The Mystery Box

I just watched this TED talk by film maker J.J. Abrams:

The mystery box
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/j_j_abrams_mystery_box.html

He has a "mystery box" that he bought for $15 at a magic store when he was a kid. He has never opened it. Somehow he resisted that urge and it helps to fuel his creativity, because he realizes that, sometimes, mystery is more important than knowledge. He asks, "What's a greater mystery box than a theater?"

I think I can answer that question.

I recall a time when Kathleen and I visited Sojourners in Washington, D.C. They happened to have a communion service scheduled for that Sunday, and we participated. I cannot put my finger on how it happened, but the sense of mystery was palpable. Still, many years later, I have clear memories of the impact, the way the room almost seemed to be buzzing with power, though it was one of the quietest, most peaceful times I have ever experienced.

Just now, I'm reading Brian McLaren's book, The Secret Message of Jesus: Uncovering the Truth That Could Change Everything.

Brian makes the very interesting point that Jesus almost never explained anything. He taught in parables. Clearly, he could have explained things, but he chose not to. Brian thinks that's probably because you can't tell Jesus' message if you do it in the clear. You must lay it between the lines. It's that sort of message. It's a mystery. You can know some of it, but you can never know all of it. As soon as you develop a consistent theology that explains it all, you've killed it, you have missed the point of it all.

I think that, what has been called "the greatest story ever told" (hmmm..., wasn't there a movie by that title?) is a pretty great mystery. And where are people supposed to encounter that mystery? In church.

No, I don't mean in the pews of a church building -- though it can happen there. I mean that the church, the body of Christ, is called to be the delivery mechanism for this great mystery. We are not called to explain it. We are called to proclaim it. The church is the greatest mystery box there has ever been.

That is, it's supposed to be. It can be, if we'll let it.

But we need to reevaluate what it means to be a church. A church that operates primarily as a "bless me club" can never be much of a mystery box. A church that claims to have all the answers is certainly no mystery box. A church that never reaches out to others, to meet them at their point of need can never proclaim a mystery, except to their own members. And a church that's just a "pastor and choir show" suppresses the operation of this mystery in the relationships between all of the members.

Jonathan Haidt at TED

I just watched an extremely interesting video at TED:

Jonathan Haidt: The real difference between liberals and conservatives
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html

One of the reasons I find this interesting is that he actually does find some psychological/moral factors that distinguish between liberals and conservatives of a wide variety of countries. But he also introduces a prescription for getting beyond the sort of political stalemate that so often stymies any effort to treat problems in a mature, problem solving way instead of a partisan and backbiting way. And, oddly, his prescription sounds like something I've heard before:

"Judge not that you be not judged."

Globe Still Warming

Recently, one of my friends who doesn't believe in global warming referred to an article he had seen about record cold temperatures, and he said that it just confirmed his opinion that global warming is nonsense.

Indeed, there have been a number of articles about unusually cold temperatures. Here's one of the more infuriating ones:

Global Warming Gets the Cold Freeze

The subtitle is Global warming hoax exposed by record global cold, and the article references a number of reports of record cold temperatures.

But one of the clearest predictions of global climate models is that, with an increase of the global average temperature, local weather extremes of all sorts will happen more frequently and be more intense. That includes cold snaps. In fact, not as paradoxically as it sounds, one of the feared results of global warming is a possible ice age in Europe.

But "global warming" means an increase of the overall global average temperature -- and it doesn't even refer to the average at any specific time. It means that, every year, the annual average of the entire globe's near-surface air temperature -- over land and sea -- is increasing.

And then, today, I see this article: Record Heat for Land Surfaces in March, saying this:

Last month was the warmest March on record over land surfaces of the world and the second warmest overall worldwide. For the United States, however, it was just an average March, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported Thursday.

So it looks like that "record cold winter" might need to be taken with a grain of salt. Unfortunately, people who live in the world's biggest source of greenhouse gases had "an average March" and can happily dream on, believing that nothing they do is causing any problems.

The Wisdom of Solomon

I got two more Lenny Solomon CDs in the mail today: Not Life Threatening, and Maybe Today, both ordered from the Solomon Band website. I continue to be amazed. I was hooked when I first heard his Global Warming Blues. It took a couple listens to start appreciating the rest of his work, because I don't usually listen country or folk. And Lenny's songs are definitely folk with country overtones. But every one is different and every one is well worth listening to. In fact, I strongly recommend getting the lyrics out of the jewel case and following along.

Viveca

Okay, I'm a little out of touch. I learned just today that my friend, Viveca Venegas, won First Prize in the National Geographic International Photo Contest 2007, with a really wonderful picture. Her prize was a voyage to Antarctica on the National Geographic Endeavor. She got some incredible shots of some unbelievable things.

We

Today, I became part of We.

I'm a sucker for a catchy title, especially when it's being used to market something I support. The new We Can Solve It campaign features commercials showing Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson sitting together, or Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich sitting together -- and actually agreeing with each other!

In recent years, the norm for politics in this country has been to tear down any idea that the other party has advanced, not because it's a bad idea, but because pols in both parties seem to feel obligated to claim that anything the other guys like must be wrong. That posture has been bothering me quite a lot, especially because these pols don't seem to think that the average American can see through that tactic. Are we really that stupid? I hate to think so.

But now, Al Gore has brought some unlikely partners together to advertise this new campaign. There are any number of other environmental campaigns out there, but this one is going to get a lot of popular attention.

So I went to the website and signed up.

Why I Support Obama

One of the most important roles of a president is "Storyteller in Chief".

After 9/11, our current Storyteller in Chief told us a very bad story: He told us that the world had become a scary place and the only sane way to respond to that was to be afraid -- be very afraid -- then go out and kill some people. He doesn't seem to think it's very important who we kill, just so long as we can tell ourselves we've struck back.

Now stop and think about that: All terrorists have one thing in common: They want us to be afraid. So the true net effect of the War on Terror is to complete the work of the terrorists, by ensuring that we continue to feel afraid. This was not the story that the President should have told. Rather, he should have told us that the way to defeat terrorists is to refuse to be terrorized. If their actions cannot make us afraid, their efforts will be unrewarded.

In the days after 9/11, America stopped flying. It was too dangerous. But a better reaction would have been for every American to go directly to the airport and buy a ticket to anywhere, board the airplane, and show the terrorists that they had failed. We didn't do that. Instead, we told them that they had succeeded. We thus "emboldened the enemy", something that President Bush keeps saying we shouldn't be doing. This does not seem consistent.

By contrast, I believe that Barack Obama has a much better story, and he is telling it consistently. It is a story of hope. He has hope that mere human beings like you and me can do things that will help to make this a better world. He has hope that enemies can talk to each other, find out why they hate each other, and work toward becoming friends, so they don't have to keep hating and killing. He has hope that environmental problems can be solved by working to solve them. He has hope that our increasingly polarized political system can be overcome, so that Republicans and Democrats can actually work to solve national problems instead of spending all of their effort telling everybody that the other party is wrong.

It's possible that Obama is wrong. Maybe we can't succeed. But we dare not admit that, or we risk becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. On the other hand, if we keep insisting that he's right, it just may turn out that we'll become a self-fulfilling prophecy of success. We all have it in our power to decide which prophecy we will choose to fulfill.

I choose success. So I choose to hope.

YouTubed

I've been YouTubed! A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon an ad for Lenny Solomon's CD Armando's Pie, which has a song called Global Warming Blues. I teach a course called Environmental Issues and Ethics, so I just had to have a copy. After I got it, I liked the song so much, I made a PowerPoint presentation using Microsoft clip art and laying the song into the audio track. Then I wrote to Lenny for permission to use his song in class. He readily agreed. He even thought my modest PowerPoint effort was "classy" and he wondered how the PowerPoint could be made into a video that he could post on YouTube. It didn't take me long to do that, so I sent it to him and he decided to post it! Here it is:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=s0bw4ZzSqqY