okay, so my phone died and I have an appointment with traffic court to explain why I haven't fixed the muffler on my truck which is currently immobile due to a faulty alternator, so this will be very short:

1. and most important. I am going to have a lot of empty time in my life soon and reading will be very important. I'm putting in an order to Amazon by the end of the week. What should I buy/borrow/read? Stipulations: absolutely nothing involving analyses of postmodernism and/or Evangelical Christianity.

2. no, it's not a sin to not feel as I feel; but it is a sin not to feel at all, or to feel only what it is safe or accepted to feel. Remember the ringing condemnation of Christ: We played a dance for you, but you did not dance. We played a dirge for you, and you would not mourn. Mindless obedience or the heartless participation of a safely detached observer, both are missing something vital. If you can witness something beautiful or sorrowful without being moved, isn't there something disturbingly wrong with you? Something problematic with your soul?

Furthermore, there are sins that are not individual: corporate sins of a church that emphasizes dogmatic intellectual conformity over freedom in Christ--freedom to explore, learn, grow, experience, and express in the guidance of the Holy Spirit the fullness of a unique and awe-inspiring human life. A fullness that goes far beyond attaining correct theology or learning how to go through the motions of some particular Christian community.

A church where people are incapable of independent response to something beautiful and human because they have been trained into passively waiting for someone in authority to tell them how to act appropriately is a broken, dysfunctional, lifeless church. If you have to curtail or conform your actions because of the sanctions or standards of a church, isn't there a problem with that church?

Conformity to Christian social structures is not holiness; in the words of Flannery O'COnnor, to be holy is "to be specially, super-alive:" full of the grace of God, and participating fully in the image of God--the creative and oft-surprising image of God that is reflected with special treasure differently and uniquely in each and every human being.

There were at least five people at that concert who, well schooled in the consequences of being nonconformist in Christian communities, disappointedly sat down because they were the only ones standing in a crowd who stood and sat as if someone was holding up signs: "applause," "stand," "clap," "sit," "heel," "stay," "good boy, have a biscuit."

I'm not saying that everyone there should have participated or involved themselves in that particular moment. But they came and provided an environment where they remained disinterested observers while musicians laid their souls bare with incredible grace, beauty and energy; and I find their response tremendously callous and fearful.

Callous hearts worry me, and strong social structures that encourage and discipline (to use Foucoult's words) hearts in conformity or quick obedience to the status quo terrify me. The church should have noting to do with these things. The church is where people come alive in Christ. If music and poetry cannot move you--either to mourn or to dance or even to lift your eyes to heaven and not see whether the people next to you are standing or sitting or leaving--what can?

I don't think it's just a matter of taste--that the polite, detatched spectators in this moment would be fully awake and alive in another context. I think there's some genuine soul pathology at work here. And God wants souls to be alive and involved, sensitive and able to percieve and respond to people in a myriad of ways and expressions.

Well, I could go on. But the pathos of my daily life is calling. Actually, not calling, since my phone won't work. Alas. I'll be in Buffalo next week, working overtime for the holidays, and if I don't call--sorry. no phone...