John Leo, in "The Loudmouth Emmys" (US News and World Report, December 6th, 2004 edition), a hilarious and yet very, very sad synopsis of the worst in American political rhetoric.

"Natalie Mains, apparently surprised that many Dixie Chicks fans hated her famous anti-Bush comments of 2003, said, 'I realize I'm just supposed to sing and look cute so our fans won't have anything to upset them while they're cheating on their wives or driving around in their pickup trucks shooting small animals.' Then she complained that the political climate is 'so the opposite of me as a person and what I believe in.' It's just about opposite my personhood too, Natalie."

there's nothing like grace to make a bad day rock. now...back into the foggy mystery.

Dustin
Lindsay
Chris Jones
Cheryl
Rachel :)
me

for the rest

much thanks to jonathon gitelson

now...who do you think of?

'Till shade is gone, till water is gone, into the Shadow with teeth bared, screaming defiance with the last breath, to spit in Sightblinder's eye on the last day' ... that is how long the Aiel say they'll fight.
-- Ingtar, The Great Hunt, by Robert Jordan

and that's how long, it seems, i'll be writing this paper.

jonathan gitelson is impressively artistic...

"I have already explained the nature of civil liberty: and, with respect to equality, the word must not be understood to mean that power and riches should be equally divided between all; but that power should never be so strong as to be capable of acts of violence, or excercised but in virtue of the exercisor's station, and undert he direction of the laws; and that, in regard to riches, no citizen should be so sufficiently opulent to be able to purchase another, and none so poor as to be forced to sell himself. (Footnote: 'If you wish to give consistency to the State, bring these two extremes as near as possible towwards each other, and allow of neither excessive wealth nor beggary. These two states, naturally inseparable, are dangerous alike to the common welfare; the one gives birth to the favourers of tyranny, the other to tyrants, and they traffic between them with the public liberty; the one buys it, and the other sells it.') This supposes on the side of the great, moderation in wealth and position, and on the side of the lower classes, moderation in avarice and greed.

"This equality is deemed by many a mere speculative chimera which never can be reduced to practice. But, if the abuse is inevitable, does it follow that we ought not try at least to regulate it? It is precisely because of the force of circumstances tends always to destroy equality that the force of legislation must always tend to maintain it."

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

thoughts:
rebuttal of Adam Smith's invisible hand?
based on the idea that a society in which one person is not free is a society in which no one is free?

it reminds me of the principle put forth in feminist theology, whereby a people deny and lose their humanity when they deny the humanity of another. in objectifying and demeaning women, we objectify and demean ourselves, losing our place in the created order...

i want to be a connoisseur of life

so, downright one of the best movies ever: "As Good As It Gets."

best thing about it? the sheer unpredictability--it feels like real life and yet it's still beautiful.

best quotes: while, the dog has the best ones, and they're all untranslatable. How about Melvin Udall, "I'm drowning here, and you're describing the water!"

best simple symbolism ever in a movie. and best demonstration of trust and betrayal, confidence and forgiveness.

okay...time to study for East Asian History and Politics' one question blue book exam tomorrow. hoorah!

friends, i have bad news.

i was perusing TIME, which someone had kindly left in the basement restroom of the library, when his smiling face leapt out at me from the obituaries page.

Howard Keel, star of the most amazing musical movie ever to have graced the silver screen, died of colon cancer. The dapper, courageous, visionary Adam Pottamie of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is no longer with us. But his inspiration and model will live on for all buckskin-clad bearded men with hearts of gold fearlessly trying to find their way (and a wife) in this all too harsh world.

we pause for a moment of silence.

in honor of Eli Knapp and Timothy Inge, it's time to try a haiku. this one is called "Honda" and it's about a little feisty unpretentious prancing beauty of a bike with a big 600cc heart.


wind whips sharp--playful
empty road beckons and yawns
alone, alive--free


and a little free verse

my own red rocket
would go with me.
spread out our wings and
blur this scenery away.
too much anxious power
wrapt up purring in
too little a frame
calls to the itch
aching in my bones
to give speech in speed--
with deep cry to deep--
and run and run
in wind and road and sun
as sunset calls to sky
burning in the day's end.


well. a bike would be really nice right now.

For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his sould? Or what will a man give in exchange for his sould?

Don't run from suffering; embrace it...What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you? What could you ever trade your soul for?

-Jesus of Nazareth

The Franciscan friars visiting our campus this week bubble over with life; I feel like a pale shell next to them, to the life they have. What does it profit a man to spend his entire life running after the impulses dangled in front of him if his entire frenzied, frenetic, restless life is soul-killing suicide?

What are the things that give us real life? Their joy comes from the simple fellowship of poverty: no television, shared meals, communal possessions, shared manual labor, shared ministry--that coveted hiking fellowship that I remember so dearly from the trail. Their spiritual wholeness comes from hours spent daily in prayer, communal celebration, solitude, meditation, study, submission to authority and worship--carefully examining the soul and by grace pushing back the self-destructive habits and ideas that strangle out the life of the soul.

All this for the price of poverty, chastity, and obedience...

"The only container into which grace and mercy are poured out is that of trust. We ought to be leaning so heavily on Christ that it is plainly evident that if He were not there supporting us, we would fall." --Brother Columba

want to read something truly amazing? Check out Anna Letton's poem of the day. very true and amazing thoughts.

"The Pearl Harbor attack has, until recently, been regarded as the supreme act of treachery and no words were vile enough to describe its perpetrators, The facts which are available today indicate that it was not, perhaps, such a "day of infamy" as it seemed. The dastardly Japanese villian made lots of warning noises before he broke into the American maiden's bedroom, and there was really no excuse for her having left her chastity belt undone." --Mosley, Hirohito.

[wince]

wow. you have to love British wit.

[comment on the incredible wealth of information on matters of state in antebellum Japan gleaned from personal diaries]

Statesmen in Japan must have nothing in the way of personal lives, be incredibly sleep-deprived, and think upon their daily actions and conversations with such hubris as to believe their every conversation worthy of memorialization. How could they have gotten any sleep or relaxation if they spend every minute running back to their rooms and scribbling down conversations verbatim, every day. Holy crap! No wonder they went to war--how are you expected to make rational decisions when you spent all night carefully annotating and analyzing and scribing the actions, conversations, menus, circumstances, and demeanors of the day before?

And historians must have absolutely no experience in diary-writing themselves, to take at face value for historical evidence everything said statesmen pen in their diaries. Good lord, there is no one to whom it is more important to appear reasonable, grand and just that to one's self--diaries are notoriously generous to the authors. Of course you think Hirohito was a kind, helpless, doddering old gentleman who fought hard for peace but was surrounded and railroaded by corrupt and evil army politicians into starting World War II in the Pacific--all that we know about him comes from diaries from his most loyal, devoted servants, people who loved him. Geeesh!

Well...anyone want to talk Japanese politics, 1848-1945? Anyone?

ps--the following piece of poetry, written by Japan's Meiji Emperor, was read by his grandson, Hirohito, and the Showa Emperor, in one of the final Imperial Councils in the last tense days of summer, 1941 (if devotedly loyal and tragically sad diarists writing to memorialize the Showa Emperor to posterity can be believed...)

"Yomo no uni
Mina harakara to
Omou yo ni
Nado namikaze no
Tachisawagaruramu"

("The seas surround all quarters of the globe
And my heart cries out to the nations of the world.
"Why then do the winds and waves of strife
Disrupt the peace between us?)

Robert Mosley, Hirohito: Emperor of Japan.

i had a big idea
i had a crazy eye
i broke the sacred seal
i told a lazy lie
i've had my conscience bent
i've had my patience tried
i've been up in the desert and
down by the riverside

will the eagle fly
if the sky's untrue?

do the faithful sigh
because they are so few?

remember when i cried?
remember when you knew?
remember the look in your eyes?
i know i do

and count the stars to measure time
the earth is hard, the treasure fine
to the sea, ill crawl on my knees

feel it coming in
feel it going out
water covers sand
blood covers doubt
so i begin again
again, the healing bow
there was a time when i might have surrendered, but not now

consult the cards to measure mine
the earth is hard, but the treasure fine
at the sea, ill wait on my knees
at the sea, ill wait on my knees
at the sea, ill wait on my knees

Dig, Jars of Clay

****

so I took this week off from people because i needed perspective. it's a strange thing to detox yourself of entanglements--to pull yourself (or just be pulled) out of all the little hectic social constructs and demands and games and remember who you are away from everyone else, and especially away from the ambitions you have when you are with people. it's like i've become someone completely different, and i'm starting to question a lot of the choices i've made this semester, this year--choices of priorities and goals and worst of all, i think, ambition and and the choice to take a stance of control.

i don't really know what to think; just that it's too easy to get lost in the sea of demands and the conflicting claims of a thousand games and obligations that come in community; i needed to gain some perspective and God gave me the chance to do that this week. it's odd sometimes how only being crippled or broken can make you do that.

well. i'm back. sort of. you never know when i'll get that crazy glint in my eyes and escape to the hills with a pack of ramen and a sleeping bag. or just take a vow of silence. now there's an idea...

Conversation of the Day and Amazingly Profound Person of the Day go to Lindsay Musser, delivering these gems in complete snappy Musser (c) deadpan:

Dan: You're right, I had a great day yesterday.

Musser: Do you know why you had a great day yesterday, Dan?

Dan: Gee, I dunno, Lindsay--because Jesus loves me?

Musser: No Dan. Jesus loving you has nothing to with good days or bad days. Believe me. You had a good day yesterday because you saw me while doing laundry.

Yup. Thank you Musser and Brautigam for making lunch so much more than really, really bad Chinese food. (Brautigam's comments are of so shockingly out of place and inappropriate a nature as to be unprintable, even with the low, low publishing standards of waybread.blogspot.com--but if you really want to know, just ask me why I fell off my chair laughing at lunch today).

"In the meantime, as a sop to the masses, as well as the the Diet and the press, they recommended the election as the new prime minister of one of the grand old characters of Japanese politics, Marquis Okuma. Okuma was well into his seventies, lived in great luxury, and liked nothing better than to relax with a jug of sake and an armful of beautiful young concubines. He was known as the Sage of Waseda becaue he has founded the university of that name, but was apt to make light of learning. The same young fanatic who had killed Viscount Mori had also thrown a bomb at Okuma and blown off his leg, but the new premier was so eccentric that he had cheerfully subscribed to the building of the assasin's memorial: 'He was a great patriot. He meant well.' "

--Leonard Mosley, Hirohito: Emperor of Japan.

Nothing makes the joy of studying early twentieth century Japanese political life more enjoyable than the fact that is it written with that peculiar British flair for droll wit, compelling narrative and a seemingly careless precision in word choice.

Have you ever had the feeling that someone else is living your life?

In a moment of random curiosity, I did a google search on my name. (trumpet fanfare) "dan holcomb" brings up waybread.blogspot.com as the first result. wayyyyyyyy cool. (other interesting results: some guy named Dan Holcomb was shot and killed in West Virginia, and his case went all the way to the Supreme Court there...whoa...)

but to continue. I saw a site with my name on it (no shocker, common names...there's a Daniel Holcomb who sells real estate in Lansing, Michigan...shudder. I will never sell real estate). I did a double take. The title of this site was in Kiswahili...strange. There aren't that many people in the world choosing website titles in Kiswahili. It's not exactly a language that everyone gets a chance to learn. I had to check it out. After all...I also speak Kiswahili.

Voila'!

I ended up at publicpixel.com, on a page entitled "matunda ya macho," which featured a number of short films including one entitled "The Dan Holcomb Experience."!!! Can you believe it...there is another white Dan Holcomb out there who cannot dance but refuses to admit it, speaks swahili, and says things like "baba yangu ni mulevi." And is an internationally aware Christian!

AND...this publicpixel.com, I discovered, is a meeting place for internationally-minded individuals with commentary on international happenings and links to hundreds of webpages, including one on "Ukimwi"--the Swahili word for AIDS. Aware of social justice issues...I'm beginning to feel a kinship here...

Well, further research discovered (I get excited just thinking about it)...

www.danielholcomb.com

I'm serious. Try it out.

Well, I had to learn more. One of the other links off of publicpixel.com was RVA's (That's Rift Valley Academy, to those of you non TCK-savvy individuals) graduating class of 1997 webpage. A quick search revealed the incredible truth:

In 1997, I graduated from the Rift Valley Academy, in Kenya (!?!), with Heath Arensen. The brother of Blake Arensen, my Swahili teacher last year here at Houghton College, and the nephew of Dr. Jonathan Arensen, my anthropology professor with whom I studied in Tanzania for four months earlier this year. Who taught me most of the swahili that I know. Do you want proof? here. Check for yourself.

So let's recap. Daniel Holcomb grew up in Africa, went to the Rift Valley Academy (a name that lives on in reverence by all jealous non-TCKs) during the Arensen/Adkins dynasty, speaks Swahili, loves rock climbing, works at a camp, has a bitter sense of anti-pop-Christianity evidenced through humor, and now travels the world including Egypt. Wow. That's stinkin amazing. Throw on top of that the fact that publicpixel is his webpage, and he is a much more incredible photographer and web designer than I ever will be. And he's chillin' out and doing pretty cool-looking things in the northwestern United States. I'm a little in awe...

So the real question is now...

do I email him?

Cheerful people are continually telling depressed people to buck up; who knows what God may do. This is positively worthless to a person who is broken by what God has not done: what has slidden into the past. It needs to be rephrased: who knows what God has already done, secretly, smilingly, that remains to be revealed.

Sometimes hope is revisionist history.

dang
so once you finally acknowledge the persistant meddling existence of this God guy, and you grudgingly admit to needing him, and you just open your life a crack and let him start tinkering with "just this one thing," the next thing you know...

all the bets are off. it's cliched because it's true: THIS changes everything. it's like some perspective shift in a movie when the camera spins 180 degrees, then spins another 180 degrees, alters color perception, whirls again, and all the old black and white blurry pictures take another dimension of focus, and then another, and then another, and the pace of the film has picked up so incredibly much and every five seconds there's an "oooh" or an "AHHHHHH" or an "oh, ouch..." or a "look out!" and the changes are coming so fast it's impossible to keep up, and you don't know whether to be scared or excited or laughing or what because something so much bigger than any pattern you've ever imagined is beginning to emerge and you've just seen one itty bitty corner that is so tremendously bigger and shocking than you've ever imagined...

it's like kayaking. and the river just surged to flood stage. it's class five with no eddies and no place to get out and nothing to do but paddle impotently and scream. this nice controllable walk with God has become something alive of it self...

raging
breathtaking
shocking
ripping
roaring
full of loss
full of grandeur
wild beyond what is reasonable
horrifying
totally past high-stakes
terrifyingly
heartrendingly
beautifully
exhilirating.

and really really scary. because everything stable and secure (even if a bit angst-inducing) just got tossed and the dice are rolling and only God (if he does) knows what will emerge from the maelstrom.

everything i thought about myself and about life is being totally reevaluated.

reborn.

"I think Bush deserves this victory because he fought a war for the USA. I don't know why Muslims grieve at his victory because there is no difference between Bush and Kerry. And US polices towards the Muslim world will never change." [emphasis added]
Yasir, Mirpur, Pakistan

"The people of the USA have proved that despite the atrocities in Abu Ghraib jail and the murder of thousands of people in Iraq, they will keep supporting injustice. This election result is a nightmare for the whole world."
Hilal Bari, Lahore, Pakistan

"I am shocked how America couldn't select such a genuine and passionate leader as Senator Kerry. God bless our world. How would the founding fathers of America feel about their land becoming such a Christian fundamentalist country?"
Tim Karman, Singapore

"Well I'm in the minority I guess but I'm so happy. These difficult times require clear leadership, dedication and strength. Kerry didn't have any of those qualities. Bush is the only one who could lead America."
Fiona, Paris, France

"Bush's victory has made the world quite clear. It is all of us now, Europe, Africa, and Asia, against them."
Irgi, Jakarta, Indonesia

"Well the right man won, that's for certain. Mr Kerry was a worthy opponent and the country is evenly divided. But only one of the two men is committed to the vision that the only long term answer to the powder keg of the Middle East is to clear the scene of tyrants and allow the people there to grow decent, lawful, representative governments. For his courageous stand on "other" people's freedoms, not just that of Americans, President Bush is among our greatest presidents."
Joseph Stern, New York, New York, USA

"Many Canadians are dismayed to see Bush stay for a second term in the White House. George Bush doesn't know how to deal with the rest of the world and thinks the stick and the carrot policy is the most appropriate, especially with Arabs. His policies have turned many people against America."
Wael, Toronto, Canada

"After Bush's victory, I think the US forces will withdraw. But not before they have passed through Iran or Syria!"
Ali Mohammed Jum'aa, Kirkuk, Iraq

From the BBC webpage of responses they have recieved from accross the world, via email, concerning the George W. Bush's reelection. (thanks for the link Katrina!)

to bounce off of flicker, the biggest question that I am accustomed to answering without even thinking is the simplest and most fundamental of all:

Who is my neighbor?

When I am hiking with STEP or Highlander adventure trips, the answer is incredibly easy: it's something I have no choice over. My community is my kids, and their neighbors are the eight other people arbitrarily assigned to that group. You cannot ignore them, clique them out, or simply choose to spend your time with someone else. And you most certainly cannot ignore what is increasingly becoming obvious to you: their amazing beauty as human beings in the image of God, and their needs and faults as ordinary people.

But when I am not hiking, my neighbors are my choice. They are the people that live in my suburban neighborhood, the worshippers in my upper-class church, the parents at my private school or in my homeschool support group, and the coworkers in my office. If I want, I can spend my entire life around people who are easy for me to live with, relate to, and love, without even making a conscious choice to do so.

The problem is, the most challenging and fulfilling relationships I've ever had were on the trail with people I either couldn't stand, or was sure I would never feel comfortable or loved around. They were so alien and often intimidating that I never would have chosen them for my neighbors. But the richness that came out of a whole group of radically different people with no other choices for fellowship was so beautiful compared to the blandness of my little homogenous groups that I was awed and brought to tears at the beauty of God's diversity. I was humbled before a God who's creativity so shockingly and refreshingly transcended my comfortable space.

It is unquestionable that once we have chosen a neighbor, and become involved in their community, it is almost impossible to not love them and minister to their needs. The question we will either embrace or ignore for the rest of our life is, simply, who will we choose to be the neighbor to?

After seeing the needs of Latin America, Cuba, Africa, the inner city, the outcasts, the poor, the trafficked humans, will I make them part of the patterns of my life--living in their neighborhoods, shopping in their markets, going to their churches, living in their world--or will I carefully or unconsciously allow myself to be insulated from their lives and their needs, avoiding their presence so that I will not stand condemned for failing them as my neighbors?

Who is my neighbor? For the best missionaries and happiests Christian I know, that answer is the people of the Rukwa valley of Tanzania.

whoa...

so I didn't have enough writing to do with a blue book exam and all today, so i spent the last hour or so (maybe two...sheepish grin) writing what for all intents and purposes is a paper. an essay. good lord. to save you having to scroll through it, i put it up at another blog of mine. be warned...it's really really long. and probably not worth reading.

"From an organizational perspective, it is not surprising to find evidence of serious accidents in the Indian nuclear and missile programs...On January 4, 2001, Indian defense secretary Yo gendra Narain led a special inspection of the Milan missile production facility in Hyderabad. The Milan missile00a short range missiel normally armed with a large conventional warhead--had failed in test launches and during the Kargil War, and Narain was to discuss the matter with the palnt's managers and technical personnel. For reasons that remain unclear, the electrical circuitry was not disconnected and the live conventional warhead was not capped onthe missile displayed for the visiting dignitary from New Delhi. Wehn the plant manager accidentally touched the start button, the missile launched, flew through the body of one official, killing him instantly, and then nose-dived into the ground, catching on fire and injuring five other workers. The defense secretary was shocked, but unharmed. The official killed was the quality control officer for the Milan-missile program."

Scott D. Sagan, Indian and Pakistani Nuclear Weapons: For Better or for Worse?


"To be clear: none of this is meant to deny that the sheer horror of nuclear war is impressive and mind-concentratingly dramatic...It is simply to stress that the sheer horror of repeating World War II is not all that much less dramatic or impressive, and that powers essentially satisfied with the status quo will strive to avoid anything that they feel could lead to either calamity. World War Ii did not cause total destruction of the world, but it did utterly annihilate the three national regimes that brought it about. It is probably quite a bit more terrifying to think about a jump from the 50th floor than about a jump from the 5th floor, but anyone who finds life even minimally satisfying is extremely unlikely to think about either."

John Mueller, The Essential Irrelevance of Nuclear Weapons.

the real disadvantage of deconstructing your culture is that you end of like Socrates. you criticize, ridicule, and the way everyone else does things in herds without thinking about them, but then you have to admit that you don't really have any better ideas...still working on those...yeah.

as a side note, John Locke views the conjugal society (that's marriage) as the product of a social contract between a man and a woman. In Lockean political theory, social contracts take shape according to their purpose; the only rational purpose that can be derived for such a union from the Laws of Nature is that of procreation. Why procreate? In order to propogate one's genes, according to Darwin, but Locke insists that we procreate because in return for birthing and governing children until they become old enough to reason for themselves, children will honor their parents and take care of them in their old age (not from any inherent altruism, but because they want the inheritance from the parents).

Soo...that's a pretty cold look at the world. And it means that the marriage, according to Locke, is only solvent as long as it is needed for the procreating, protection and education of children to maturity.

One might instead take the functionalist sociological perspective and say that marriage is an institution carefully socialized into the members of a society in order to provide a stable unit for the procreation and enculturation of children, thus ensuring the survival of the society. Status as an adult, romantic notions of love and marriage, sexual legitimacy, and religious obligation and emotional attachment are tools (lures as you will) to bring men and women into this arrangement.

Sigh. All of this deconstruction just rips right through beauty.

Most recent political theorists emphasize the depravity and individuality of mankind. They don't talk a lot about loneliness, the need for fellowship, community, and belonging, affirmation, laughter, celebration, beauty. and romance. In reducing life to the material essentials of survival, they often forget the reason for survival: for people who no longer have to struggle to live often surrender all that progress and kill themselves.

Yes, the men and women of mankind are dirty, fearful, self-serving individuals who will subordinate pretty much everything to surviving feared threats. But once survival has been achieved, we go right back to those other things: we need them. Too many theorists miss that very real aspect of other human needs and desires than just survival; so Locke misses a very many good reasons for conjugal society.

Not the least of which, according to CS Lewis, is laughter.

So...questions. Just for kicks and giggles.

What is the purpose of marriage?
What criteria does one use to find a partner for this joint endeavor?
How does one persuade this partner to enter into this agreement?
Do these processes make sense in light of their goal?

And why is it that fifty percent of these ventures fail in our society? Why do we do things the way that we do them, as a society? What are our motives, conscious and unconscious, as individuals, for playing these games?

And my favorite:

Taking into consideration a lack of knowledge about the future, a lack of understanding of the opposite sex, an impossibly wide field of candidates (in this very small world), a complete inability to predict personal changes in self and other over the next sixty years, clumsy and ill-advised courtship institutions, the sheer overwhelming power of arbitrary notions such as physical beauty and romantic attractiveness, not to mention undiscovered psychological preferences skewed by positive and negative interactions with members of the opposite sex over the course of life, and the individual's ingrained and sometimes dysfunctional social behaviors from years of living in sometimes painful and sometimes rewarding social systems, the inevitable build-up of the presented, social self...

is there any way you can expect twenty-somethings to make intelligent decisions about these sort of things? it's a wonder than fifty percent of these marriages do survive.

1. eating donuts is good

2. eating free donuts: priceless

3. celebration is the lifeblood of community

4. community is essential to faith

5. faith and laughter are very good friends

6. if you aren't laughing or crying, you aren't listening.



ps--to whom it may concern, I now declare a change in theoretical orientation. I used to be a realist with a grim dash of constructivism. i can no longer justify that perspective, helpful and formative as it may be. i am now a feminist/radical/marxist. yes, you heard that right. i am a feminist. and a marxist. and a radical. maybe a liberation theologian, in my own special way.

why? because as the astute Ms. Winter observed, realism, liberal thought, and constructivism are not about people; they are about nation-states and ideas in conflict. They are about power, coercion and control. They are about systems, systems to which the theorists are too fond of and too comfortably attached. They are the view from the inside.

So it is that we see nations fighting nations, comfortably directed by the ideas and men at the top, who are kept quite safe. Why is it that we are willing, for the security of "my innocent six-year-old son," to cheerfully and righteously bomb some poor Iraqi woman's six-year-old son? How is it that one child is a casualty of war while the other is a tragic loss?

It is because theory sees states, nations, people-groups, and ideas in conflict--but not people. Individuals. War is not the clash of nations but people killing other poeple and burning their houses, usually poor and defenseless people.

History written by the victors is not complete; nor is political theory by the powerful, nor is economics by the rich. And if you look for my king, you will find him with the lepers, the slaves, the sexually exploited, the desperate poor, the broken, the lame, the blind, the crippled...

it is true you will find him with the rich, the healthy, the joyous, the redeemed and those whose lives have been in one sense or another rescued from the wrack and ruin of the world, of the state of nature. For truly, nothing is more alienating and soul-killing than the state of nature. but he does not stay there.

his eyes are constantly outward; they look over the walls of good institutions where a semblance of hope has been carved out of the despair of the world, to those who are outside, or worse, underneath. he ever looks to bring the outsider in, and the troubled to peace. he is not content with security and peace when those outside do not know these things.

and if the walls by which we know peace and prosperity are built on the insecure and poor, he humbles them. if the gates are shut and locked, he blows them down.

the view from the inside is incomplete; in that sense it is a lie until it joins the view from the outside and the view from underneath. then it comes closer to the perspective of Christ. and that is my goal as a Christian: to see the world as Christ sees it, to celebrate when he celebrates and to mourn when he mourns and to smite with angry wrath when he...

we'll work on that.

Tony Campolo: "Francis Fukiyama was wrong; democratic capitalism is not the last great idea of history. The Kingdom of Heaven will be the last great idea of history--The true End of History is Christ."

The Alpha and the Omega.

----

I don't care if it's an anarchic international system with competitive securtiy interests and unavoidable conflict. I don't care if we live in a Hobbesian state of nature.

There is no peace without justice, and there is no justice without shalom and reconciliation.

End of discussion. There will be no compromise on this definition. Completion of conquest and subjugation will no longer be tolerated as an alternative definition of peace. Yes, I know that's how we did it in America...

But there must be a way for the peoples of the world to still the discord without silencing the discordant voices themselves.