It is the holiday season. I’m not feeling so festive this year. In the past couple of days I have witnessed more anxiety on the street, more road rage, and in general less consideration for others when out and about in public.

One day this week while headed home on 101 after work, I saw someone trying hard to prevent someone from merging into the lane ahead of them. Granted, this is nothing new in the bay area, but there was something slightly more aggressive about the behaviour.

Yesterday while lining up to get gas at a station just off of 101, I noticed some strange behaviour that may also have been related to holiday rush and anxiety. The station was full and people where waiting to get to a pump. There were a few of us lined up on one edge of the station lot. As soon as someone filling up left their pump, we witnessed someone come directly off the street and take the pump that several people were waiting for. In general, I don’t think you typically see this kind of behaviour out here. What made it unique, other than the disregard for the line that was forming, was the individuals apparent lack of awareness that a line was even present. Based on their behaviour, I don’t think they even noticed the line existed. Once they pulled in, they retrieved some items from the trunk and proceeded to study them for 4-5 minutes while sitting at the pump. To make a long story short, they didn’t end up pumping any gas. They just pulled into an empty spot at the station, put some thought into something, and then left without using the pump. All the while, I don’t think they were really aware of the people around them.

Was this just coincidental and strange behaviour? Perhaps. I think most would agree though that this is a hectic and stressful time of the year.

Is it worth it? Isn’t there another way? We Americans spend a lot of money this time of year buying things for people who really don’t need any more. How many of us have over stuffed closets and garages?

There are about 40 million people living below the poverty line here in America. There are roughly 1 billion people (or 1/5th of the worlds population) that live in abject poverty on less than $1 a day.

Isn’t there another way? It is estimated that ~$17 billion was spent on holiday shopping during the 3 day weekend after thanksgiving. If we say that Americans will spend around $100 billion or more this holiday season, imagine what would happen if we decided to give that as a gift to the poorest of the poor this holiday season?

Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Luke 12:32-34

What if all of the followers and apprentices of Jesus were to give that money to the poorest of the poor this holiday season? What would that add up to? Maybe $10 billion? Maybe $20 billion?

I think instead of giving any gifts this year, I’m going to give money to the poorest of the poor in the name of my family and friends. Here are some ways we can give:

• Supply a village in Africa with some livestock or clean water. See the worldvision catalog.
• Help end world hunger at heifer.org.
• Help American families.
• Help hungry families in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties through Second Harvest.
• The red cross.
• Quake fund for Pakistan.
• National AIDS fund.

Maybe this will result in a little less anxiety on the streets and in the malls and little more consideration at the pump. What do you think? Will you join me?

This weekend, we kicked off a brainstorming session on creating a common life as apprentices in the way of Jesus. It was a fun beginning to what will probably be a lengthy process of both individual and corporate spiritual formation.

The discussions centered mostly around coming up with common, multi-layered rhythms that will be practiced by the community. The rhythms of the community will be inspired by the life and teachings of Jesus and fall more or less into six buckets or streams: centeredness, generosity, community, restoration, integrity, and creativity.

The rhythms of these streams will be practiced daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, etc. We will start off by focusing on a stream for 1-2 months like we did with the have2give1 project. As we focus on the stream for a few months and allow the project to challenge and shape us we hope to come up with daily, weekly, or monthly practices that can be incorporated into our daily lives. These practices will ultimately shape the vows of the community– the values and practices we commit to in seeking to be apprentices of the master.

We also took this opportunity to dive into a creative chemistry project– soap making. Ever since I saw fight club, I’ve had a passive interest in making soap. I also think it could be a interesting and creative way to make some money on the side. Imagine coming up with a funky concoction and convincing some swanky department store to sell it for $20.

Anyway, Lisa was telling me a few weeks prior to this trip that she has done it and that a friend gave her some supplies for making soap before leaving the area. She offered to guide us through the process using some of the materials she had left over. You just need some water, lye (sodium hydroxide), fats/oils, a fragrance and or texture, and about an hour. The recipe that Lisa was drawing from called for a cup of coffee grinds that had been sitting in vodka for 24 hrs as the fragrance/texture. Textured it will be. The coffee grinds are still intact in the semi-finished product.

One catch is that you need to wait for about 6 weeks before you use it. I’m assuming that the six weeks allows the lye to break down some so you don’t burn your skin.

I’m thinking about making this a series to collect and share my thoughts on each of the streams. If you have any thoughts on monasticism, intentional community, or soap making let me know. I’d like to hear about it.

So I came out as a Neo orthodox from the what is your theological worldview quiz. Hmm… Neo orthodox… does that include space for a neo generous orthodoxy to include my emergent side? I found it on Mark Fletcher’s blog.

Give it a shot.

It is fascinating to me that some of the things that have been happening in my discipline (computer science) also seem to be happening to the church. Andrew referenced this in his blog today. My first exposure to some of the background to what was happening (both in software and in the culture at large) first came from ESR’s book The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

Eric first wrote the book “online” before it was later printed and published. This is something that perhaps some of the emergent authors should explore– first putting their thoughts, ideas, and theology online before or while publishing it. This might nurture, for good or bad, some of the decentralized contribution that has benefited software in the opensource movement. Some of this is clearly happening now through blogs and other online media but it would be interesting to see what would happen if it was applied to more formal and typically more lengthy collections of thoughts such as books.

Perhaps those working/assisting/struggling with the emerging church (and the context) could learn something from what has happened with software and the opensource movement. A good place to start would be the The Cathedral and the Bazaar and some of the related writings and critiques that ESR has compiled on the same site. We might learn something about spiritual formation from the hacker culture too.

I first stumbled upon NT Wright under the resource list at emergent village. There are four MP3s there of talks that he gave on The Future of the People of God. These talks opened up a whole new world for me. When I was telling a friend about the talks a few months ago, he suggested that I read The Challenge of Jesus and let me borrow his copy. It took me a little while to get through it, but it was a great read. It opened the veil for me to some larger story lines in the bible and the pivotal role that Jesus played in ushering the first day of the new creation.

I really enjoyed his walk through of the road to Emmaus story on the afternoon of the first Easter and his connection back to Psalm 42 & 43. He talks about how the Jews expected the exile to end with Jesus through the traditional means– holiness, zeal for God & the law, and some kind of military revolt– and their disappointment and confusion when he is crucified by the pagan Romans that he is supposed to overthrow. He ties in 43:3-4 to the frustration and fear they must have felt on the road to Emmaus after the death of Jesus and how Jesus comes, gives them the skinny on God’s redemptive work through the law and the prophets culminating in Himself and reveals Himself to them causing them to run back to Jerusalem with Joy and join up with rest to figure out what in the world had just happened (boy that was a long sentence). He then wraps this all into thoughts on post-modernity. He has some great insights into post-modernity and the Churches challenge in addressing/comprehending it. Good stuff!

About a day or so ago, I was browsing Andrew Jones’ site and found this post on monastic vows. I was intrigued by the list of vows that he listed from the Vineyard article. I tried following the links to the source, but they have since moved. If you are interested, you can find the source article here.

The issue of Cutting Edge referenced also has a great article on the Church of The Saviour in DC. What a great article. It has some amazing quotes from the founder Gordon Cosby. Their ideas on cultural captivity are fascinating. They have done a lot of work on helping followers of Jesus find freedom from the ways in which the culture has captured their imagination that God did not intend. They have developed a framework of intense training in spiritual formation that is part of the membership process at the church. The cool part is that it is not just about spiritual formation but preparing the individual for their call or “mission” and the “corporate” mission of the community. This is distinct from the more individualistic notions of spiritual formation that are more common.

Mark and Nate of reimagine are starting a six month process to establish a network of people committed to a common life inspired by the example and teachings of Jesus. The idea is to get a group of folks together to be intentional about being and making disciples in a first world urban context like such as the SF bay area. I’m pretty excited about such an idea. I have my reservations about what value I will add to the venture. I feel like a bit of a novice to be participating in forming something like this. I long for a deeper foundation in scripture and church history to guide me and help inform the process. But maybe this is one way to get there. Undoubtedly a rhythm of study will be one stream of this common life. Perhaps that will afford me the opportunity, and the encouragement, to pursue a deeper understanding of scripture, theology, and apprenticeship to the master.

I have been working with some friends on a project called have 2, give 1. The project is about looking at the teachings of Jesus on possessions, wealth, generosity, etc. As part of the project, we’ve been looking at our stuff, selling what we don’t really need and giving that money to the poor. We decided that we wanted to cap the process with some kind of prophetic event on the busiest shopping day of the year.

For the prophetic event, we put together some post cards to hand out in Union Square in down town San Francisco. On the front of the post card in the middle of the hand we glued a nickle– a small but very real token of our generosity and the invitation of the master to a life of generosity and abundance.

It is a lot harder to give away money than I thought. People weren’t as receptive to it as I thought. Maybe it was because of the bombardment of other stuff that is pressed into your face on a busy day– the biggest shopping day– in down town SF.

We tried all kinds of catch phrases to try and get attention. Here are a few:

“My friend and I are trying to be generous and give away some money.”

“We’re trying to encourage generosity by giving away some money.”

“Here is some spare change. If you can’t use it, give it to someone who can.”

“Do you want some spare change.”

As the day wore on, it seems like the third one was working the best to get people’s attention. We noticed too that some people were more receptive than others. For example, middle aged, mostly upper class Caucasians seemed to be the most skeptical. It seemed like the most negative response came from them. The hipsters and art students were intrigued by the hand and the most curious.

Mark and I were handing out the cards in front of a Louis Vuitton (sp?) store. At one point, one of the staff came out (a younger Asian fellow) to have a smoke. He was curious about what we were doing, so we chatted for a few. When he told me he worked there, I asked him what his average sale was. He thought for a second and said about “six G” meaning six grand. He casually mentioned that he was holiday help and that some of the other staff do much better. Louis Vuitton is a high end luxury store. To give you an idea, they sell purses for around $3K.

The juxtaposition of this kind of retail/consumption and the fact that about 1/5 of the world lives in abject poverty blows me away. Where are we? I think this is a place where as followers of Jesus we should be on knees in prayer with the scriptures in one hand and the painful juxtaposition in the other seeking guidance and clarity on pointing in a new direction.