parables of a prodigal world

Happy Black Friday everybody. For those of you who, after years of day-after-Thanksgiving sales, are starting to feel a bit like a trout in a lake full of trout surrounded by worms dangling from shiny metal objects, here are two alternatives to Black Friday that might not hurt in the throat as much: Buy Nothing Day . Make Something Day . OK, that having been said, there were a lot of great posts this last week about Thanksgiving. Three of them, though, seemed ominously similar to what I tried to say to my brothers and sisters (and guests) at our annual Thanksgiving dinner. Quit stealing my ideas, guys. Eugene Cho expounds on two simple thoughts , You are Blessed and Remember the Vulnerable. Richard Dahlstrom gives the theme a bit of a twist . "'And there was a famine...' is what Genesis says, and only then are the wheels set in motion for God's chosen family to begin their process of profound transformation." Hmmm...? Mike Todd, though, hits the nail on the head...

I've been listening a series of three lectures by N.T. Wright to the Harvard Graduate School Christian Fellowship. Those who know Wright's stuff will find some new and interesting viewpoints here, but the format forced him to condense a lot of huge topics into really small packages. A lot of Q&A, though, but again, huge questions with unfortunately little time to develop appropriately-sized answers. At one point, though, Wright said something that got me thinking. Not the first time that's happened. He said, and I'm paraphrasing here, that Obama's victory was huge from the perspective of seeing the culmination of a "piece of good" that most people thought hopeless, i.e., the rise of an African-American to the highest seat of political power. On the other hand, Wright was concerned that too much hope was being placed on Obama's shoulders. He was concerned for the man because he knows that he cannot possibly bear the weight of all that hope, let ...

Maybe this is precisely the year when this will catch on. What with the credit crunch and the free-falling economy, maybe this just might have the impetus to reach a critical mass. Yeah, it'd be cheating, I know. People would buy into it for the wrong reason. But maybe that's how a Conspiracy has to play out. Or, maybe, it'll start for the wrong reasons, but become a tradition, so that future generations would just see it as "the norm." Or maybe none of that matters, as long as one extra human being gets to not die because of a lack of clean water. Yeah, maybe. Pass it on. And tell whomever you pass it on to to pass it on. Grace and Peace, Raffi

I was honored and privileged to be asked to speak to the members and guests of our church at our annual Thanksgiving dinner tonight. Here's the audio, for anyone who might be interested. Grace and Peace, Raffi MP3 File