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.