Sun - November 27, 2005

reflections on project


Berkeley was the first time I committed myself wholly to God's use and service for a period of time; the first time I really participated in seeking first His kingdom in some sense. Maybe it was one of the first, important times of stepping out into my calling.

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Fri - October 8, 2004

The ethics of protection


Emboldened by a friend's blog as mentioned elsewhere, I wanted to start what may hopefully be not just my thoughts but a group conversation about something I've given little previous thought to, and you may not have even heard about. That subject? Microbicides. No, not "my crobicides" (as a friend hilariously thought the other night; sounds just like a weird disease, right?). Microbicides are actually one of the more promising areas of research and development in the fight against AIDS, which I had read about during the AIDS conference in Bangkok earlier this summer, and have learned even more about while freelancing for That Company.

Basically, microbicides as I understand them are a plant-based topical barrier that may protect women not only from disease but also impregnation. I don't have figures off the top of my head, but developing an actual vaccine for HIV/AIDS is still fairly far down the R&D pike. Scientists and pharmaceuticals are certainly working on it, but as Dr. Emilio Emini of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) highlighted during a talk at the AIDS conference I attended in June, the disease is extraordinarily complex, resistant to immune-system attacks, and able to adapt. As a result, one of the most practical ways to contain spread of the disease in the short-term is focusing on ways to prevent contracting it.

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Thu - September 23, 2004

A midnight thief of flowers



Plucked from the local community garden.

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Tue - August 31, 2004

a pilgrim in NY, pt. 3


Pt. 3 of a 3-part series. (Read Pts. 1 and 2 here)

Sorry for not yet providing a report on “today’s” convention experience. All I can say is wow. Since I got home after 2:30 a.m., a detailed report will have to come later. Major personal news of the day is that Friday I have an interview for an internet consultant position with a marketing/communication firm I applied to. Very excited to see how that goes and what it leads to.

THANK YOU to those of you who’ve sent such kind emails in response to pts. 1 and 2. Tomorrow I’m fairly occupied with convention-related stuff, but if I don’t end up getting guest credentials for tomorrow night, maybe I can report on what I saw (and personally respond to your emails).

Meanwhile ... the conclusion of my 3-part saga.

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Mon - August 30, 2004

a pilgrim in NY, pt. 2


Pt. 2 of a 3-part series (read Pt. 1 here)

Moving on
By the time I began to stabilize in the midst of that situation, I was halfway through a master’s degree in religious studies. During summer 2001, my spirits began at last to buoy. God provided a car without my even seeking one, I began a program of regular exercise for the first time in my life, dabbled with internet dating, and discovered my Cheers.

Admittedly, my relationship with Rula Bula did not begin on the most noble terms. On my 23rd birthday I met a cute waiter there and developed a short-lived crush. But in the midst of a turbulent fall semester full of first dates with men I met at the bar, and struggling to comprehend a world suddenly changed, I began to have a series of conversations with other bar patrons that awakened a passion for evangelism I didn’t know I had. This was not the forced, sales-pitch evangelism I associated with Crusade, but natural conversations about God and religion that felt more like the sort of thing Frances Schaeffer might have done. Sometimes in those moments I felt my humanity so intensely it seemed I could almost weep.

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Sun - August 29, 2004

a pilgrim in NY, pt. 1


Shortly after I emailed my summary of two years’ adventures in New York (not long ago), a thoughtful reader asked about the spiritual side of that story. As I’ve wrestled with the answer, it’s become a lengthy meditation on where I came from, the impact of summer 1999 in Berkeley, and learning to serve God as a reluctant single on the urban scene.

The back back-story
As some of you know, I grew up in a strongly evangelical family and by all accounts “became a Christian” in childhood. However, not until my freshman year at a small college in Iowa did I actually, honestly, begin to say I loved God. The period that followed that turning point, which involved struggling to gain control of my weight, and transferring to Arizona State University, is one I now consider the “honeymoon stage” in my relationship with God. After moving back to Arizona, I got involved with Campus Crusade, found a very solid church, and generally experienced much satisfaction as a Christian (although, of course, I still thought the one missing “piece” was finding a man to marry).

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Tue - August 17, 2004

gender, pt. 2


See “pt. 1” here. Meanwhile, on with another comment blurb from the New Pantagruel forums (click here to read the whole thread; includes some stuff on the McGreevey announcement):

The problem viz. gender roles extends to both men and women, and bears itself out in the confusion of our interactions. The men probably do know the stakes, and are therefore more reluctant to actually ask a girl out (hence the pseudo-date). The women become frustrated with this and either date men outside the church, or engage in passive-but-aggressive attempts to get the man’s interest and try to force him into interaction. I have, um, been very guilty on both counts.

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Religion and its clones


In the wee hours of the morning, I found myself suddenly waking up enough to not only read the entirety of Jack Heller’s very interesting piece in the latest New Pantagruel, but also read all the comments about it and post one of my own:

One thing that strikes me in reading the foregoing conversation is that this is probably a case of the blurred lines between “Christianity” and what we in religious studies like to call “American civil religion.”

It’s extremely difficult to govern a group of people without having some sort of unifying passion/identity/credo. Thus, appealing to and modifying a religious tradition that most of the constituents already adhere to works well. To the degree that the founding fathers were comprised both of “Christians” and “non-Christians,” they succeeded in developing a system of governance Christian enough to persuade people allegiance was part of their religious duty, and secular enough to satisfy the “non-Christians” it wasn’t a religious enterprise. (Sorry I’m not explaining this more clearly; at 2 a.m. the brain gets a little fuzzy.)

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Wed - July 14, 2004

isn't He wonder-ful?


Last night a random foray in my dot-mac inbox brought me into contact with the latest iTunes newsletter (they come out weekly). Out of curiosity, I clicked on the link for Edward Norton's celebrity playlist. His comments were eloquent but down-to-earth (I liked his use of "cull"), but I didn't have much interest in the two bands he championed. Who else had provided a celebrity playlist? I wondered. About 100 are currently available, most by bands or artists I don't know.

Moby, predictably, supplied a list of protest songs, but none caught my attention. Then I saw Angelique Kidjo's name, which I know mostly from my days at McGraw-Hill. I'd only heard a couple samples of her music before, with mixed reactions. It didn't make me run out and buy a CD — but I know that her project in general is pretty impressive (at least intellectually). So I checked out the playlist. And I was intrigued. I liked her range — James Brown to U2 to Serge Gainsbourg — and the way she wrote about the music. It made me want to listen.

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Thu - July 8, 2004

how to waste a perfectly good night...


Spend it writing up your profile on a personal site! Sometimes I really wonder why I do these things...

Following are some excerpts from the short-answer portions of my profile (read: ad). The content is far more explicitly religious than usual, so click through to new york journals or another page if that makes you feel better. ;)

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Fri - March 5, 2004

“Saints” as the body of God


The Iconic Nature of Family Portraiture for Evangelical Christians
Presenter: Christi A. Foist

My first visit to New York City came in May 2002 when I was privileged to participate in a symposium here on the intersection of art and religion. At the time, I was struck by two things. First of all, the under-representation of scholars from my discipline, religious studies. Secondly, and perhaps related to that, I was struck by the awkwardness of even the group assembled here in discussing the difference between “the religious” and “the secular.” Even within religious studies, this can be a burning question. Scholars in my field are often at pains to distinguish what we do from theology. Sometimes it can be an issue of legitimacy similar to the struggle for photography to be included in the canon of “Art.”

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Mon - August 11, 2003

gender, power and theology


> The Men's Ministry is challenging. We are living in a spiritual
> culture where men are being challenged to be strong in the
> faith. A good, close and spiritual mentor of mine has challenged
> "a bunch of us" with the idea this present spiritual culture has
> been feminized.

Gender and the character of God is a really interesting issue to me, especially as I look at the influence of feminism on our culture, and the way gay culture is perceived as offering an alternate perspective on manhood/masculinity. In the New York Times magazine, an article recently profiled the "Down Low" culture of gay black men -- who emphasize their masculinity in contrast to what they see as a "sissy," effeminate gay/white culture.

It makes me think of many things. Power. Emotions.

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Tue - May 28, 2002

evil (and other broodings)


(email to a friend)

Haven't heard from you in a while, so thought I'd send another loooong email to make the task of replying even more intimidating. ;) (Sorta like my brother's resistance to washing dishes when we lived together — because it was always an all-or-none deal for him. The worse it got, the more we needed dishes washed, and the less he was willing to do it — since he could never make "just a dent")

Well..... OK. Truth is, I had some bad dreams over the weekend. And I feel like I've sorta been avoiding any real reckoning with them (do you think watching 24 episodes of Sex and the City in two days might be part of that??). Tried starting to write about it all in my journal, but that didn't work too well either.

And the real thing is, these dreams brought me face-to-face with evil in a way I rarely have to. I mean — literally, I woke up from the first one praying, "Come Lord Jesus" — and I never pray that (mostly because I've had this longstanding, silly fear of dying a virgin). I don't know how to describe it, really, but there was just this very real, palpable sense of evil — in a very serious way. I remember praying about the world at large in a way that I don't very often....

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