All Souls Procession

NEWSFLASH! We are going to the All Souls Procession downtown for youth group Sunday! This is something I've wanted to do for a couple of years, but we always had conflicts in schedule, so I forgot about it. Chloe suggested it Thursday, and I thought, "Why not?".

DINNER WILL BE AT 5pm and NOT 5:30. Do not be late, we will leave you. We hope to return by the regular 7:30 ending time, but regardless, we will return close to that time and if there are any changes, you can call.

This is a Tucson tradition (since 1990) that is creative, fun, spiritual, and centers on remembering and honoring those who have left this life. The website for the event is http://www.allsoulsprocession.org/

The low for Sunday is 56, but that will not be the temp at 6pm, but I would wear pants and comfortable walking shoes and bring a sweatshirt or jacket in case you want it. If you have any questions, email me or call me. Parents and friends are welcome to join us!!

Richard
403-2403

Half of U.S. Kids Use Foodstamps Before Age 20

Mark R. Rank of the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis co-authored a study analyzing the financial circumstances of U.S. kids (ages 1-20) over a period of 30 years. Key findings include:

* 49% of all U.S. kids will be in a household that uses food stamps at some point during their childhood.
>> 90% of black kids
>> 37% of white kids
>> 91% of kids in single-parent homes
>> 37% of kids in married homes
* Nearly 25% of all U.S. kids will be in households that use food stamps for 5+ years during childhood.
* 97% of U.S. kids by age 10 who are black and whose head of household is not married with less than 12 years of education reside in a food stamp household.

Even limited exposure to poverty can have detrimental effects upon a child’s overall quality of health and well-being.
- Mark R. Rank :: George Warren Brown School of Social Work

While these findings encompass decades of ups and downs, do not forget that current food stamp usage is at record levels (10%+ of the total U.S. population). Simultaneously, 80% of food banks can not meet demand (based on May ‘09 research).

Churches can help fight this hunger.

(via USA Today)

Psalms Wiffiti

To add a thought on the Psalms, you can
1-post a twitter with "psalm" in it and it will eventually get picked up.
2-Text @wif10874 + your message to 87884
3-Go to http://wiffiti.com/screens/10874 and post your thoughts.
[You can click in the right corner of the screen to go full screen.]

Challenging Article on Prayer

I ran across this article on the United Methodeviations blog. Good (but challenging) thoughts on prayer. What do you think?

Why People Think We’re Crazy November 3, 2009

Posted by doroteos2 in Congregational Life, Critical Thinking, prayer, spiritual practices.
Tags: anti-intellectualism, Myths, prayer, spiritual practices
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There are times when Christians drive me absolutely nuts. One way this happens is when I hear well-meaning and sincere Christians confuse faith and superstition, relying on prayer as a magical talisman or incantation. I listened to a United Methodist colleague share recently that he no longer prays because it never makes any difference. He told of a time when he was getting a cold and he prayed fervently that he not get sick, but got sick anyway. “I have better things to do with my time,” he concluded. Well, duh! Prayer isn’t our opportunity to tell God what to do or to corrupt it as a selfish want list. This irrational magical thinking does nothing more than give Christianity a bad name. We don’t need any help looking less enlightened than we already do to a growing educated and informed segment of our society. Ignorance, self-centeredness, judgmentalism, and narrow-mindedness are the four most prevalent reasons younger non-Christians give for avoiding the church (and the faith). When we promote a mythical-magical, pre-rational (irrational?) faith, we do ourselves no good. For example –

A weepy woman pastor wails on about how Down Syndrome babies are a gift from God. She explains that this affliction is a blessing to test parents capacity to love. That Down Syndrome children are the happiest and most carefree of all His children. She explains that Down Syndrome children are the earthly equivalent of cherubs, and that anyone with a Down Syndrome child is doubly blessed and will be richly rewarded in heaven — where their Down Syndrome children will be restored to full health (though why God would want to tamper with their perfection and blessedness is beyond me…). This lunatic actually invited mothers to pray with her that they might experience the blessing of having a child with Down Syndrome. Now, I don’t know what this lady’s brokenness is, and she may sincerely think she is offering a message of hope to families with a Down Syndrome child, but I do not for one moment believe that it is “God’s will” that a child or a family endure torments and heartache — especially as a test! OMG!

And then there is the crying couple who discovered that their son, missing for months in Afghanistan, was released and is coming home. “Our prayers brought our Son home safely from Afghanistan,” said the father. Mom added, “Jesus saw the love in our hearts and rewarded our faith. He gave us our baby back!” Touching, sentimental, and as the commentator said, “a powerful testimony to the power of prayer!” So, what about the hundreds of praying parents who receive word that their son of daughter is dead — killed in a senseless war while back home faithful people ask God’s protection and grace? When you link the answer to prayer to one’s level of faithfulness, what are you implying about all those who don’t get their heart’s desire? Is one person’s faith qualitatively different from hundreds of others? When ten people pray for rain and ten people pray for sun, is it an automatic proof who God prefers when it does one or the other? When one town prays the hurricane won’t hit them, is it an indictment of lack of faith on the town it does hit? When a terrorist prays that the bullet they fire will hit with deadly accuracy and it hits and kills the young person praying fervently that they will not be hurt, does that mean the terrorist’s version of God is stronger than our version? Prayer indeed is a comfort in time of distress and tragedy, but it is not some magical incantation that makes us somehow exempt from the uncertainties of life that plague everyone else.

The willingness to ascribe a supernatural cause to the unpleasantness of real life is widespread and has a long history. I sat on an airplane with a thirty-something woman who told me that her ”cancer occurred because I let Satan into my life.” She went onto say that “cancer isn’t really a disease, but an outward manifestation of what you really are. If you are a truly good person, you don’t get cancer. Cancer is the darkness of sin when it takes over your life.” There are so many things wrong with this worldview I don’t even know where to begin. Every person who has ever had cancer got it because they are evil? All the people who avoid it are good? The key to beating cancer is to be good? Where did she get this crazy idea from? “My pastor,” she told me. “She had cancer at a time when she was living in sin. She renounced sin, prayed to God for forgiveness, and IMMEDIATELY,” she reported breathlessly, “her cancer went into remission! I’m not there yet, but I am really trying to be good.”

Oh, yeah, and this guy — “My wealth came when I gave my life to Jesus and learned true prayer!” he enthuses. “I began to pray holding money in my hands so that what I had would attract more! The very first time I prayed this way, I held a ten-dollar bill. That same day, I found a ten-dollar bill in a parking lot. Now I have a dedicated prayer space in both my home and my office, and whenever I pray, I place my wallet — my cash, and credit cards, and check book — on the altar. God has yet to refuse to bless me!” Take that Joel Osteen! Even he isn’t this blatant. The “Prosperity Gospel” has all kinds of problems — too many to list here — but once again the implications are troubling: good people get, bad people do not. If you are wealthy, you are blessed of God. If you are poor, or merely middle-class, you possess a sub-standard relationship with God. Shame on you…

I feel sad when I encounter these kinds of “simple faith.” I emphasize the simple, because they reflect a non-critical, non-rational, almost hysteric clinging to magic, where God is little more than a grand genie in the sky waiting to serve our every whim. Many studies into people’s understanding and practice of prayer indicate that these are not isolated examples. Millions of Christians hold this children’s Sunday school understanding of prayer. They might hold Harry Potter in contempt, but they practice no less a Hogswartian approach to prayer as magical incantation than poor Harry and friends.

Readers of this blog know that I regularly raise the questions, “What is prayer?” and “What is prayer for?” I truly believe these are not rhetorical or simple questions. Prayer was a staple of the primitive and pre-modern roots of our faith, where myth, magic, and mystery ruled human understanding. But times have changed. Our spiritual understandings and practices cannot stay mired in archaic and unenlightened times. I believe there is great power and benefit in prayer, but not as a metaphysical means to manipulate the physical. I do believe in spirit and essence and energy, but not so much in magic and occult machinations.

Even our critics often denounce us — not because we believe in magic, but because our magic doesn’t work for them. I remember reading an essay by Steven Weinberg, “A Designer Universe?”, where the main argument was there cannot be a God because of all the bad things that happen. Abdicating all human responsibility for evil and illness, the essay basically says that a God that won’t do what we want him to is no good at all. Only a God that responds to our every whim and absolves us of all responsibility for our actions is worthy of our belief. Yeah, good luck with that…

Christianity in a consumeristic society is bound to be a compromised package at best. We are a culture that wants all the benefits but with the fewest costs. We want an easy faith that will take care of us, but that demands little. Prayer as a discipline? Not a big seller. Prayer as metaphysical mail-order, no money down, no monthly payments? Now you’re talking!

Something That Is Working!!

An Altar Call from Bill and Melinda Gates

[click on the link above to see the video]

by Jim Wallis 11-02-2009

Last week, my wife Joy and I were front and center when Bill and Melinda Gates launched their new Living Proof campaign in Washington, D.C. I have to imagine that this campaign launch sounded a lot like one of Microsoft’s shareholder meetings. It was replete with charts, graphs, well-defined metrics for success, best practices, and market projections. But present throughout Bill and Melinda Gates’ talk on the state of global health and poverty were not just numbers but the real people whose lives are being saved every day by their U.S. investments in global health. As the Living Proof Web site states,

Much of what people read and hear is bad news — terrible statistics and sad stories. The purpose of the Living Proof Project is to share good news: Together, we can help the world’s poorest people improve their lives. We know, because we’ve seen living proof. People’s lives are improving in measurable ways … They are testimony to the fact that when you improve health, life improves by every other measure.

I believe the Gates Foundation has been so effective in their work for two primary reasons. First, they aren’t afraid to make the “smart case” through clear and definable metrics and at the same time make clear the “moral imperative” for improving global health and ending extreme poverty. Second, they recognize that solutions to problems this big come when everybody is at the table. That means private philanthropy, government policy, NGOs, local leadership, and the faith community all have roles to play.

Too often the well meaning case for the moral urgency of global health and poverty is divorced from a hard nosed look at both what is most effective and what makes the best use of limited resources. The Gates Foundation is changing that. In the “I’m Living Proof” video, they show child after child proudly proclaiming, “I’m Living Proof” that these programs work. They talk about the “Lazarus effect” of how HIV/AIDS drugs are bringing people back to life who were nearly dead. They profiled a small child who nearly died after her mother’s death from HIV/AIDS. Just one year after starting HIV/AIDS drugs, the video shows this same child now thriving. The change is almost unbelievable.

These compelling stories are combined with big goals and measurable outcomes. Bill and Melinda Gates called on each of us to join them in advocating for U.S. investments in reducing the number of child deaths worldwide by nearly half by 2025. That may sound like an ambitious goal, but we’ve already made real progress. The number of children who die before age 5 has been halved since 1960 — from 20 million to fewer than 9 million per year — even as the number of births increased by more than 20 percent. The child death rate declined by more than a quarter (27 percent) from 1990 to 2007 alone. Now we need to further reduce child deaths by half once again.

The kind of gains we have seen in the past and the ambitious goal of repeating them in the future are not the result of any one sector of society, approach, or organization. It is not a choice between private charity, government aid, debt cancellation, trade policy change, or NGO cooperation; rather, it’s a question of getting them all to work together. Change happens most effectively when there is coordination and cooperation between different sectors and forces, not a choice between them. Bill and Melinda make it very clear that even as the Gates Foundation is the single largest philanthropic organization in the world, they can’t accomplish their goals without the cooperation and coordination with government and the nonprofit world — including the faith community.

Bill Gates is known for the smart approach; that came through as he made the compelling case for the results we can have with more investment. Melinda struck me as a real evangelist as she spoke naturally and passionately for all of our involvement. She spoke in moral terms about the “preciousness of every human life.” But the most successful CEO in the world also spoke in moral terms about the deeply held American value of equality and how we now need to be consistent in applying that value around the world. In other words, the poorest kids in the world shouldn’t die from diseases that none of our kids do anymore.

As I spoke with a person at the foundation at the small reception afterward, he explained to me that the Gates had been on Capitol Hill for two days and in almost every meeting they had, Members of Congress told them that the faith community will have to be centrally involved if the U.S. is to make an even deeper investment in global health. At the reception, I thanked both Melinda and Bill Gates for their work and promised that we would be involved.

I almost expected an altar call at the end of Bill and Melinda’s presentation, and I would have gone down the aisle. Because when it comes to the health and well-being of the world’s poorest people, Jesus is already there, and its time the rest of us Christians joined him. And as I suggested to Bill, the combination of the smart case and the moral case is the winning strategy.

The Spiritual Practice of Serving Others

This is a great post from Off the Map blog. Click on this link to see a good video about this subject.

The Spiritual Practice of Serving Others

1 Nov, 2009 blog

By Jim Henderson

Word association game time…

I say spiritual practice – what images come into your mind?

If you have been formed or influenced by any of the major world religions (including Christianity) you will think of things like
mediation, prayers you recite, ritual liturgical gatherings you attend, mental disciplines and maybe fasting
What you probably won’t include on that list are things like

• Listening to someone
• Holding the door for someone
• Noticing someone across the room who is struggling
• Asking someone how they are doing and actually paying attention
• Feeding someone who is hungry
• Visiting with or advocating for someone who is trouble with the law
• Dropping clothes off at Goodwill

You may think of these practices as spiritual

You may even do them intentionally, not for points, but in order to be faithful to the God you follow.

Nevertheless you won’t often hear these practices being referred to by church leaders with the same degree of reverence, frequency or fervency as what has become known as the interior spiritual practices.

For some reason, when it comes to being a serious follower of Jesus, the spirituality of serving others doesn’t count for as much as prayer, worship or church attendance. More insidiously we’ve learned to transfer these same values to God who apparently lacks the capacity to see or value the small and invisible things human beings do in their day to day lives to serve others.

This in spite of the fact that Jesus clearly favored the small, invisible and private over the public and obvious saying such things as when you give don’t let your right hand know what your left hand is doing and when you pray don’t be like the Pharisees and if you want to be my disciples do things like give those without the ability to thank you something as small and ordinary as a cup of cold water (our cultural equivalent would be paying attention to someone without drawing attention to ourselves).

It’s apparent that by his words and practices, Jesus – the founder of our movement and our Master – clearly thought of serving others as a spiritual practice.

Good All Saints Thoughts

Check out this post from a blog called United Methodeviations about All Saints.

How Does the Holy Spirit Lead You?

This is a short video discussion on how the Holy Spirit can lead us in our every day lives. It is from the folks at LifeChurch.tv.

Studies in Mark: The Temple Veil is Torn

Not much time this week. The worship bulletin is here. Watch this video by Petra called "Enter In". It's about the topic of our study for this week in Mark 15.32-41.

Catalina Youth: News and PHOTO!

OK, friends, this has been a crazy week for me, so no newsletter this week; just a few announcements:

1-YOUTH GROUP MEETS SUNDAY NIGHT! EVERYBODY should be here! Dinner is at 5:30.

2-If you are going trick or treating on Halloween, PICK UP YOUR REVERSE TRICK OR TREAT CANDY this Sunday. Just pick up a bag from me or Kristen. Here is the deal: You go to a house and say "Trick or Treat!" and hopefully, they give you a treat. Then you say "Thank you" like your mother taught you many years ago (and probably reminded you before you left the house). THEN you say, "Here is a treat for you!" and hand them a card with the fair trade chocolate attached! The point is to raise awareness about Fair Trade practices. This is a way that you can have fun and do something for social justice all at the same time!

3-VOTE IN OUR TWO POLLS!! U of A football game tickets: http://bit.ly/SVFAN Youth Group Super Bowl Party http://bit.ly/3yu3bL

4-UofA Volleyball vs ASU!! Friday, Nov. 13 at 7pm Tickets are $2! (I've got 16 tickets available). UofA volleyball women beat ASU convincingly last weekend in Tempe, now they are at home for the rematch. Details on where to meet, and at what time will follow. BUT if you want a ticket, I would reply to me or text me and I will put you on the list. If I run out of tickets, you can buy one at the door, but the line will be long! And the ticket will cost $3. If you want to visit the concession stand, you are on your own for that.

5-The photo of the week is...well, you see it!

6-National Mix-It-Up at Lunch Day is Tuesday, November 10. Info is at http://foxyurl.com/JWd Talk to your friends, teachers, administrators, student government, school clubs, or just do it yourself!!! This event is sponsored by Southern Poverty Law Center (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr founded it) and encourages students to sit with someone new, someone different at lunch on November 10; you get it: MIX IT UP! AND THIS IS THE SHORT VERSION????? Yes, it is.

7-UofA Football Game vs Oregon Saturday, November 21, time to be announced. We are taking a group to this game. Next week, I will announce which ticket package you guys chose and give you the details about ordering tickets (YES, you can bring friends!!). But VOTE IN THE POLL!! See above.

8-PRAYER FOR THE DAY Parent me God where I am lost. Soothe the struggle of my soul. Where I have left the simple trust of childhood, heal my heart. [from Twitturgies by Gerard Kelly]

9-Set up Twitter on your phone http://foxyurl.com/vva and then follow richardinaz for all youth news! Or you can just go to twitter.com and set it up on your computer.

I'll See You Sunday!

Richard 403-2403

Catalina Youth: One More Poll!!

I am considering buying tickets to take youth who want to go to the Arizona v Oregon football game. Start time has not been announced. The two options are:
The Family Zone ($17 adult, $10 student), which is the north end zone. You are close to the field, but can't see the screen/big scoreboard.
The Economy Sections (Marked with an "E" on the stadium diagram) ($15 package includes ticket, hot dog, peanuts, and a soda), which is upper level at each end of the east side of the stadium. You are very high up, but you can see the screen. Vote on which you would prefer, but ONLY VOTE if there is a good chance you will go to the game.

Click on the stadium diagram and it gets bigger.

Skips answers 3,4,5. I forgot to take them off before I published the poll.

Catalina Youth: Take the Poll!

we all come to prayer with a tangled mass of motives

"The truth of the matter is, we all come to prayer with a tangled mass of motives - altruistic and selfish, merciful and hateful, loving and bitter. Frankly, this side of eternity we will never unravel the good from the bad, the pure from the impure. But what I have come to see is that God is big enough to receive us with all our mixture. We do not have to be bright, or pure, or filled with faith, or anything. That is what grace means, and we are not only saved by grace, we live by it as well. And we pray by it." - Richard J. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home
HT: Tony Steward

By the way, I have read this book and I recommend it without reservation--as I do with anything written by Richard J. Foster.

Ending Extreme Poverty...Just Over the Horizon?

Over at Compassion International's blog, I found this great post written by Brianne Mullins. Read it all, (especially to see that charts and stats--they are encouraging, really!) but here are a few quotes.

We used to say that 40,000 children under age 5 die every day of hunger or preventable diseases. Then about 6 to 7 years ago this number was 30,000. Today, 24,000 children under 5 die every day of hunger or preventable diseases.

These statistics show that in 20 years the number of children who die every day of hunger or preventable diseases has been cut in half. Yet, the birth rate is actually going up. The population is increasing.

“Ending extreme poverty* is a practical, achievable objective and is an objective that can be completed by our generation.”

“The wealthy church today, the American church, has been entrusted with a purse of the Kingdom. The majority of Christ’s followers live in the developing world. What do they think of us as treasurers? Are they assuming that we would put the treasuries of the Kingdom to celebrating God’s goodness or caring for the poor? How are we doing?”

The annual income of Christian American churchgoers is $5.2 trillion. The amount of money needed to end global poverty is about $74 billion a year.

Did you crunch the numbers?

Basically, 1 percent of our annual income a year is what is needed to end extreme poverty.

Can you imagine? It could be said of our generation, “And there were no needy persons among them.”

To add a little perspective, the green bar represents the amount of money Americans spend on entertainment every year. We spend ten times more on entertainment ($705 billion) than what is needed to end poverty.

My Top Five Albums

Over at Jesus Creed, Scot got me thinking. He asked what are your top five greatest albums of all time? Here is what I said:
Top Five? Tough. So many artists albums are uneven. But I would say:
1-U2 Joshua Tree (Why has no one else mentioned this? It should be on everyone's top five--it's a given.)
2-Bob Dylan Time Out of Mind Underappreciated, but full of Dylan soul.
3-Moby Play The only CD you really need.
4-Bruce Springsteen The Rising Full of gems. Full.
5-Jeff Johnson Brendan's Prayer (or Patrick--both great--as is everything else Johnson and his cohorts record)

Was Jesus Like Stewie Griffin?

How did this thing of Jesus being God AND human work? When did he come to consciousness of his divinity? I think a lot of us imagine Jesus was like Stewie. Stewie is extremely intelligent and has great powers of speech, but he is a baby. Is that how Jesus was? Almighty God in the body of a baby? Or did Jesus become the Son of God at some point? His baptism?
These questions of how the natures of Jesus worked are hard to answer. Why did this come up? Well, this Sunday, I am preaching on Mark 14.32-42, The Garden of Gethsemane. At Gethsemane, we see the human nature of Jesus come through more clearly than anywhere else. At Gethsemane, the struggle between the natures of Christ are revealed. Jesus did pray NOT to have to go to the cross. That prayer was not granted. Jesus did come to the point of praying "not MY will, but THY WILL be done." This Sunday, we will consider two important issues Gethsemane brings up: 1-The nature of Jesus as the Christ, and 2-How does prayer work? (Or did it not work in this case?). We will look at the Nicene Creed, since it was formulated in response to discussion and debate about the nature of Jesus. The worship bulletin is here. Join us Sunday!

Health Care Reform Would Benefit American Business

During the 8 years that George W. Bush was president, the cost to an American employer to employ an American worker rose 25%. In other words, if it cost an employer $16/hour to employ a worker in 2000, it cost them $20 in 2008. And this is not inflation cost. It is a real increase in the cost to do business. Now, this was not President Bush's fault, and his policies did not cause this. And this increase was not due to tax increases, nor were the employees just making more money. This increase was due to rising health care costs. In other words, rising health care costs are hurting American employers. Health care reform will not just make liberals feel good. It is not to benefit those who can't or won't work. HEALTH CARE REFORM IS GOOD FOR AMERICAN BUSINESS. Who knows, if we could reform health care, maybe businesses wouldn't be forced by economic realities to outsource jobs overseas.

Obama Deserves the Nobel Peace Prize

The U.S. is the most powerful country in the world. Barack Obama has chosen to reject the in-your-face-it's-my-way-or-the-highway attitude of former U.S. leaders. He has moved America from a position of aggressive international bullying to a position of conciliation and dialog. He holds the position of ultimate power in the world, yet he has chosen dialog and negotiation over threats. This shows great restraint and great wisdom.

Who Wants the Kingdom of God? Not Us

http://networkedblogs.com/p13764475 Follow the link to a blog post by Steven Burleson. Good stuff. It makes me think. The Kierkegaard quote is right on. And I spelled Kierkegaard right the first time without looking it up.

God's Top Ten #3

This link is to a sermon text by Don Heatley. It is part of his series on the Ten Commandments. It is about "Don't take God's name in vain". And he hits it out of the park. Read.
http://www.donheatley.com/2009/10/what.html