March 27, 2007 @ 8:06 pm | Category: family/relationships
Here is a story about a gay adoption gone bad from Salon.com. It reminds me not so much about the debate over gay adoption but how we all view children. American culture sees children and everything that comes before, i.e. sex, as a purely personal experience for the self-actualization of adults. Children as commodities to be bought, negotiated, and traded like pork bellies is where we are going. If we aren’t already there. What kind of human beings will this produce? Maybe, ones which have no regard for emotional or family ties because the most basic human relationship has been made irrelevant.
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March 24, 2007 @ 8:44 am | Category: welcome, media
You can now get my new book hot off the press. I got my copies delivered yesterday, which was very exciting for me. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. I plan on writing about some of the things in the book on this blog. Stay tuned.
If you live in or near Dallas plan on attending the book launch party at Brookhaven Country Club on Thursday April 19, 2007, 6 to 8 PM. RSVP to info@damarisproject.org. Hope to see you!
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March 20, 2007 @ 11:03 am | Category: spirituality/religion, Pop Culture
It seems that every few years the same banal, arrogant, and cheap spirituality gets recycled again. This time with no one other than Oprah championing The Secret. Read this excellent article in Salon. What is the secret? You create your own reality. Whatever you want you can have. Whatever you have, that you don’t want, is your fault. Money, power, romance, are all waiting for you. Tell that to millions of starving children, victims of human slavery, and the people of Darfur. It’s spitting in the face of millions, even us whose only problem, on any given day, is finding a parking spot.
The real secret, and it’s not even a secret, Jesus already told us. It’s difficult for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God. Better to lose the world than lose your own soul. Take up your cross and follow me. Lose your life in order to gain it. Of course this all doesn’t sell well in consumer self-centered culture, but it’s the path to contentment. The alternative is to end up terrified and alone with all our stuff facing the Master of our lives. No one will be able to save us, not even Oprah.
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@ 8:14 am | Category: welcome
Blog readers: Please do send me things that you think I might be interested in commenting on. I do my best to keep up, but if you’re in tune to culture, gender and religion I could use another set of eyes. Thank you!
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March 17, 2007 @ 2:05 pm | Category: media
The ads by the company that makes Three Olives Vodka have always bothered me. If you don’t see the problem, can you imagine an ad with a young man in this position? I really get tired of this type of advertising, its demeaning to women and men.
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March 11, 2007 @ 1:30 pm | Category: Pop Culture
See this interview in the Atlantic of Lynn Peril author of College Girls: Bluestockings, Sex Kittens, and Co-eds, Then and Now. Peril writes some interesting cultural history on women. By the way if you were wondering, a bluestocking is a woman with literary and educational interest. In the 19th century it was used as a pejorative for women writers and their fans.
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March 4, 2007 @ 8:51 pm | Category: global issues, theology/church
Today I had the opportunity to hear a lecture by Philip Jenkins, the author of The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South. In it he writes about how the center of Christianity is moving to Africa and Asia where the bible is a living book. Christianity as experienced by the global south is charismatic, engaged with overcoming spiritual powers, and liberating for women. In taking the Old Testament stories seriously they are able to draw tremendous power which yields dignity and freedom for women.The same stories that are often considered misogynistic in the west and unworthy of women are the stories in which global south women find their freedom. Stories like the rape of Tamar, the murder of the concubine in Judges 19 and Ruth’s and Naomi’s sojourn all become redemptive metaphors for the experiences of women everywhere. As we learn to read these stories through the freshness of their eyes, instead as old and forgotten fables, maybe they can have the same power to transform our very different lives.
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@ 1:46 pm | Category: media, global issues
See this review of Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the New York Times. It will be on my list of must read biographies. As an immigrant I can say that even though it’s fashionable to think of immigrants as disgruntled with their new home more often it’s the opposite. My immigrant family was less likely to question American values and way of life. Apparently Somali-born Ali has gone overboard in extolling western values and has adopted more of its recent inventions. In the context of her life it does appear understandable. Looking forward to reading this one.
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