Sacred Space

jerusalem this morning.

i always love it when weather slows down our lives. it reminds us that were not so big, so important, so powerful, so full of ourselves - that a little bit of precipitation can't change our priorities and let us take ourselves a little less seriously.

these bouts have always appeared to me to be a sort of sabbath rest. a sacred space. my community has been looking at sacred space ... and the time invested in doing so... this series, these conversations in prep, and in discussion afterwards, have opened my heart and mind up even more to the beauty and natural breathing that God very nearly demands we take in our lives.

i'm just coming to understand this and appreciate this with some depth. however, my wife, a teacher, has long understood the deep theological underpinnings behind a snow day ;-)

i am an agent of emergence

the land of the...

What happened in Concord in 1775? Let's be honest. You're asking me about Concord? I rely on the bus driver to find my own house from here. Concord could be on Neptune for all I know. And what happened 220 years ago?? I'm a kid. I don't know what's going on NOW. I don't have a shred of context for any of this. It's hopeless, Miss Wormwood, hopeless.

~Calvin

when i was growing up - i learned how america was formed in the crucible of religious oppression and religious freedom. And we-all, being the good guys of course, fought for our religious freedom, and won it. the land of the free and the home of the brave.

i assume that's true.

i don't really have enough context to discover otherwise.

this is why we fought the british, isn't it?? I guess? maybe tea was involved somehow, oh wait, taxation without representation... i'm confused. aren't the british mostly christian?

anyways... religious freedom. it's one of our mantra's. i think that's what we fought for. we want it. want to give it to other people. it might be an unalienable right. bush may have heard directly from God on this very issue. the almighty never was big on privacy from what i understand so that makes sense now. but religious freedom in particular. right? any question on that? is there? I mean there could be - but I was thinking that much was settled.

ok, so religious freedom. you want it - we got it. right? cool.

so whats with the hoopla over barack obama being a muslim?

I mean, seriously, I wish he were a muslim. talk about renewed american credibility on the world stage. and a real opportunity to demonstrate to the middle east that this is not a religious war (despite what they ;-) make it out to be... those crazys) and that democracy is not inherently a white christian thing. because, i mean, look: even without this - barack "as is" means so much to the way america could be viewed.

so anyway - the rumours of barack are seriously small minded. i'm not trying to be dismissive to those who have serious questions over this stuff. if that's where you are - seriously check it out. but the issue for me in all this - is that which is giving power to these rumours.

so say someone is a muslim... in a land of religious freedom, that's not a problem? is it. right?

so say someone is an atheist... in a land of religious freedom (i'm assuming the opportunity to "opt out" is part of the deal), this is not a deal breaker either. right?

only it is if you're an atheist. and it appears to be if you were to be a muslim.

so now i really don't get it.

what did all those brave lads fight for? and what do we stand for today? and if we're not who we think we are - are we willing to change? and if you're part of the christian majority and believe in religious freedom - are you willing to stand up for the atheist so he doesn't get oppressed; and stand up so that your fellow muslim brother can practice free of oppression as well? and what would you want him to do if you were in his country?

Fuck Intel

i wanted to be delicate with the way i titled this post... i feel like i struck a nice balance.

recently, i blogged that because the information age promises to be more significant than the bronze age, the iron age or the industrial revolution, the $100 laptop promises to do more than say, the loom in fighting poverty and injustice.

but now intel has screwed around with the OLPC project and officially pulled out of it with this announcement. all sounds very corporate and official sounding.

nicholas negroponte responded with this statement. it's worth a read. sounds to me like he didn't feel the need to hold back. i applaud that.

what intel has done is immoral. the are thinking with their dick wallet rather than their head.

i'm glad my macs still have motorola's chips inside. i mean, motorola got lazy and apple was right to can them. but i rue the day i need to ever buy an intel chip again.

lazy habits of blogging

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

i'd like to make an example of one of my heros. Guy Kawasaki. dude started a blog about two or three years ago and it was incredible. over just a few weeks, he exploded to the top of the blogosphere. here was a fifty plus year old guy who had been there done that, had been in the bowels of apple, and had his head screwed on strait with the way the world works today. he was just blowing everyone away with the kinds of thoughts he was offering up, for free no less, on a daily basis.

at some point within the last year, he changed the nature of the content he was delivering. instead of creating new / fresh / original content... he started linking / pointing / referring to content around him.

he switched from being a fresh water well, to being a portal, a gatekeeper, (dam?) of other peoples water.

he got lazy if you ask me.

now i've noticed these two kinds of blogs before (the portal and the well)... but never paid too much attention to the differences. it took watching guy kawasaki change from one to the other, for me to put a name on it, and clarify in my own mind there is a difference. and to also decide, i want to be a well. if only to challenge myself.

i can't vouch for quality of the water though ;-)

so with this in mind - and with an already too crowded blog page - ive created two new pages. the first is an about page - which is basically my internet credentials (like if you can't perform a google search on me), and is usually pretty static. it has some resources about what works for me (books, blogs, software) - if anyone's interested. the other is a tags page - which is very dynamic in that it shows a tag cloud of my delicious tags, my twenty five most recent delicious tags (left) as well as my most recent twenty five top or most important tags (right). you can get a feed to any of this stuff if you want.

i may someday bring this content back to my blog page, if i can organize it cleanly enough. but for now, this process has helped me separate the idea of being a fresh water well - from that of being a portal. and reinforced that i don't want to get lazy and let other people do too much of my thinking for me - let alone try to pass that off as my own content. not that i think i exist in a vacuum - those links are important context... it's stuff i'm reading. but it's not me.

ok in truth - no ones coming to my blog and tons of people are going to guy's - so i'll shut up now.