?" If He is indeed the Christ for us then we can rest in that and not apply cosmetics to His handiwork, nor yield to the "Satan" of self interest in proscribing the outcome of our journey with Him. We are called to the death, burial, and resurrection of the Messiah and His working in our lives and the calling of His grace to give us strength. "My grace is sufficient for you."

John

Is you is, or is you isn't?

Someday I hope the polarizing questions we ask and thrive on aren't the foodstuffs of our ephemeral selves. The liberalism and conservatism of moderninity I hope give way to progression and cooperation.

I am a believer in the "vive la difference" of life that diversification is healthy, but polarizing ourselves into warring factions is an autoimmune disease of our church and our culture and mankind. How do we do this? As a post modern which is what we are like the label or not we carry forward the germ of humanity in its quest for discovery including the discovery of God. Post medievalism-moderninity thrived on change and languished in conflict and competition; the denominations exist today because of this competition. Brian Mclaren writes about this issue in his book "Generous Orthodoxy".

For a person who doesn't quite know whether to label myself a post charismatic I prefer to just be a Christian for now. For some of us I think we have a need to know what it is we know, I can say that for me I'm learning about who I know-Jesus among others, and about knowing who is me.

John