A Generous Orthodoxy - Post II

(Pg. 34 in the book, from the opening chapter titled "A Generous Refund")

McLaren writes: Scandalously, the generous orthodoxy you will explore (if you proceed) goes too far, many will say, in the direction of identifying orthodoxy with a consistent practice of humility, charity, courage, and diligence.

In the following paragraphs he talks about how many Christian denominations equate orthodoxy with right thinking while leaving out the orthopraxis of right living. He goes on to say that orthopraxis should be the end result of orthodoxy - there should never be a separation between what we believe and how we act. In my own words, we should be congruent - always trying to live out what we believe in every situation life puts us in.

It's hard (as evidenced by religious leaders in many Christian denominations, as well as by practicing members of all world faiths) to always and everywhere live out our beliefs; we need orthodoxy to help show us the way to take. We need wise and knowledgeable people to help light the way into God's presence here on earth and in the hereafter.

But if we ourselves don't start to take that light and use it ourselves, at some point we'll grow tired of following and either just sit and stay where we're at, or worse still we'll take a different path altogether, one where we try not to think about the absence of light and instead focus on just surviving in the dark. Without practice, the knowledge in and of itself is useless.

Case in point: I play the trumpet. I can read music, I know my scales, I have a good grasp of the theory behind taking a long piece of tubing and making music come out it of. However, I my ability to make good sounding music come out of my glorified copper pipe has lessened as I get further and further away from my high school days. Back then my music theory may have been weaker, but I practiced my trumpet every day, sometimes a total of 4 or 5 hours a day (marching practice before school, during band, during lunch, during private lessons, marching practice after school, then finally at home). No I'm lucky if I put in 30 minutes once or twice a week. My orthodoxy is sound - I know how my lips should be just so, how my air flow should be aimed just so, how my body should be just so, how my fingers should move just so, etc. But if I never actually take out the trumpet and play . . . well, my orthopraxis is shot - I can no longer wail as once I did.

So I like this opening to the book - it meshes well with my own struggle to live out my beliefs and test my actions against the teachings of Jesus and the church. May we all come to the point where there will be no distinction - either personally or corporately as church - between word and deed.

Blessings & Peace,

Hugo

Finding A Job - Poverty Project

Your last step is finding a job! You should look for a job that you think you would like to do. The following sites will help you find normal jobs (teacher, lawyer, architect, contractor, doctor, research scientist, etc.) - if you want an exotic job (rock star, professional athlete, world-famous diamond king, etc.) you'll have to do the research on your own!

Once you find a job you like, I'll need a printout that shows me the job title and your annual salary. If your job cannot support your desired lifestyle budget, you'll also need to find a job that can pay as much as you want to spend per year. You will have to print the information for that job as well.

CareerInfoNet - has a list of the highest paying jobs

Salary Wizard - will give you low, medium and high pay for different jobs

Jobs.com - let's you generally search for jobs; not all have a listed salary

O-Net Online - you can seach by keyword; salary is listed at the very bottom of the page

US Dept. Of Labor - you can search by name or browse a list of many occupations

Enjoy! :-)

Blessings & Peace,

D

What Happens At YO?

Want to catch a glimpse of what you'll do next year at YO? Head over to Ms. Cindy's web page and see a few pictures and read about their adventures!

But . . . do your work first! (Remember - it's due Friday and it is your final!)

Blessings & Peace,
D

What Would Jesus Take?

So I had an interesting thought earlier today as I was . . . using the facilities here at school: would Jesus have gotten constipated or had to deal with diarrhea? I wonder about this because we affirm that he was truly human and truly divine. There have been times when we've celebrated his divinity so much that his humanity has been eclipsed, and there have been times when we've done the opposite. If we affirm that he was truly human, then the occasional bout with irregularity must have happened. If we affirm that he was truly God, then it would seem that he should never have to suffer the indignity of either of those scenarios (especially before the advent of all the wonderful drugs we use to treat the symptoms of both of those conditions).

Now, another way to approach this is to wonder about Adam & Eve and the Fall. Would Adam & Eve ever have suffered from irritable bowel syndrome before eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? If we affirm that suffering entered into this world because of our sin, then it would seem that if humanity had stayed sin-free we would also have trouble-free bowels. However, since committing that first sin our bowels have been paying the wages of sin long before our death. :-) Bringing it back to Jesus in a more concrete fashion - if he gorged on grapes, dates and olives as a young boy, he would have to live with the natural consequences of his actions - loose bowels.

Why wonder about this? I favor an approach to my faith that tries to apply universal truths universally - to the time before creation, to our earliest ancestors, to us now, and, if God wills it, to the people that will be alive 200,000 years from now. I think God created us as is - we were no different then than we are now. At some point in our evolutionary journey we learned how to commit sin. Every person, at one point or another, lies for the first time and feels shame when caught. Every person, at one time or another, thrills to the first consciously used bad word that issues from a previously curse-free tongue. At some point, I think, humanity as a whole learned how to commit various hurtful actions that we now call sin. But that jump into sin didn't, I believe, somehow usher in a time of suffering through death and disease.

I take the stories of creation in Genesis as religious myth - stories meant to engage us and teach us universal truths about God, ourselves, and the relationships between Creator and created and between all created beings. So I don't think that, for example, our earliest ancestors gave birth without any birthing pains, or that at some point our earliest ancestors would not have died if they would not have sinned. We are now as we have been - fallible beings created by an infallible Creator, housed in bodies that tend to break down (like everything else in our universe subject to the force of entropy). We suffer, not as a result of original sin, but as an original blessing offered to us by God.

So going back to Jesus, my own response would be that Jesus could have suffered from the same maladies we can suffer now, some due to choice (eating way too much fruit, for example) and some due to chance (catching a cold because you were around someone else who had one). In this way, he was truly like you and me in everything except the willful choice to take actions that would run contrary to the will of God.

Blessings & Peace,

Hugo

My Actual Sunday Blog (A Generous Orthodoxy)

I posted earlier about missing a post on Saturday - so technically (in my mind, anyway!) that was yesterday's post - this is today's post.

I've read and re-read Brian D. McLaren's book A Generous Orthodoxy. Upon my second reading I went through and highlighted the paragraphs, links and thoughts and struck me as true (which pretty much means "I think like that") or questionable (which pretty much means "hmmm . . . he could be going to hell for this"). :-)

On pg. 20 (in the introduction to the book; and I'm reading the softcover with "new epilogue & discussion guide included," just in case you're following along), writing to those who are not yet Christian but thinking about it, McLaren states: You wonder if there's any way to follow Jesus without becoming a Christian. In the footnote to that sentence he further writes: If you need permission, YES, you can follow Jesus without identifying yourself as a Christian. See Chapter 17. Of course, as a follower of Jesus, you will learn to love and draw near to everyone, whatever their religion of lack thereof, including Christians. In so doing, you will exemplify what a Christian should be.

So I find myself of two minds right at the edge of this book.

1. I think of Gandhi, who valued the teaching of Jesus as found in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew so much that he read and meditated on them and honored the Jew who uttered them. He never identified himself as a formal follower of Jesus, but he tried to live out the teachings that fit in with his already determined path. This is, for me, a perfect example of what McLaren's talking about - living the lifestyle espoused by Jesus even though there's no declaration of faith, no baptism, no formal Church attendance, etc.

2. McLaren seems to be making a case here that to follow Jesus means acting a certain way, this acting having been precipitated by learning more about Jesus and trying to act as he would act (that's a convoluted sentence, by the way, but I'm not sure how to fix it, so it stays as is - hopefully y'all can make sense of the sense I'm trying to get across!). I think I agree with this, too - at the core of Jesus' teaching seems to be the tripartite commandment to love God and love others as self. If we can manage that, then it would make sense that our lives would be so ordered as to live a Jesus-like lifestyle, whether or not we ever attended any religious service or received formal religious instruction.

3. On the other hand, the New Testament is also filled with stories of people living out their faith in communities of faith. Our history as fractured Church shows that even in times of persecution and schism people tried their best to live faith in the midst of other struggling Christians. If, as I believe, Christianity is best lived out in community, then becoming a follower of Jesus all by your lonesome is not really an option. It smacks of a solitary practitioner of Wicca picking and choosing from among many varied and often contradictory sources to create a personalized path of rituals, chants, spells, beliefs and gods. It reminds me of gnostics and early orthodox Christians, East and West, Protestant and Catholic, etc. - each person living out their own vision of what it means to follow Jesus. The New Testament shows arguments, conflicts and disagreements over doctrine and practice, yes, but it also shows eventual compromise based on the prompting of the Spirit and the prayer and conversation of early leaders. I find it hard to realistically tell someone that they can follow Jesus without entering into the messy arena of the Church.

4. On the other hand, I think McLaren may be saying that you can follow the teachings of Jesus without having to make a formal declaration of churchiness. This is what Gandhi did - he treated all religious teaching as ethically true, without ascribing to any one religion eminence over the other. He followed the teaching of Jesus, but did not enter into the complex world of Church politics, limited atonement, number of sacraments, divinity of Jesus, or any of the other things Christians fought (and continue to fight) over.

5. On one last hand, the New Testament again seems to argue that following Jesus mandates both an ethical change of lifestyle (love God, love neighbor) and an additional assent of faith in the incarnation, life, passion, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus; not just an affinity for his teachings, but an essential worship of the Logos made flesh. In light of this, I find it hard to unflinchingly assert that anyone can be Christian just by saying it's so. However, I can say that anyone can follow the teachings of Jesus so long as they read for themselves and put it into practice. And really, wouldn't the whole world be a slightly better place if everyone - Gentile or Jew, woman or man, servant or free - followed this?

Blessings & Peace,

Hugo

Already Missed A Day

Due to the fact that yesterday was very packed with stuff to do. Had to wake up early because my son had a birthday party to attend. He was being picked up here at our house, so I had to clean the kitchen, living room & dining room all while getting our clothes ready and me showered. Once he left it was time to take my wife out for her Mother's day meal (since we were alone - it's not often we get to eat out by ourselves!). Then it was shopping time for her gift (she ended up finally getting the digital camera she's been asking for!). We picked up our son after that, rushed home, and I showered and changed again (I was playing trumpet at a wedding). I got home at about 10 last night, and now I'm posting quickly because I have to get to Mass then do two more Mother's Day meals today (mom & mom-in-law).

Here's to long weekends! :-)

Blessings & Peace,

Hugo

It Starts

So this is Day One of my Daily Post-A-Thon (or would it be day 2 . . . I actually posted yesterday and mused about trying to post every day . . . and since I'm posting today that means I've posted two days in a row . . . but technically yesterday I was only *thinking* about posting every day . . . and today I've started . . . hmmm . . . we'll call it Day Two - that means I've done it twice!)

But I digress . . .

I'm thinking about the Mass we had earlier this morning. It's our 8th grade student's last all-school Mass. We sit our youngest students closer to the front (1st and 2nd grade), with 7th & 8th students in the balcony at the back of the Church. Since today was the last Mass for 8th grade they were moved to the very front of the Church. Right before Mass was finished all of our 8th grade students were invited to come up around the altar for a special blessing from Fr. Ray. He prayed for them and blessed them with holy water, then they sat down again. Once the closing blessing was given the 8th grade students processed out before anyone else. It was a very symbolic way of letting all of us gathered know that they were ready to move on to High School next year. It was also symbolic in that there was now an open space for the next grades to fill.

It was also a moving gesture for me personally:

1. Since I work closely with Jr. High students (I teach 7th grade religion and 7th & 8th grade study hall, and I work with a team of Middle school students to do ministry around the school), every year is another exercise in letting go. Some years its harder, some easier, but this year some of the 8th grade boys were, well . . . 8th grade boys :-) - which, of course, made me love them even more. I'm going to miss seeing them in the hallways and in class.
2. My son is in 4th grade this year - in a few years I'll be watching him and his friends graduate from school and moving on - it really hit home this morning that I don't have too much time left in this phase of his life - this pre-adolescent, energetic, still-wanting-to-spend-lots-of-time-with-his-dad phase. It forced me to re-evaluate - once again - my time and leisure commitments. This also spurred me to think about my other relationships (God, wife, mother, siblings, in-laws, friends) and how best to cherish and celebrate them in the midst of our changing lives.

So it was an awakening moment for me. I pray that I'll stay true to the kind of person I want to be (spending time with people important to me) instead of slipping into the kind of person I can all too often be (putting stuff and my comfort ahead of my relationships). May you be true to your best self as well.

Blessings & Peace,
Hugo

Blog-A-Day?

I read somewhere that by committing yourself to blog once a day - every day, no matter what - you force yourself to see it as another daily commitment (like showering, or eating, or other important stuff). So it got me wondering - given my less-than-stellar track record for blogging, would I be able to commit to blogging (writing) every day?

I like to think of myself as a good writer, and looking back over my posts, I 'd also like to think that some of them were pretty good. :-) So with summer fast approaching, I thought I'd try The Great Daily Blogging Experiment. Starting today. :-)

Some of the posts won't be

1. very long
2. very deep
3. very coherent
4. some or all of the above

but at least I'll be writing/posting, especially during the time when I can let my brain athrophy with too much TV / bumming around. So stick around - you'll get to read some of the strange thoughts that have been germinating in the compost heap of my head. :-)

Blessings & Peace,
Hugo

Movies Part II

A quick update from a previous post: I've seen 590 movies over the course of my lifetime (according to the movies I've rated at Blockbuster.com). Again . . . not sure if I should be proud or worried (especially after my previous post topic!).

Blessings & Peace,
Hugo

Online Grocery Stores - for Poverty Project

Instructions for Today's Class (05/08/07):

1. You're buying groceries to make meals for one (1) week for you and your two children (ages 7 and 3). That's seven breakfasts for 3 people, seven dinners for 3 people, 2 lunches for 3 people, and 5 lunches just for you. You may also include snacks (after school, after dinner, etc.).
2. You do not need to feed your kids lunch (they will eat at school or at their day care for free).
3. On a separate sheet of paper (or on the paper I gave you, or typed in a Word or Excel document) write down the food for each meal and the cost.
4. Add up all the costs for the week - that's your total food expenses for the week.
5. Multiply by four (4) to get your monthly total.

You can click on the following links to help you with your grocery shopping:

Albertson's
Amazon.com Grocery
The Hard to Find Grocer
AULSuperStore.com
NetGrocer
MyBrands

Enjoy!

Blessings & Peace,
Mr. De La Rosa