Two Great Newpaper Articles about Boulevard Presbyterian

Check out these two great articles about Boulevard Presbyterian Church...

This first is about our beloved Boulevard Quilters and their +30 year commitment to the traditions of handmade quilts. Click the link below to the article.

Quilters pursue traditional craft

The second article is about Boulevard's Community Christmas Basket program that partners with a multitude of Grandview and Tri-Village groups to make Christmas a bit brighter for over 380 families and their +1000 children. Click the link below to go to the article.

Boulevard Christmas Package project aids more than 380 families

Cartoons, Child Abuse, and Facebook

On December 6th every Facebook profile photo was to be a favorite childhood cartoon. Why? To raise awareness of child abuse.

For the weeks leading up to December 6th the Facebook landscape slowly (and sometimes not even all that slowly) turned into a red-carpet Who's Who of cartoon characters from our respective childhood. Older Facebookers had Yogi & the Flintstones. Those who were closer to my age donated their spaces to GI Joe, the Thundercats, the Adventures of the Gummi Bears, and more. Still others resisted, often with the following status update:

Please do not think that I support child abuse because I haven't changed my profile picture to a cartoon. I just don't see how it will help.

When the rumors died down the meme was the work of pedophiles, or that it was a crafty way to hack your Facebook profile, and December 6th came and went, the question remained unanswered: So did it help? Were children less abused during the Facebook run-up to December 6th? I doubt it.

I also doubt that it was a waste of time, or some viral stunt just to see how many folks could get rolled up into the eSnow-Ball barreling down the slope of the information super highway. The creators of the meme hoped to raise awareness & I got to believe the thousands if not millions of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that popped up in the days leading up to December 6th did in fact create "awareness" of child abuse. Someone had to have asked "why do you have Papa Smurf as your profile pic?" Hopefully the wise old Smurf replied.

Like it or not, we are going to be seeing more and more of these kinds of things via Facebook, Twitter, and the myriad of other social network sites. The success of the Cartoon/Child Abuse campaign cast that in stone, and truthfully, I am a fan. In a world where this humble, often neglected blog already has 10 views today (now 10:00 AM Eastern), and since its launch has been accessed 18 times from users in Malta, I can communicate across a landscape that is both humbling and empowering. From Malta to Turkey to the Netherlands to Palm Springs, CA and right back here to Columbus, OH, folks have read what I wrote (mostly opinion) and when you amplify that by the traffic of Facebook or Twitter, the potential grows in a way that should produce humility...hopefully.

I am small potatoes. My sphere of influence is minuscule. Just ask my dog. Yet somebody somewhere reads this (thank you by the way). Somebody read my Facebook status update today and when I "donated" it to the Human Rights Campaign they read that update too. I missed out on the Cartoon profile pic meme (sadly) but I do not need a blog, a Facebook page, Twitter account, or one of those banners they tow behind planes at football games to raise awareness and neither do you. Every time you tell somebody that you are busy Sunday because you are going to church, every time you object to a racist/sexist/homophobic joke, every time you stand firm for your convictions be they reusable grocery bags or animal abuse you live out the best campaign ever - a person who puts their faith and convictions into action.

As Jesus said, "Go and do likewise."

Mulitple Personalities

In January of 2011 I am teaching a class about the changing face and character of Jesus in America. The topic has been an interest of mine since that first Religion in America class some 10 years ago at Whitworth College (now University) in Spokane, Washington. I found it compelling that from the Puritans to Thomas Jefferson to the Pro & Anti-Slavery movements, and beyond to the Hippie “Jesus Movement” and now in modern times, Jesus has undergone a series of radical face-lifts and personality changes. For some he is a enlightened teacher of morals. Others see him as the sweet and loving savior who wouldn’t hurt a fly. In the time of Billy Sunday, who once called the current state of Christianity in America as “effeminate” and “sissified”, Jesus was a manly, hard-nosed, take no prisoners Son of God who told it like it was, and was a stark contrast to the Hippie Jesus who graced the cover of Time magazine in 1971. Today we have Jesus “characters” like Buddy Christ who is everybody’s friend, and the popular t-shirt slogan “Jesus is My Homeboy” that stand in stark contrast to the Jesus of the Westboro Baptist Church whose members picket the funerals of soldiers with signs proclaiming all the things Jesus hates. Using photos, music, video, scripture, a bit of theology, history, and pop culture, we will dive into the “American Jesus” and see just how the Son of God became such a iconic American figure.

History tells us that Jesus was “used” differently by different groups at different times. The Pro and Anti-Slavery movements both invoked Jesus’ name to add credence to their interpretation of scripture and the events of the day. Their visceral, opposing rhetoric made it seem that their Jesus was the just and correct Jesus and the other side’s Son of God was an imposter. Like the two football teams that pray before kick-off for victory over their opponent, Jesus gets drafted into service and wields his holy dominion for both sides. Both sides, each with competing agendas and opposing viewpoints or goals, claim Jesus. The truth is, this reality plays out on a personal level as well.

I saw a woman pray out loud at the counter of the gas station where she purchased her lottery tickets. “Jesus, make these numbers the right ones”, she prayed as the machine randomly selected her lotto numbers for the hundreds of millions of dollars up for grabs later that night. I assume she didn’t win because I didn’t see her on TV or in the papers that next day but for our woman in question Jesus had thoughts about the possibility of her being rich.

Millions of men and women prayed on the Sunday after the earthquake that rocked Haiti about a year ago. We prayed for the health and well being of those who survived and for the families of those who died in the quake. We prayed because we believe Jesus had thoughts about those who suffered in Haiti.

“Jesus, make me rich” and “Jesus, care for the poor.” Can it be both? Are we giving the Son of God a split personality?

Broken TV = Blog Post About Habits

Anybody who knows me even a little bit knows I am a fan of TV. I watch about seven programs religiously with the help of my TiVo, a computerized video recorder known as a DVR. Figure in following my favorite sports teams, watching games that are interesting, and sports related programming like SportsCenter on ESPN, and my total TV time can grow to levels not usually deemed acceptable. Adding to this grand total is the new acquisition of Netflix, an on-demand video service that allows me to watch whatever available show/movie I want whenever I want. All in all TV is a fairly consistent presence in my down time.

Now that you get the general gist of things, you can understand my despair upon discovering one November day that the TV had died. Given up the ghost and where my sitcoms and endless sports coverage once was proudly displayed was a momentary field of thin blue lines followed by nothing. No amount of smacking and pounding brought the picture back.

Being that this is a January Newsletter- the first letter of the year - you might be prone to think I am going to say something like “I decided we would go without the TV and spend more time together as a family” or perhaps “I put the broken TV in the garage and have now spent the time I used to watch TV reading.” You would have a fair amount of justification for such an assumption. January newsletters, blogs, sermons, and other transmissions are often full up with pity stories of turning a new leaf and discovering the benefits of starting afresh in the newly minted year. Advertisers bank on such a spirit blowing through the culture, and now that it is January I can bet each of us has received or heard something about the low rates at our local gym or Jenny Craig. Something in the way we do business as a society provides the first month of the year to make, to start, to promise, or to commit to do something that would seem to make life better. The term we tend to use is a “New Year’s Resolution.” I think that it is bogus.

It wasn’t 12 hours before I hauled our 2nd TV down to the basement & within minutes had everything hooked up and ready to go. Sure, I could have taken up reading in the place of TV. I could have spent my time learning the art of French Cuisine, learning how to work on my car, or brushing up on my fading Spanish language skills but I didn’t. I plugged the TV in and got back on the couch.

Going from TV to no TV would be a radical change in my life; a radical change which would almost certainly result in epic failure. The key would be a step down approach. Now that the College Football season is over, don’t watch TV on Saturdays. That is something I could live with. Incremental, baby-steps, slowing chipping away at the excuses and variables can over time lead to an ingrained habit. The same is true for someone’s spiritual life. Nobody wakes up on January 1^st and says, “I am going to be spiritual now.” Or if they do, it isn’t met with much success. Like anything else cultivating a habit takes repeated exposure over and over again. Setting aside a five minute window to be still and silent is more doable than a weekend of silent meditation, and saying a prayer while the car warms up is a lot more productive than saying you are going to read the Bible cover to cover and then not doing it.

In the end life is about creating habits. What we begin slowly now can lead to a rich life in the future. Like deciding to run a marathon, you start running a mile before you tackle all 27. If a deeper connection and relationship with God is something that you desire for your years to come then lose the New Year’s Resolution and begin small.

Another FAIL in Relgious Literacy