Jan 2009
The Interpreter
28/January/2009 09:06 Filed in: Weekly Column
Our new President sure has caused quite a stir in his first week in office. The consensus across the spectrum is there seems to be no quantifiable anything on really what are the core principles of Barack Obama. There is a lot of spin on the applications so far, some of it I received as comments to last week’s offering, but whether this is spin to appease his far left supporters, or whether they are Obama’s core beliefs, or whether Obama possesses any core beliefs at all, are truly undefined and it might take a while to really know the truth. Then and only then, truth may be only relative and that is no truth at all.
We are surely not going to change any of that here at Wonder Springs, but we will add some thoughts about communities, especially human communities, that hopefully bring some context to the future, which truly is without similar parallels in this country and the world.
“The Interpreter” is a song by Blackfoot Indian, Jack Gladstone. One of the lines from the song goes: “In a barroom brawl, he’ll knock you out, then buy you a drink when you come to.” The link to the song title leads to the rest of the song’s lyrics as well as a little history relating to the song. Jack was raised in Seattle, played football at the University of Washington, in the ancient history when they went to the Rose Bowl, and currently lives in Western Montana.
The job of the interpreter is to provide a means of communication between languages and cultures. Those cultures may share a variety of things in common, they may not. The interpreter seeks to find words and customs to bridge those differences. The barroom incident seems to relate more to customs than language.
The context of the American Frontier is a wise model to what is happening in the United States today. On the Native American side you had basically a communal culture where the concepts of what we today call private property, if they existed, were not all that pronounced, and were subservient to the needs of the community structure of tens and fifties. In the larger community structure of thousands, the ties were much less developed simply because of the demands of environmental survival.
The culture of the White Man was much more hierarchical in nature. The Great White Father ruled from the land where the sun rose, was in charge, owned all the property, and you would submit, because Indian ways were uncultured in comparative arrogance, actually savage in the generalized interpretation. Communities, in the Native American sense, did not and do not exist beyond the concept and influence of the Rez.
Read More...
We are surely not going to change any of that here at Wonder Springs, but we will add some thoughts about communities, especially human communities, that hopefully bring some context to the future, which truly is without similar parallels in this country and the world.
“The Interpreter” is a song by Blackfoot Indian, Jack Gladstone. One of the lines from the song goes: “In a barroom brawl, he’ll knock you out, then buy you a drink when you come to.” The link to the song title leads to the rest of the song’s lyrics as well as a little history relating to the song. Jack was raised in Seattle, played football at the University of Washington, in the ancient history when they went to the Rose Bowl, and currently lives in Western Montana.
The job of the interpreter is to provide a means of communication between languages and cultures. Those cultures may share a variety of things in common, they may not. The interpreter seeks to find words and customs to bridge those differences. The barroom incident seems to relate more to customs than language.
The context of the American Frontier is a wise model to what is happening in the United States today. On the Native American side you had basically a communal culture where the concepts of what we today call private property, if they existed, were not all that pronounced, and were subservient to the needs of the community structure of tens and fifties. In the larger community structure of thousands, the ties were much less developed simply because of the demands of environmental survival.
The culture of the White Man was much more hierarchical in nature. The Great White Father ruled from the land where the sun rose, was in charge, owned all the property, and you would submit, because Indian ways were uncultured in comparative arrogance, actually savage in the generalized interpretation. Communities, in the Native American sense, did not and do not exist beyond the concept and influence of the Rez.
Read More...
Hope for validity
21/January/2009 11:56 Filed in: Weekly Column
Yesterday, Tuesday January 20, 2009 the United States of America peacefully inaugurated the country’s forty-fourth President, Barack Obama. A true Afro-American, without the history of human slavery in his heritage, we see in Obama, a refreshing beginning for not only this country, but also the world. The story that in America anyone can grow up to be President, not only rings true to those with generational history in this land, that bell of freedom now encompasses the whole world, including the continent of Africa.
I personally was moved by the bumbled oath of office, because some forty years earlier I too recited essentially those same words, in the process of being commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the US Army in Cheney, Washington. At that time the words sent a humble chill down my spine, those words still do, and have, every time I have heard them recited since that cold winter day.
“… to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. So help me God.”
Those are words, just words, but those words have been recited in the call to public service to this country since they were first administered to our first President George Washington. Those words have however a transcendent power that have kept this nation secure for over two hundred years, in times of plenty and times of crisis.
I wish and pray for success for this new President, for he has before him a task and challenges that few have seen in the history of this country. Most would say that these challenges are of economics and of foreign hostilities, but those are really just symptoms of a much deeper challenge of bringing the country back to, and leading forward into the historic hope and promise of the American experiment.
The founding of the United States came from the understanding that human beings were created in the image of God, for a Divine purpose. In that light we all walk a pilgrimage that requires an analysis and affirmation of four distinctly human principles. Those four are origins, morality, purpose, and destiny.
Read More...
I personally was moved by the bumbled oath of office, because some forty years earlier I too recited essentially those same words, in the process of being commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the US Army in Cheney, Washington. At that time the words sent a humble chill down my spine, those words still do, and have, every time I have heard them recited since that cold winter day.
“… to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. So help me God.”
Those are words, just words, but those words have been recited in the call to public service to this country since they were first administered to our first President George Washington. Those words have however a transcendent power that have kept this nation secure for over two hundred years, in times of plenty and times of crisis.
I wish and pray for success for this new President, for he has before him a task and challenges that few have seen in the history of this country. Most would say that these challenges are of economics and of foreign hostilities, but those are really just symptoms of a much deeper challenge of bringing the country back to, and leading forward into the historic hope and promise of the American experiment.
The founding of the United States came from the understanding that human beings were created in the image of God, for a Divine purpose. In that light we all walk a pilgrimage that requires an analysis and affirmation of four distinctly human principles. Those four are origins, morality, purpose, and destiny.
Read More...
Brute' redfines the context of "Red Ink" as the fruit of The New Deal Revival!
16/January/2009 20:48 Filed in: Et Tu Brute'
Walls of fear
14/January/2009 10:51 Filed in: Weekly Column
Today we begin the impossible, to attempt to describe not a program but a mission for the church to get back to the reason for her existence. That mission focuses, in Augustinian principles, to build the City of God, so that the City of Man again realizes that Biblical Christianity is a viable worldview in the complex nature of human events.
Accomplishment of this mission does not lie within the power of human facilities; these achievements can only come by the transcendent triune God supernaturally. This can best be described as ex nihilo creation of a new reality from rapidly expanding existing human social chaos.
If you haven’t noticed that chaos and realized its importance in daily events, perhaps you should join the reality of this present world. By and through God’s unity and diversity is the reality that reorders that chaos into a recognizable unity and diversity of human events and social structure. That reality in which the church operates is and has always been focused upon common elements, the proclaimed word, baptismal water, communion bread and wine. Added, in this age, should be an emphasis on functional common human communities, which were historically assumed and are truly in existence throughout human history.
After our enlightened prolonged period in which human created uniqueness has been subjugated to only individual and personal fulfillment in natural noise and toys, Christians need to seek only God’s grace, through faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Just as Elijah came to understand in the wilderness of 1 Kings 19, the still small voice of God only is apparent where the cares and other stupendous events that surround us are put in their proper perspective.
You don’t need to read much in the Wonder Springs archives to realize I have tremendous respect for the transcendent nature of wildness to restore the soul, but that wildness must be tempered with the reality of human community interactions. In that tension, we can find true common grace harmony in specific Biblical grace.
Read More...
Accomplishment of this mission does not lie within the power of human facilities; these achievements can only come by the transcendent triune God supernaturally. This can best be described as ex nihilo creation of a new reality from rapidly expanding existing human social chaos.
If you haven’t noticed that chaos and realized its importance in daily events, perhaps you should join the reality of this present world. By and through God’s unity and diversity is the reality that reorders that chaos into a recognizable unity and diversity of human events and social structure. That reality in which the church operates is and has always been focused upon common elements, the proclaimed word, baptismal water, communion bread and wine. Added, in this age, should be an emphasis on functional common human communities, which were historically assumed and are truly in existence throughout human history.
After our enlightened prolonged period in which human created uniqueness has been subjugated to only individual and personal fulfillment in natural noise and toys, Christians need to seek only God’s grace, through faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Just as Elijah came to understand in the wilderness of 1 Kings 19, the still small voice of God only is apparent where the cares and other stupendous events that surround us are put in their proper perspective.
You don’t need to read much in the Wonder Springs archives to realize I have tremendous respect for the transcendent nature of wildness to restore the soul, but that wildness must be tempered with the reality of human community interactions. In that tension, we can find true common grace harmony in specific Biblical grace.
Read More...
The Mission, mission
07/January/2009 16:30 Filed in: Weekly Column
As this New Year begins, the current and pending real world indicators don’t look all that optimistic. The latest from the emerging President is that his economic stimulus package could easily reach a trillion dollars. The Federal budget deficit could be a few hundred billion beyond that, and virtually all our states are in dire economic straights. Furthermore, all this monetary chaos is expected to continue well into the future.
Capitalism in its greedy worship of money alone, precipitated this current crisis and at least at present spin asks for more freedom to do it all again. If government would collect no taxes from anyone, then the economy would grow into a giant economic utopia. However, at least for the short term, Wall Street needs some government bailout money to set the ship on course. I think not, that they will not get the money; I think not that it will work.
What is missing in each of these wonderful schemes is any sense of a reality that personal peace and affluence is not only a bankrupt economic model, this all stems from an complete insolvency of the underlying materialist philosophy. Neither of our addicted to their-own steroids models above, is willing to accept this absolute truth.
To focus on these true deficits is to say that we are in the secular world trying to achieve a true mission impossible. This is not a Peter Graves or Tom Cruise action fantasy where the good guy struggles for the whole episode to overcome the bad guy. This is a reality world in which at best the good and the bad are so intertwined that there can be no real resolution of the conflict. Before our current problems can be solved we need to redefine the mission.
This new mission statement is not going to come from any players in any of the above. The only hope for our struggling world is that we redefine the goals of all humanity beyond just tangible material reality. I suppose some good news in all of this is that in the course of all human history, the totally materialistic worldview has little precedence.
In other words this is the only time in history man has not looked in someway for guidance from some type of higher power. This godless materialism, is at best a twentieth century phenomena and has earnestly ruled in the west since it defeated the Soviet form in the 1980s. The end of the Cold War has brought atheistic material prosperity to all, Hallelujah!
Read More...
Capitalism in its greedy worship of money alone, precipitated this current crisis and at least at present spin asks for more freedom to do it all again. If government would collect no taxes from anyone, then the economy would grow into a giant economic utopia. However, at least for the short term, Wall Street needs some government bailout money to set the ship on course. I think not, that they will not get the money; I think not that it will work.
What is missing in each of these wonderful schemes is any sense of a reality that personal peace and affluence is not only a bankrupt economic model, this all stems from an complete insolvency of the underlying materialist philosophy. Neither of our addicted to their-own steroids models above, is willing to accept this absolute truth.
To focus on these true deficits is to say that we are in the secular world trying to achieve a true mission impossible. This is not a Peter Graves or Tom Cruise action fantasy where the good guy struggles for the whole episode to overcome the bad guy. This is a reality world in which at best the good and the bad are so intertwined that there can be no real resolution of the conflict. Before our current problems can be solved we need to redefine the mission.
This new mission statement is not going to come from any players in any of the above. The only hope for our struggling world is that we redefine the goals of all humanity beyond just tangible material reality. I suppose some good news in all of this is that in the course of all human history, the totally materialistic worldview has little precedence.
In other words this is the only time in history man has not looked in someway for guidance from some type of higher power. This godless materialism, is at best a twentieth century phenomena and has earnestly ruled in the west since it defeated the Soviet form in the 1980s. The end of the Cold War has brought atheistic material prosperity to all, Hallelujah!
Read More...
