“When a single racial or religiously motivated murder takes place in Europe or North America, the event occasions widespread soul-searching, but when thousands are massacred on the grounds of their faith in Nigeria, Indonesia, or the Sudan, the story rarely registers. Some lives are worth more than others” - Phillip Jenkins

“The scope of our interconnectedness defines the radius of responsibility and concern.” - chief rabbi of the United Kingdom Jonathan Sacks

A little help. Seriously, I am lost.

Julian of Norwich once wrote "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well".

Paul of Tarsus once said "In God we live and move and have our being."

Maya Angelou once noted "I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

These lines have been with me for weeks now and there is a "mash-up" insight in there somewhere, but I have yet to glean it.

Any thoughts? Do these speak to you at all?

What percentage are you?

In case you missed the whole Occupy Movement, in a nutshell it was raising up the economic disparity in America. The chasm is great between the have and the have nots. As such, here is a little tool to help you see perhaps where you might fall into the income percentage in your area of the United States.

I am not sure if you are supposed to do your before tax income (I think that is the intention of this tool), but you can do your post tax income if you would like.

According to this my household is in the top 40% in my area. It makes me wonder if my socio-economic level pushes me farther away from the needs of people in other income brackets? It makes me wonder if I am in fact richer than I think I am.

What Little Miss Sunshine taught me about Church

Marcel Proust is someone I know nothing about.  I feel like I should because he is acclaimed to be a rather well known author who wrote about memory in a seven part series, entitled Remembrance of Things Past.


In fact the extent of my knowledge of Proust is what I learned from Steve Carell's character in Little Miss Sunshine.


With that said, I encountered this line from Proust not too long ago about memory:


"(Memory) would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being".


Each week the Church gathers together for a number of things, but in part to remember.


When we remember the Story of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit, we are given once again a rope to draw us up out the the abyss of not-being.  Each week we come together to discover again, for the first time, what it means to be a "being".


While it is an interesting story, it would be hellish to never have a memory.  Movies like 50 First Dates or Memento are great to watch but I would not wish my enemy into that state of memory limbo.  Amnesia is a horrible thing to witness and if you do not believe me just ask anyone who has witnessed a loved one suffer from Alzheimer's disease.  Or just ask Clive.  


The Church comes together each week to stave off group amnesia or collective Alzheimer's.  We remember and we are pulled from that abyss.  We remember and we are once again home.  We remember and we are no longer alone.  We remember and we are found.