Tensegrities

I was in the midst of the Children’s Summit on April 4th, and wasn’t really able to blog that day. If I had been able to, I would have pointed to the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Fortunately, many other bloggers have written eloquently about it, and pointed to great sites. Among them, Lewis Black on MLK.Jr, and this moving version of the U2 song Pride, by John Legend.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of this, but it certainly packs its own kind of punch. (Hat tip to TheCorner.)

Roseanne Cash (whose last album I loved), has a piece in the NYTimes today where in passing she notes a friend’s description of Christian fundamentalists:

I thought of something a friend used to say about that particular brand of religion — that it was like “looking at the ground with a flashlight when the whole universe was around you waiting to be noticed.”

What a great metaphor! And not just for fundamentalism, but for any of the myriad ways in which each of us refuses to look beyond the boxes we live in.

People need alone time in which to work. Or, at least folk involved in certain kinds of creative production (the post refers to coding, but I would add any kind of writing — particularly that of dissertating). I think part of why I feel so stretched (not in pleasant) ways at work, is that I live in the stress of competing commitments.

Example: needing to be fully present to students, staff and my fellow faculty; and yet needing time apart to get research and writing done. Example: needing to be actively involved in the worship life of our community at Luther, and needing to be grounded in worship in the Catholic community. Example: needing to be available to and present with my kids; and needing to find silent time to be with myself. These are real and powerful commitments, and they work against each other in real and powerful ways.

It gets even more perplexing and difficult when these needs are also bound up with WANTING to meet them. It’s easy enough for me to give up things I don’t want to do, even if I NEED to do them. But giving up things I also WANT to do? Not so easy.

The result? Stress.

I usually don’t delve into the comments at dailyKos or StreetProphets. Enough gets posted on their main pages, and I just don’t have the time to invest in the community that way. I suppose I read these sites more as a kind of news source. But clearly something’s been going on in the comments at StreetProphets, something strong enough that the main page felt it important to reiterate community norms. And these norms are worth reiterating more broadly, and are an example of the kind of norms that evolve over time in communities that are really struggling to BE community.

Read this.

During a sleepless night (I have a a horrible cold at the moment), I found this piece by TheologyfortheChurch, pointing towards the idea of “repentant patriotism.”