Kontakion

On my Google home page I have a section for NASA photos. The photo you see here was taken by the Hubble telescope a few years ago. For any regular readers you will know that I love to read about science and nature and they often become the subject of my meditations. The Google feature actually has an explanation of the picture underneath, the fact that it’s a new star shining, and a nebula surrounding it aren’t what caught me (even those subjects are worthy of their own reflections.) I came across the name of something I didn’t know, a Bok Globules. Named after a scientist (with the last name Bok) the black section of the picture is a dense section of gases and various particular matter that is considered cold, by which I mean its not on fire. From what I understand this is basically a dense nebula, so dense that you can’t see light on the other side and this nebula may or may not be in the active process of creating and birthing a star. The immensity of creation am...

Thanksgiving is always a good time for my family. We are the type of people who really enjoy being together eating, talking, and playing. We went down last night and came back today in the evening. The day was made even more fun by the fact that I got my psychological review back on Tuesday. (I have yet to figure out why I had to pay 200 dollars for something I could have told the board, in fact the counselor quotes me at some length and all the issues that are pointed out are issues that I am already aware of :P) All of us got up in the morning and got to the business of watching the Macy’s Parade on TV, a tradition that we have been doing for as long as I can remember. In the morning I took time to make eggnog for the first time. We had it later with dessert and needless to say I don’t know if I’ll ever buy eggnog again…yeah I will, I like it to much. After we ate we passed out in the sunroom and watched Rent. Needless to say I’m thankful that the holiday w...

Just a brief post wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving. My family and I will be leaving this afternoon to stay with my family and I will not be posting during the holiday. If I’m lucky I’ll post on Friday and give some update on what I’ve been thinking about. So for all best wishes, love, traveling mercies, happiness, and peace this Thanksgiving. May God bless everyone.

The seminar this weekend I would say was 98% good. I have to be honest that I am not entirely happy with one particular event that occurred and needless to say this space will not be sufficient to express all of it. I have actually just got back from the 3 hr ride it took me to get home and on the ride I thought about the misunderstanding that occurred when I spoke. At a point in the seminar we were asked if you could raise your hand (as a white person) and say that you’re a racist. I’m honest, I didn’t. I have several issues with it, one being the individualization of racism rather than acknowledging the fact that it is in large a systemic issue that we are dealing with. Also for me I don’t feel that I can say it because of my hearing, and because it would discredit the memory of a friend of mine. My direct concern is that by getting people to say that they are racist, make better racist. I honestly have issues with people who never thought of themselves as racist...

Today in ethics class we were discussing the viability of people choosing to have children with disabilities. This is a topic near and dear to my heart. I am partially deaf, I have 30 % of my hearing, and this basically means that I hear 30 words out of 100. Hearing loss is actually measured in decibels, and of course I can find my paperwork from my test to know what that level is. Suffice it to say that I have moderate/severe hearing loss. In class we were talking about genetic engineering and how one deaf couple decided to have a deaf child. They took care to make sure that it would be a deaf child not a hearing one. People didn’t understand in class, or I should say there was quite a bit of silence when I began to talk. I had several major points. The first was to use the term “disabilities” is a value statement about the person and what they can/cannot do. My second point revolved around the fact that white people who adopt black children usually run into p...

I’ve had a vision. It occurred when I was taking a shower this morning, I don’t know by what fancy the Ancient of Days led me down this pathway. I will give you the vision and the interpretation. I am hesitant because for me this is a vision, not the type of vision we normally think of, a witch hunkered over a crystal ball spelling out doom. I believe it is a vision like the Old Testament Prophets received. Those that know me know I’m not the type of person to do this, unfortunately cyberspace doesn’t portray that. If you don’t believe me read my other posts you will find nothing of this sort. I call this a vision, because this is where my imagination took me as I was contemplating the church today. Picture with me if you will a beautiful country side, a country side with rolling hills of green, broken by clumps of trees stretching their arms toward the heavens. You are standing in a grove of trees. Trees like the ancient sacred groves that beckoned toward peo...

If you are liberal and value talk over action you want to avoid this particular post. As I have been struggling for a name for myself I find that the conceptual idea of a Liberated Evangelical to be tempting. I have tried to combine the best I find in Evangelical and Liberal traditions, with a growing interest in other forms of Christianity that can influence me i.e. Orthodoxy. Again in just the past week Liberal religion has found another way to frustrate me. This is more of a potential concern, one that I wish I didn’t have. This coming week I have to be at the Healing the Wounds of Racism seminar in order to continue my trajectory toward Ordained Elder. All UM ministers are required to go to this 200 dollar expense apparently in hopes of eradicating racism. I was talking to my father about it, he has already done this seminar and he provided me with a warning. “The last day they will try to get you to raise your hand and admit that you are a racist.” I wish he...

“What a tempest in a tea-cup! He will say. But when we consider how small after the cup of human enjoyment is, how soon overflowed with tears, how easily drained to the dregs in our quenchless thirst for infinity, we shall not blame ourselves for making so much of the tea-cup.” - Kakuzo Okakura This quote is from a book I just finished reading, “The Book of Tea” is about Teaism in Japan . A loose type of ‘religion’ based upon tea, it draws from Buddhism and Taoism. This was a fascinating book and I found myself pulling out my highlighter and going at several passages (like the one above) like I haven’t for quite some time. Teaism is concerned with finding the beauty and the infinite in the mundane. For those who read my post can tell that this is a topic that has grown near and dear to me. I feel I have had some of these particular insights while sipping my cup of tea, or baking my bread. I am not trying to make Teaism Christianity. My goal is to understand th...

“Do you think that there are white people victimized in America ? These people are victimized like Black people, but are reaping the benefits of their own victimization.” Rev. Kevin Brown, one of my professors asked us this question today in Christianity in America . This question is a rather difficult one in some sense, but plain in another. I agree that there are white people that are victimized by being apart of a racist and oppressive system without even thinking about it. And yes these people do reap benefits, but some individuals I have met feel, or act like, those individuals benefiting from the system should basically just get out. This is harder than it seems. I will admit and own the fact that I come from the victimized white group who benefit from systemic racism. I will also admit that I am often at a loss as to how to deal with it. In my home community I come from a “poor” as well as “intellectually” challenged family. What I mean is that in my hom...

Last year at this time I was reading about Islam and in some ways deathly afraid of the trip to Turkey that was right on my door step. I have found lately though that I am missing Turkey in some ways. The other day I got out some dried apricots and I stopped, I don’t know why but something was familiar about the smell. I kept thinking and thinking as I was chopping them up to put in oatmeal, where do I know that smell. Then it hit me, every morning in Turkey dried apricots were at breakfast. I maybe only ate one in Turkey , but the smell reminded me of our first hotel in Istanbul and looking out the window at the Blue Mosque. Another memory point has been my reading over the last several months. Just recently I started reading a book on the history of the Knights Templar. In the course of the book Constantinople was mentioned and its part in the crusade history. I found myself visualizing the walls that circled the city, the aqueduct with roads running un...

This morning Olivia and I went outside. It was only more or less 40 degrees outside the nip in the air was even more potent when the breeze would pick up and wrap its chilly arms around us. We both had on jeans and sweat shirts I had on an F&M one, while she had a Penn State sweatshirt that her aunt had gotten her. I went and sat down at the community picnic table where the sunlight was the strongest and watched her walk around. She carefully walked around staring at the ground. Occasionally she would stoop down and pick up a leaf only to crush it in her small hands and drop it on the ground. Eventually in the course of her walking she went to the next door neighbor’s porch. Their porch is less than a foot off the ground and make of concrete, the biggest reason she went there is because they have a porch swing and she always wants on it. I walked up there and set her down on the green wooden seat of the swing, and then sat beside her. We started to ro...

Sometimes I wonder if we have really learned anything. Today I sat in United Methodist polity and we were talking about the issues that led up to the schism in 1824. The issue was over the episcopacy and the rights of bishops to appoint their presiding elders (modern day District Superintendents). Throughout the discussion we were talking about the differences and what the different sects were fighting over and while class discussion was good, and I am honest I always find fights to be interesting. However toward the end of class I found myself zoning out. Part of this is due to the middle of the semester crams and stress related to financial issues, but also because I seriously began to wonder, what the hell were these people doing? I don’t mean what they were fighting over; I mean was it really worth all the fighting. I looked at the issues that were present and saw a lot of the current issues over homosexuals in it. I am not about to go into a discussion on...