Dear Amy Jo and Miriam (Chicks on the Right): A Letter About Creating Meaningful Change

In order to create lasting change one has to have a broad understanding of the constituency that will have to participate in the change. Not just conservatives, but liberals and conservatives and everyone in between. This broad understanding is necessary because creating change requires the consent and willing participation of MOST PEOPLE. You are not involved in a society made up exclusively of conservatives. So conservatives cannot create lasting change by simply banding together and attacking the people viewed as the opposition.

An Open Letter to the Congregation and Leadership of East 91st Street Christian Church in Indianapolis

And, yeah, I’m a little stirred up. Because you aren’t being honest with yourselves when you say you are “a church that loves all people.” I can’t help but think if you were actually honest, and said, “We are a church that loves all people, except gay people,” it wouldn’t feel right coming from your lips and you would try to love better.

Two Anti-Gay Christian Groups at IndyPride – This Is Only a Test

Let’s make sure our reaction to this is not about our own anxious projections of danger. Let’s make sure we are reacting two to little booths and a few annoying people at IndyPride, and not reacting to years of spiritual wounding at the hands of other Christians.

Guns, Newtown, and Personal Responsibility

Yesterday, in Newtown, some guy goes into an elementary school and shoots six year olds. And we can’t believe it. We don’t know how something like that could happen. We say, “He must have been insane.” And I’ll tell you why we say that. Because that lets us, individually and collectively OFF THE HOOK. He was insane. So there’s nothing we could have done about it.

Which is bullshit.

the higgs boson – it’s not the God particle – but it is pretty cool

The Higgs Boson was a particle that had been proposed, but never found. Scientists thought it might exist because it was just the thing they needed to tie all the divergent theories of sub-atomic particle physics together. The big picture theory of these little tiny things is called The Standard Model. Without the Higgs Boson The Standard Model was just a bunch of sub-theories that all looked good, but didn’t work together.

this is not a game

President Obama selected Tom Daschle to head his health care reform effort. By almost all accounts Mr. Daschle was the perfect person for this job. But it turned out that he had messed up his taxes, to the tune of a hundred grand or so. So Mr. Daschle withdrew his name. President Obama apologized all … Read more

overkill

Last summer, Lisa and I invited her family over to our house.  It was our turn to host one of the quarterly birthday celebrations.  Lisa’s family is large, and they work really hard to get together a few times a year to spend time as a family. We have a wooded back yard, with a … Read more