jfurnal's Xanga

Saturday, July 05, 2008

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 20:15:50 GMT

Tonight, I went down to eat some pizza at Tarek's. It had been over a week since I'd been there, and he wanted to know where I had been. I had a horrible headache this evening, so when he asked me how I was doing, I told him the truth. "Even better!" He said as he was throwing the pizza dough up in the air. I was confused, "Why is having a headache better?" He tried hiding the smirk on his face, "Because after a week of vacation, you deserve a headache for not working!"

I ordered my usual sausage pizza, and tried reaching as far back into the fridge as I could, hoping for a cold Coke. Outside, there were some wobbly tables set up, and I sat there waiting for my pizza and for Jen to show up. Tarek followed me out for a smoke break and to ask how my trip in Bari went. Customers flowed in and out, which kept him running back and forth from our table to the pizzeria. His wife, Noha, came with the family in tow, and I had the opportunity to meet Adam, their newest as of two months ago. We chatted a bit and then Tarek brought out some espresso, symbolizing the end of the meal. He makes no hesitation to tell the other customers, when they ask for coffee too, that he only makes coffee for his friends.

As we finished up the coffee, he remembered a story from this week that he wanted to share. He couldn't remember exactly how I came into the story, but a customer stopped by who Tarek identified as "a communist" and somehow he asked the communist if he knew who I was. The commie shook his head, "Nah, I don't know who Josh is." Tarek started to tell him about me, "Oh, well Josh is an American priest here in town that I'm friends with and who comes by to eat my pizza all the time. Every Sunday, Josh comes by and picks up the bread that I make for them to use for their Mass." Tarek said that the commie stopped him in the middle of his story, "Wait a minute, you're telling me that you, a Lebanese Muslim, makes bread for the Mass for an American Priest!?" Tarek smiled real big, and said, "Yea, why wouldn't I? Josh is a friend of mine." The commie shook his head again in disbelief, "Lebanon and America aren't supposed to get along. Muslims and Christians aren't supposed to get along. If a journalist got ahold of this story, it would be all over the news!" Tarek smiled again, "Yea, well I don't think of it as some sort of publicity effort. We're friends, and that's what friends do." Tarek closed his eyes, imitating the response of the commie, and made an Italian gesture with his hand, quoting him, "E' veramente bellissimo!"

Now, I'm not really a priest and what we do on Sunday's isn't really a Mass. But Tarek's lived in Italy now for over a decade, and for Italians it's very hard to think about Protestants without framing them up into Catholic categories. At the table though, I didn't feel the need to correct his misdescription of what I'm doing in Italy because despite his using the right kinds of categories to describe me, Tarek was able to get one thing completely accurate, and that one thing carries the Gospel in with it--that one thing is our friendship. I like how the beauty of such a friendship can give a commie hope in this mixed up world and have the kingdom break through their preconceived notions of how followers of Jesus are supposed to react to the marginalized. E' veramente bellissimo!

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:53:53 GMT

It would've been nice to let Bishop Wright talk more in this video, instead of Colbert cracking so many jokes (which weren't all that funny) but for what it's worth, check out the book:

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:55:57 GMT

recently, i've come across two quotes from two ladies that i deeply respect and i wanted to share them with you:

“The higher Christian churches – where, if anywhere, I belong — come at God with an unwarranted air of professionalism, with authority and pomp, as though people in themselves were an appropriate set of creatures to have dealings with God. I often think of the set pieces of liturgy as certain words which people have successfully addressed to God without their getting killed. In the high churches they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a strand of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it any minute. This is the beginning of wisdom.”

–Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm (New York: Perennial, 1977), 59.

"I think that the Church is the only thing that is going to make the terrible world we are coming to endurable; the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it."

-- Flannery O'Connor in a personal letter to Elizabeth Hester after being called a fascist

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 09:16:30 GMT

simply breathtaking...

#93.6 BON IVER - Skinny Love
by lablogotheque

my brother and sister called me from bon iver's minnesota show last night... i went on a mission to find some good videos online, and these were just posted recently by LaBlogotheque where Bon Iver took france by storm...

go and watch the other videos and be set free

Bon Iver Part I
Bon Iver Part II

if my vote counts for anything, this gets my "best album of 2008" award...

Friday, June 20, 2008

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 09:51:47 GMT

I dove headlong into N.T. Wright's latest book, Surprised by Hope, which is a good introduction to his theology. As I read, I found myself getting giddy as I read about the Resurrection of Jesus ushering in "not simply a new religious possibility, not simply a new ethic or a new way of salvation, but a new creation." I got giddy because my little experience thus far on this earth is finding a track to discover its significance. I got giddy as I pondered the smile of the risen Christ extending his pierced hand to me as an invitation to walk in this new creation life. The more I thought about it, the more I liked this splendid interruption in my desire to live life in a calculated manner of cause and effect. A huge question mark gets painted around this notion of living according to any other sort of narrative. This "newness" that the Resurrection brings is very attractive to me. It sets you into a mood that's calming and pleasurable. Like holding a newborn baby, or like holding your lover in a reciprocal embrace. I got giddy because these things are quite good things in life that, for the first time, I'm given the gift of experiencing them as signposts that point us toward a greater creation that is to come (and is in fact coming!).

To think of Resurrection, not in terms of bunnies or new dresses, but in terms of something that breaks into your life from the background which, in turn, demands that a new back drop be strung up, becomes a new way of seeing--not through the skeptic's sneer, but through a lover's embrace. Life steps into waking Life and you're suddenly given permission to really live, and to really love. It's like the margins get reset. Wittgenstein said that "It is love that believes the resurrection." Bishop Wright takes this to mean that:

"the resurrection is not, as it were, a highly peculiar event within the present world (though it is that as well); it is, principally, the defining event of the new creation, the world that is being born with Jesus. If we are even to glimpse this new world, let alone enter it, we will need a different kind of knowing, a knowing that involves us in new ways, an epistemology that draws out from us not just the cool appraisal of detached quasi-scientific research but also that whole-person engagement and involvement for which the best shorthand is 'love,' in the full Johannine sense of agape ... Just because it takes agape to believe the resurrection, that doesn't mean that all that happened was that Peter and the others felt their hearts strangely warmed. Precisely because it is love we are talking about, it must have a correlative reality in the world outside the lover. Love is the deepest mode of knowing because it is love that, while completely engaging with reality other than itself, affirms and celebrates that other-than-self reality."

[I'm not even sure if I've connected any dots here, but hey, here's for trying...]

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:01:50 GMT

i don't know if this happens to you, but sometimes when i'm reading, i'll come across a passage that totally puts words to some sort of inner twinge that i've felt for some time. this happened today with this passage:

"Given such courage [made available by Christ's redeeming work], we can admit the glimpses of death present in our everyday life. Fall leaves--at once fire-spangled and decayed, burning with color and dry as dust, beautiful and sad--speak of death. The quiet withering away of a friendship or movement from one job to another, simple goodbyes, episodes of forgetfulness, the realization that no moment or experience can ever be exactly duplicated: all these are little deaths. They demonstrate to us that, this side of our resurrection, all things change, melt, fade, or otherwise pass away. They are signs, like glints in a moving mirror or reflections in a passing car window, of our mortality and the mortality of everything and everyone we love on this earth. We can expend energy trying to ignore these reminders. But Christian spirituality presents another way. It calls us to recognize and acknowledge these little deaths, and in them larger deaths. It calls us to see them as they are, shot through with pain. And without pretending there is no pain, it calls us to see them in the light of their transformation in Christ and the lasting joys of resurrection happiness. The question then is not, How do we hold on to our earthly joys and try to keep them just as they are, as long as we can? Instead, the question becomes, How do we love these things in God and in hope of eternal life? How do we keep perspective and better fit ourselves--and our world--for enjoyment of the real, true, and final happiness that is to come?"

- Rodney Clapp, Tortured Wonders: Christian Spirituality for People, Not Angels, 167.

Saturday, June 07, 2008

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 11:59:52 GMT

    The last time I was at Rosa's house, it was the night before Massi's funeral. She was completely destroyed after losing her fiancee (and rightfully so!) and she didn't want to eat or get out of bed. So when Jason and I went to visit her last night, it was comforting for me to see her sitting at the dinner table with her family.
    The television wasn't squawking over our slow-starting conversation at the table but was turned down just low enough for me to miss out on the overdubbed, eloquent dialog of a headhunter and his native american counterpart in a show that I hadn't seen in years called Renegade. Some sort of ragu pasta was dished out on plastic plates and we respectfully declined as it passed our way. We had both already eaten before we came, and we weren't intending to stay long. Jason did a good job opening up conversation while my eyes went around the kitchen, to the television, and back to the table.
    Rosa's parents aren't what you'd normally think of when you think of a set of Italian parents. If I had to describe them to you, words like rustic come to mind. In Italian, the word that comes to me, is usually found on the brown packet of sugar that I always go for when drinking an espresso. I don't care for the pretty, white, refined, sugar. But I normally reach for that rough, raw, crude, unprocessed, unrefined, brown sugar that says grezzo on it. When drinking coffee, I prefer this sort of sugar. When sitting at the table with Rosa's parents, I kept thinking "sugar packet." They aren't the normal kind of folk that I run into in the city. They come from the blue collar, farm stock, that you know how hard they work by looking at the lines on their leathered faces, calloused hands, and darkened fingernails. While Jason maintained conversation with Rosa, I kept wanting to find an avenue into the conversation between her parents and brother on the other end of the table. They spoke through a thick accent that forced me to listen harder.
    At some point, the two conversations going on at the table converged on the topic of justice. Everyone was in agreement that Massi didn't deserve this short of a life and that it didn't make sense that there is still in existence dishonest men with longer lives. I quickly found a spot to make a joke in order to lighten up the mood, "Yea, like that Antonidretti guy!" The conversation stopped and everyone paused at this foreigner trying to figure out what he was saying. "What?" I tried my phrase again, sounding it out slower, "An-tone-eee-ooo--teee" Rosa just kind of looked at me confused. I tried another route real quick, "You know, il Divo, that politician, he's really old, they made a movie about him?" Rosa's dad fixed his askewed glance as if his eyes had been crossed, and unfurrowed his brow, "Oh! Andreotti!" Everyone gave out a sigh, as the joke quickly faded into confusion, and then resolution. Her dad gave out a big belly laugh because he caught the joke and said something in dialect like, "yea that guy will never die!" I tapped Jason on the leg, under the table, because I was surprised that the joke was salvaged and Jason said under his breath, "three points for you."
    We eventually went into the other room and Rosa began asking us different questions that she had been wrestling with. The first one had to do with, "Can Massi see what I'm doing now and is he going to be angry with me if I don't honor him with the rest of my life?" This spun out into a very interesting discussion on how little the Bible talks about intermediary states and what the resurrection means for us in our day to day lives. Her other big question centered on Jesus' invitation "Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, 'Go, throw yourself into the sea,' and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer" (Matt. 21:21-22). Why would God not heal Massi if she asked for this in faith? This led into a great discussion about doubt not being sinful, God not having a meticulous destiny for everything that happens, and how prayer is an invitation to collaboration. I now realize in summing up our long evening, that it sounds like we had cliches for every question that she asked. This is not the case. It really was a great evening with hard questions.
    I think in our evangelical circles, there exists a hard-nosed, non-human, spirituality that says "Rosa should be back in church a week or so after the funeral with hands raised in worship praising the God who giveth and taketh away." Rosa said that she's had people come up to her and give her this unsolicited advice. I can't help but think how cruel this way of thinking is. What kind of spirituality do you have if it prohibits you from fully expressing yourself in your humanity? What kind of spirituality do you have if you have to be the strong one all the time and not let anyone in on what you're really feeling? When your whole world falls apart into a rubbled heap, and you're left to decide whether it's best to sit in that rubble or start rebuilding, who do you want there with you? The religious person who tells you that your current suffering is connected to some hidden sin in your life and that you should get back to attending church? I don't think so. When it comes to rebuilding your shattered faith, you need more room to breathe, to question, to feel, to build. You need more space to be the human that you are in this new context in which your old forms of faith are like broken toys in a larger playground.
    I felt like, last night, Rosa was given permission to step into that space, that extra room. I don't think we were able to speak to all of her doubts. And on the car ride back, I felt like maybe I had said too much. But what I think is best, in these situations, is that people are given the space and the grace to be people. When Christ came to this earth, he didn't come as an angelic being, aloof from all contamination of this life. No, he came as one of us--a human, (grezzo even!). And he showed us how to be fully human. And what I'm finding out, is that in ministry, a lot of our canned answers and conventional theology is for the angels, and not for humans.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:27:29 GMT

here's an irish group you should give a listen to called 'the swell season':

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Sun, 25 May 2008 19:03:48 GMT

    As an American living in Italy, there are several things that you must adjust to in order to "get" the culture in which you inhabit. The first thing I would throw out there would be the pace of life. My family was just here visiting me and they were constantly frustrated by not having a 24 hour shopping alternative. I've grown to appreciate the frequent slowness of the day and have learned to work with it. The other thing that I would say that Americans just aren't used to, is eating fish. I took my family to the market and showed them what was available by way of "eating fresh" when it comes to fish. Both my sister and mother had to cover their noses and walk briskly past the fish aisle so they could keep lunch down. It ain't no Long John Silver's. One last thing I'd say would be that Americans just don't understand soccer.
    I had the opportunity to go to my first soccer game today. Ancona was playing Perugia for the possibility to move up from Series C to Series B. When we walked in towards the stadium, I could hear the crowd's chanting. We found out through some disgruntled fans who were heading back out to their car that the game was sold out. We kept on going towards the gate just to make sure. Well, sure enough, we found out at the gate that it was, in fact, a sold out game. There were 10 of us all together. We just kind of stood outside the gates and listened to the crowd's excitement. We had to kind of shout because it was so loud. I saw Tarek go up to the gate and start talking with the ticket takers. I walked up to talk with him and see if he had a ticket. He didn't. He was using his 'slyness' to try and get them to let him in without a ticket. Something absurd, right? Tarek said to the guy, "Can't you pick up one of the stubs off the ground and pretend to tear it and let me in?" The guy looked around for his supervisor, looked over Tarek's shoulder, looked at me, and then told Tarek to go on in. Tarek smiled real big and said, "Josh, I'll see you in there!" I was stunned. And before I realized what was happening, the ticket taker guy was telling me, "Go, Go, Go! Follow him in!" I didn't skip a beat, and waltzed right past the gates into the stadium. I turned around and waved at my teammates who were staring back at me in disbelief.
    I got in and took a look at the playing field. The crowd was all wound up. This was going to be too good of a thing to let my teammates sit outside for. So, I went back down the stairs, found some ticket stubs on the ground, and went back outside to hand my teammates the ticket stubs so they could get in too. The problem was that I hadn't grabbed enough of them though. So we debated outside how we were all going to get in. By this time, some people who didn't have tickets started crowding the gate. Cops started to come over to sort things out. (A side note is that in Italy, they have to have massive security, not in their airports, but in their soccer games, because they get so intense!) Well after a few minutes of fans asking for sympathy, they let everyone in! Some of the fans were saying, "I knew that their hearts would soften sooner or later." One kid, as he went past the guard asked, "Are you sure we don't need tickets?" The guard smiled painfully while finishing the last drag on his cigarette and said, "Look kid, don't ask me these kinds of questions, just get in there and enjoy the game!"
    So we were in! The game was intense! I didn't know all the songs everyone was singing, but everytime there was a bad call by the ref, the entire crowd erupted. The fans from Perugia were bussed in on the opposite side of the stadium and were blocked in by cops decked out in riot gear. The Ancona fans started chanting obscene things like, "Perugia go F@#* yourself!!!" Old men, young kids, pumping their fists in the air and shouting at the top of their lungs. I leaned over to Chris Casey and said, "I guess soccer games are not a good place for spiritual formation." In between the obscenities and blasphemy, there was no doubt that the fans were personally involved in the game.
    Ancona ended up scoring two goals, and had to win by two in order to move up in their ranking. The last two minutes of the game were the most intense. Perugia managed to get multiple goal attempts, but failed each time. The level of blasphemy quickly lessened and the spiritual fervor of the fans gained as they began shouting prayers to God beseeching His intervention. Three generations of Anconaetani stood to their feet and began chanting the ball away from the net. The last kick of the game, the ball went straight for the net, the crowd went silent. And in slow motion, the ball bounced off the post and went out of bounds. The ref indicated that the game was over and that Ancona had won. It would be an understatement to say that the crowd went nuts. Kids began rushing the fence and started climbing over. The cops in riot gear began to unleash the dogs. The drunk kids saw the dogs, and decided it was best to not jump on to the field, but to stay perched on the fence. I found myself at times getting caught up in the game. I yelled to the guy next to me, "It's impossible! How did that not go in!" The guy wiped the sweat off his brow and looked at me with his bloodshot eyes and said, "It's destiny man, it's destiny..."

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Thu, 15 May 2008 08:36:31 GMT

"While I wait for God as long as he remains in hiding,
while I wait and hope for him.
I stand my ground and hope..." (Isaiah 8.17 MSG)

I woke up today to discover that Massi had died and that Brian and Jason were already at the hospital. While they were in the trenches of ministry, I had a conversation with Maurizio (who was at work) on Messenger about the "why's." Our church has been praying for Massi for sometime now. For healing, like real 'faith-filled' prayers. The kind that stretch the pray-er when the request is uttered. Many, many, many others have been praying for Massi's healing on a regular basis, with a persistence that matches a widow's bludgeoning a judge with her requests. Maurizio had experienced first hand the stretching that comes from praying in a position like this, and the news this morning left him baffled, because he really believed. Maurizio knew that Massi had a greater faith than he did, and that the character of Massi didn't warrant such suffering. So we wring our hands... in prayer.... we wring our hands.

It started to rain really really hard around lunch time today. I went out on to my balcony to listen to it patter off the pavement, to feel the wetness of the balcony's rail, and to think about what I really believed. Scriptures flooded through my heart about hope, about this sickness that's not unto death, and about what it means to place your faith in a Man that says He's "the Resurrection and the Life." I thought about all of these things. I thought about my own death. I thought about all the people I love. The wetness of the rain covered up my tears. When it rains it pours.

My good friend Rob Grandi wrote me an email with this reminder:

"Sorry to hear about Massi's death. But it is followed by his new life with the Father. When you wrote, "When it rains it pours?", what came to mind was the Scripture that where sin increased grace increased even more. Likewise, I think, when trouble increases, grace and strength increase even more. When it rains, it pours. When it pours, God floods. Praying for you all and each to feel the flood and to swim in the Father's love."

For our community here in Ancona, today is a day filled with tears and questions. But I don't think anyone of us has lost hope.