Breakthrough!!!

Ok Wow I just had a really really big break through moment. I just read a friend/colleague's blog and I also listened to the first ever young people's address and when I got up to do some of the chores that I need to do I just had a breakthrough. I know why conference encourages me more than it drains me. It shows me how passionate we are about our denomination. Rather I agree with where the passions are placed is not it important but there are a lot of us there who are desperately passionate about our church.

And I can stay a part of this church and become an ordained member of its clergy because I to am passionate about this church. I am passionate about the church but I am NOT the church. I am me I represent my spirituality and my faith, I represent Christianity, i represent the United Methodist church, but the I am not the United Methodist church. I am simply a valuable piece of the body. I can still represent my visions and dreams wholly and with integrity even when i am in direct disgorgement with the church. In the same way that i feel that I can pastor/lead a church of varying views and opinions.

I envision an church that will never be unified in the way that we would like to be, but unified in the idea that we are all God's children. We all need to walk with Christ. We need to love wholly and fully.

Since when do we get to decide who God's people are

This is the e-mail that I got from one of my profs today if you are interested in writing a letter let me know in the comments section and I will get you the addresses. For those of you who have never heard Mark Miller he makes amazing Music that in doubt is insipred by God and made for the Golory of God

Dear class,Forgive me for interrupting your summer interlude, but I wanted to let you know of one more relevant issue to our course. My wonderful colleague and our music director, Mark Miller, is being attacked with a full press by UMAction and Institute for Religion and Democracy. According to them he is unacceptable to lead music at General Conference next year because he is a self proclaimed gay man. YOu may remember the stories he told us about General conference in the past where he has been a powerful prophetic voice. They are well funded and have mailed all the churches in the country to get a letter writing campaign going to protest the selection of Mark and his co director Marcia McFee (who will be teaching for us this summer. This makes me so sad and angry, to see someone with such a generous and loving spirit and dedication to God attacked this way. I have felt the presence of God so often in the midst of music lead by Mark. He is an incredible person and musician, and we have had to work hard at Drew to keep him from being lured away. This is what our class was about--the power of religion to destroy and do harm.IF you want to write letters of support to counteract this campaign, let me know and I'll provide the addresses. I just thought that since so many of you had been moved by Mark's presence in class that I needed to let you know.

Rutgers Basketball

I decided to way in on this since I am a huge fan of women's basketball and involved in racial issues. I am going to go out on a limb here and I may really anger some people but here it goes. First what Don Imus said was wrong. However, he has said worse, others have said A lot worse. Not that others doing it make it right. Yet, I think there is a bigger issue you here. first and foremost, Imus has been on the air for a long time obviously people listen to his show and are patrons to his advertisers and therefore his show makes money and he stays on the air. Just as Howard Stern is still in the business, and many others. Look at the success of South park. A show based on making fun of other people. We justify it by saying that well they make fun of everyone, why is that acceptable?

Second, we as the black community have to look at the way we treat each other. In some hip-hop and rap music being called a nappy headed ho would be the least of my concerns. the use of the N word outrageous. How can we expect others to treat us with respect if we do not treat ourselves with respect?

We all ,every human being, needs to step up to plate and starting treating one another with respect. We need to teach our children what respect means, what it is to be respectful. That is missing big time right now in all communities. I glad that Imus is being called to task on this, but I am sad that every case of racism gets this kind of attention. If we don't make some serious changes this is a story that will be back again and again.

Finally, think it is a shame that the Rutgers women's basketball team and women's basketball are only making the press for these issues and not the successes they achieved this year.

Ecotheology

So my two favorite classes this summer are systematic theology and religion and the social process. The great thing is that often they intersect. Here is something that i never really thought about. The way we divide ourselves is the reason why really important issues get stifled. In stead of all of those being oppressed getting together and working on each others issues, we stand around saying well they don't care about MY issue. We need to stop! We need to come together.

In systematic yesterday we had a discussion about ecotheogoy. Some of my classmates were getting bogged down in the fact that by focusing on the environment we lose sight of environmental issues. That with all the hooopla surrounding The Inconvenient Truth we have forgotten about poverty issues or issues in urban settings. What they seem to forget is that environmental issues often negatively effect the poor the most. What they didn't seem to glean from the reading is the Ecotheology is not only about caring for the physical planet ( although that is VERY important) it is also about caring for the creatures on the planet, including us humans.

People and environment are not separate issues. Anyone who tries to tell that they are are simply worried that if there are no poor people or cleaning up the environment will hurt their pocketbook.