God Is In the Ipod

Billy Jonas recorded God Is In before the age of the ipod so he didn't include it in the lyrics. (Take a minute and click on it and give it a listen. Lovely and incredibly creative song.)
Now that you're back ... God is in the ipod, or, at least in mine, at least this noontime while I was running four miles.
It remains damn hot here, mid 90s. While I love the sweat-soaked feeling that comes with running in this weather I won't claim that running itself feels very good when you can feel the heat rising off the pavement up through your feet.
But music helps ... unless the songs are about death. The ipod shuffled up Sarah Mclachlan's Hold On, a song about the pending death of a lover. Interestingly, it was a good song to run to today with a rhythm that fit my slow pace. I hadn't heard it for a long time, so I listened to it twice. Naturally, the song and the suffering made me think about death for a moment.
It was a passing thought until the next song came along: Black Peter by the Grateful Dead -- "Just want to have a little peace to die/and a friend or two I love at hand."
By the time that one played I was thinking that dying would feel better than running.
I also thought that I'd like to have a collection of songs about death played as the prelude to my own memorial service. Naturally, I'd like there to be several more decades of music to choose from before anyone has to plan the actual service.
As I considered the possibilities, I quickly concluded that I'd like the songs about death to end with the sanctus from Rutter's requiem. At that point in my run, the ipod shuffled to Rutter. I kid you not. It wasn't the sanctus, but another selection from the same cd.
God is in the ipod shuffle, playing tricks just for fun.

War Is Over ... War Goes On

With far less fanfare than President Bush's infamous declaration of "Mission Accomplished," President Obama announced something only slightly clearer: the end of combat operations. Given that 50,000 American troops -- presumably well armed and trained in the arts of war -- remain on the ground in Iraq the president's Oval Office speech last night seems like a milestone without much meaning.
Since March of 2003, 4,416 Americans have died in Iraq. Untold tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed. We have spent almost $750 billion.
With 50,000 American troops still in Iraq those costs, in lives and in dollars, will continue to increase.
The president promises that we will have no "boots on the ground" in another 18 months or so. I doubt we will get an iconic "helicopter on the roof" photo opportunity of the end of this war, but I am sure that we will spend just as many years counting the costs of this one and trying to figure out why we were there in the first place.
Meanwhile, the death toll in Afghanistan climbs to 1,269, and the cost approaches $350 billion. When will we ever learn ...

Remembering Katrina

The fifth anniversary of Katrina hitting the Gulf Coast got me thinking back to the brief time I spent there that fall in the early days of the clean up effort. Here's something I posted then. Alas, five years on, our theological discourse remains in greater disrepair than does the Gulf Coast, what with mosques burning and Glen Beck's preaching.

Katrina Diaries: Theological Storms

Rita swirls out in the Gulf, bringing sporadic rain and a steady breeze with sweet relief from stifling heat and humidity. No amount of wind can clear the air of the bad theology that clings to the aftermath of Katrina. The other day I heard a radio preacher talking about the judgment of God on the voodoo-welcoming people of New Orleans.
Never mind that a god so narrow minded as to wipe out people seeking various ways to the divine does not deserve praise and worship. A god who discounts as collateral damage the hundreds of people who probably shared the radio evangelist’s faith doesn’t even deserve respect. A jealous and angry god is one thing – perhaps even a Biblical thing – but a god with such lousy aim is worthless. A god who unleashes flood waters on poor people trapped in New Orleans by a system that forgot to evacuate them is not the God of Moses who parted the waters for a people escaping a system that enslaved them.
I met some folks today at a church that sits right on the coast in Biloxi among a row of houses built just after the Civil War. The homes on either side of the church were destroyed, but the church itself escaped with nothing more than a flooded basement and a few damaged doors. One of the people I met there said, “God must have been watching out for his house.”
Less than two blocks away, 30 people died when the motel they were in collapsed. Here’s a god with pin-point precision but confused priorities. A god too busy watching over a temple of bricks and mortar to protect the flesh and blood next door is not the God made known in Jesus Christ, the suffering servant.
But when you wander through streets that look like a war zone, it’s hard not to wonder who and where God is in all of this.
Desmond Tutu has written, “The God we worship is the Exodus God, the great liberator God who leads us out of all kinds of bondage. Do you remember what God told Moses? [God] said, ‘I have seen the suffering of My people. I have heard their cry. I know their suffering and am come down to deliver them.’ Our God is a God who knows. Our God is a God who sees. Our God is a God who hears. Our God is a God who comes down to deliver. But the way that God delivers us is by using us as […] partners, by calling on Moses, on you and me.”
Ah, and therein lies the rub. Lousy theology lets us off the hook. It is fatalistic rather than faithful. If spirit is wind and fire – pnuema and ruah – then surely God can speak to us through the ferocious winds of Katrina and Rita, and surely part of the message is simply this: “here I am; where are you? Here I am, come and join me.”