sacred journeys

…sorry for the absence. Voxtropolis has had major issues / upgrades / etc. lately, and every time I have tried to log on to post something this past week, I have been unable to….. arghhhhhh.

Anyway, a St. Patrick’s Day prayer for you ( a little late)

Peace between neighbors
Peace between kindred
Peace between lovers,
In the love of the King of life.

Peace between person and person,
Peace between wife and husband,
Peace between women and children,
The peace of Christ above all peace.

Bless, O Christ, my face,
Let my face bless everything;
Bless, O Christ, mine eye,
Let mine eye bless all it sees.

Taken from God Under My Roof: Celtic Songs and Blessings

I am “one who is on the way, though not necessarily very far along it, and who has at least some dim and half-baked idea of Who to thank” -Frederick Buechner

“Most churches make the mistake of selecting as leaders the confident, the competent, and the succesful. But what you most need in a leader is someone who has been broken by the knowledge of his or her sin, and even greater knowledge of Jesus’ costly grace.” — Tim Keller

A good friend of mine in MN — Josh, sent this over to me. I was challenged & blessed by Francis Chan’s words… “say whatever I tell you to say…”

Well, we are not having an Oscar party tonight to view the Academy Awards. We could not switch our Kairos gathering for the morning - because Hope and Kairos are allowing another church to temporarily use our building. So, we did not feel like we could cancel the gathering just for the Oscars. To be honest, people will still be able to watch the last couple of hours (of long-winded, out of touch acceptance speeches…) — they will just miss the red carpet entrances, and the first hour or so of the Awards.

Speaking of long-winded acceptance speeches — it does not bother me so much when someone goes on and on (and on and on….) - when they are thanking friends, family, producers, fellow actors, fans, and oh yeah - they throw in a generic thanks to ‘god’ — it is just when they get political (whatever their politics would be) — that can be nauseating.

If I had my choice, like this LA Times article puts it — shut up or speak out? — I’d have them shut up (after a simple, humble ‘thanks’)

Best quote from the article: “But not everyone is as entranced with the celebrities’ views as they are. “It’s like, OK, enough already,” said cultural historian Leo Braudy, author of “The Frenzy of Renown.” “Those things turn as many people off as inspire them.”

We live today in a world in which nobody believes choices should have consequences. But may I tell you the great secret that our culture seeks to deny? You cannot escape the consequences of your choices. Time runs in only one direction. - character Jack Ziegler, in The Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Clark (Vintage, 2003)

So, overall living in LA — I rarely feel ‘not safe’. Yesterday however, I kept hearing these helicopters overhead & was wondering what was going on. I did not have time to watch the news last night, and my radio is dead in my car — so today I go on-line & see this…

“Gang mayhem cripples big area”

Los Angeles Police Department SWAT officers continue to search door to door Thursday at scene of fatal shoot out.

The first paragraphs say it all: “A drive-by attack followed by a wild shootout between gang members and police shut down dozens of blocks of Northeast Los Angeles for nearly six hours Thursday afternoon, stranding thousands of residents, keeping students locked in their classrooms and leaving two people dead. Veteran L.A. Police Department officials described the bizarre midday shootings — and the widespread disruption they caused — as highly unusual even in an area known for gang activity. It left the neighborhood littered with shell casings and its residents fearful.”

This was just blocks away from this Staples store that I go to (maybe a couple of miles from our house). It just seemed a little surreal when I was reading the article — because I was totally clueless with what was going on yesterday close by.

“….we are wanting to see the shalom of God breaking out into the world in God’s people.’’

A photo from where we meet at Kairos — overlooking our neighborhood of Hollywood / Los Angeles.

“This sobering image, showing a 40-year-old groom sitting beside his 11-year-old future bride in Afghanistan, brought Stephanie Sinclair top honors in the annual Photo of the Year contest sponsored by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).”

——-

We live in a crazy, relativistic, post-modern world; where it is hard for people to make judgments of what is right and what is wrong. It is clarifying when someone has the guts to speak their mind on behalf of those who cannot speak up — about what is right and what is wrong.

How a UNICEF Photo Makes the West’s Heart Ache — An 11-year-old child bride sits next to her 40-year-old fiance. For UNICEF, this was the Photo of the Year. Dutch writer Leon de Winter laments the perversity of this wedding picture and the frightening relativism of the West.

A quote from the article: “I don’t have a clue who we are. But I know that this universe is not only a universe of iPods, Disneylands, CO2 penalties, tax write-offs, and New Year’s sales in our department stores. No, I know that this is also a universe of human rights. I know that this universe is deeply shaken — right down to its core — by the suffering of this lonely, lonely little girl.”

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