Corn and Wheat are up 70%
Rice is up 141%

100 million people entering poverty as a result. Many are starving.

Primary cause: US subsidies for Ethanol.

Lesson of the day: Central planning of economies often leads to many unintended consequences – some of which are devastating to those outside our borders.

For those of you who care…Number 5 is a BOY!!! Slowly but surely we (the men) will tip the gender scales in our favor!!!

I am a former fundamentalist, evangelical Protestant turned peace & social justice-oriented Catholic contemplative who has a great admiration for earth-based spirituality, which is shown us by many indeginous cultures (who have as much, if not more, to offer us as we may have to offer them). Heroic and inspiring ideologies include the centering prayer movement, the Catholic Worker tradition, the Taizé community, liberation theology, creation spirituality, Wisdom Christianity, and deep ecology.

This is how I describe my current belief system. It’s in ways eclectic, but I see it as holistic. How about ya’ll? How would you describe your own spiritual thought process in its current state, if you don’t mind revealing such personal matters?

The Greenback Effect – By Bill McKibben

“Markets solve all problems;
Markets are not solving global warming;
QED, global warming is not a problem.”

I’m drunk. Let’s say tipsy. Spent the majority of the day drinking Busch beer at Michael Tonarely’s house. In a can. Followed by Old Crow whiskey. Barbeque. Pulled pork. Stole the smoker out of my neighbor’s yard. No one’s lived there in over two years. Rusting. Weeds growing over it. Took it.

It’s either not wrong, or my conscience is too hardened. Which is it? If it was a neglected dog, not being fed, I would be considered a hero. But it’s a rusted smoker; does that make me a thief?

I don’t even care. I’m sunburned.

The pork was good. Best I’ve had in a while. Cinnamon is an ingenious ingredient. And that’s saying a lot, since we all went to Rock ‘n’ Ribs yesterday at Bass Pro. My parents came, with my dad tolerating the pictures folks took of him, mullet and all. Joe Dirt.

Drinking water out of a Nalgene. Sober up, boy: Sober up! Coffee out of a thermos — stayed warm since this morning, when Michael, Taylor, and I went to the shooting range to sight in our shotguns for the upcoming turkey season. Skipped church. The subsequent time spent eating, drinking, smoking pipes, and tolerating Sarah’s menthol cigarettes.

I set up a tent in my living room a few nights ago. Been watching movies in there the last couple nights. Tonight I plan on watching Open Range. I love westerns. I’m a cowboy. No, I’m not. I wish. The cowboy myth. I’m an American.

I’m  a cowboy.  

Have any of you heard of muxtape.com? It’s a pretty neat site where you can upload up to 12 songs at a time to make a mixtape that others can listen to and it’s free to set up. I think it would be a great way for us to share music ideas with each other. I found out about this site from my friend Casey. She’s definitely high up there in my friends as having some of the best taste in music, so if you want to listen to her muxtape it’s caserray.muxtape.com.

I set up one but haven’t had a free moment upload anything. Once I get some songs uploaded however I’ll add the url for it in the comments.

Looking for some advice from my green-minded friends.  I am considering joining this community (Yes, I need to research more, make sure they’re not a CULT cult.)

Twinoaks.org

If anyone wants to take a look and give me some thoughts and feedback.  I really like the way the community is structured, as far as I’ve read, and many of the beliefs resonate with me, especially the egalitarian stuff.  The one thing that confuses me is the idea that everyone will live in peace in any way that they wish, and that somehow this works.  I don’t know how that would ever work.

Henry didn’t want to take a nap yesterday afternoon so I strapped him into the car seat and we went for a drive around town. I decided to visit some rough parts of town that I’d heard about recently. These areas were once wealthy neighborhoods with elaborate architecture and beautiful parks that have since seen years of disinvestment, poverty, and crime. One can’t help but imagine what some of these places were like earlier in their history and it’s exciting to imagine what they may one day be like again soon.

As I drove, many of the conversations I’ve had here and elsewhere came crushing back on me like a wave. I wondered at the cause so much destruction. I blamed school district lines, zoning regulation, property taxes, the war on drugs, poverty, highway subsidies, and racism. So many poor decisions by people trying to make the world a better place.

Amos 5:11
You trample on the poor and force him to give you grain. Therefore, though you have built stone mansions, you will not live in them; though you have planted lush vineyards, you will not drink their wine.

One house in particular struck me, a Victorian brick mansion in the historic northeast Kansas City with turrets, elaborate woodwork, and fantastical details. Like something out of Alice and Wonderland. Yet many of the windows were broken out with only plastic and plywood to keep out the weather. Inside I could see a light on. Here was a beautiful home built by a rich man a century ago now being inhabited by a poor man. As I wondered about the source of the wealth that created the house I was reminded of all the ways in which injustice may have financed it. And now in an odd twist of fate, the poor inhabit the stone mansions of the rich. Has justice come full circle?

On the opposite side of town I found an old neighborhood with a Eastern orthodox church at it’s center on top of hill. The view over the river toward downtown Kansas City was breathtaking. But the church was boarded up and the houses in near ruins. So much beauty on the verge of disappearing. Will anyone else find this place? Will someone save it?

“And in my best behavior/I am really just like him/Look beneath the floor boards/For the secrets I have hid” – from “John Wayne Gracy, Jr.” by Sufjan Stevens

Cities bring you face to face with the worst of humanity juxtaposed against the very best things humans have created. They paint a picture using people, buildings, streets and trees of our own selves. We are all so very beautiful. We are all thinking, moving, laughing, crying, loving and creating beings. But we have all learned to hate. We have taught ourselves the art of ugliness. This individual reality seems to also be reality of our cities.

Revelation 21:1-3
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth…I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God…And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.”

We have been promised that all things will be made new. Not that there will be no more earth or no more physical bodies, but that the existing reality will be renewed, made right. Just as our humanity will not fade away into eternity, our cities likewise will be saved. All things screwed up within ourselves and within our cities will pass away, but our very selves and the good works of our hands will be made new and made right. At least that thought is comforting. It’s hard to imagine cities full of life. Cities lacking slums and crime. Cities where the children play in the streets. But this is an end towards which we can all work.

Henry with his new friend, Marlow, eating an organic cheeto.

My neighborhood Chipotle. The only decent fast food chain in the world. Now with hormone free meat.

My coworker and I at a local Piano Bar.

Fresh homemade sourdough bread. Thank you Branden for the starter and the local bakery he stole the yeast from (using a coffeemug full of water and flour while he studied at a table!)

Henry with the neighbors on their family’s fourwheeler. This was at Marlow’s birthday party last weekend.

• Still applying to different radio shows, I’m kind of waiting for the big NO from This American Life before I turn elsewhere.
• My film that I wrote, directed, shot, and edited got nominated for best experimental film in our school’s festival.  As they say on the Office; “it is literally the highest honor a salesman in a mid-sized paper manufacturer in the northeast can achieve.” 
• I’m thinking about moving to Iceland, in September?  Really.
• I only need to pass two classes to graduate (much to my shock, I’m managing to graduate Magna, which is like a 3.9 gpa?) but they’re Theoretical math, and advanced Spanish grammar.  Yeahhh, right, we’ll see how that turns out.
• I’ve been working on my screenprinting, hours and hours a day. I’ll let you know when some of it’s on sale, or just up in general.  There’s nothing so relaxing as burning screens, mixing your inks into glorious blues and greens, carefully cutting papers to the right size, down from 24 X 18, setting the screen and pulling print after print, long into the night, MFDOOM blasting on the surround sound.
• Been building the old record collection, grabbed The Church’s Starfish, which is good, some Joanna Newsom, some Panda Bear, oh glory.
• Loving Los Angeles more every day.  I will miss the city when I go, there’s nothing like Hollywood.   There’s so much light pollution where I live, the birds sing all night, because they think it’s dawn continually.
• I’ve been totally into Karaoke, I go every Friday.  The other night night I sang Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” and Loretta Lynn’s “One’s on the Way”, at this dive bar in the city.
• I saw a train that had just hit a car, yesterday.  The car was completely crushed.

I have a new radio show posted on my, take a listen if you care to.  You can even skip the interviews if you don’t like them.  Here, you can even right click here and save it to your computer.  It’s a mixture of awesome music and discussion.  I’m pretty happy with the most recent episode.  They got weird for a bit there, but they’re back to normal.

This picture made me laugh and I thought I would share it.  Inside the bus is the olympic torch and some chinese delegates.  They were forced into the bus due to protesters.  But don’t worry, they are well guarded by the police on …rollerblades?  

Well, friends, summertime is coming, and the long hair had to go. Remembering the humidity-tortured effects of my sweaty, greasy mop when placed through a season when the sun is closest to our planet, I chose the easy way out. A yearly ritual. A sacramental act of seasonal recognition. A submission to a part of Nature greater than I.  

Winter will come again.

Many things been going on, I suppose. My son Jack, for instance. He’s had some minor health issues: pretty bad acid reflux, projectile spitup, given medicine for it, severe cradle cap, excema all over his body, went to the doctor, told us to use dandruff shampoo, hair fell out, tried lotions and oils, nothing, thought it was food allergies, mother on elimination diet, rash all better, rash back and meaning business, saw a naturopath who gave us some herbs that made his skin almost melt off, still on diet, mother starving, craving Oreos, another doctor, told us it was cradle cap again, told us to give him steroids and take him off his reflux meds, baby no body builder but rash going away.

I still like him quite a bit, though. He and I have fun when we’re together. We play guitar and sing songs when I get home, and sometimes I lull him to sleep with my harmonica. (Although when my dad saw that picture, he said, “Ah, how cute. He’s watching daddy eat a piece of toast.”) But I’m tellin’ ya, Jack’s a folksinger in the making.

So I guess Amanda, Jack, and I have just been doing normal family stuff. We go on walks every night after dinner. Here we are together at her parents’ house in Ohio. See that picture on the mantel? We turned it over like three years ago, and they’ve never noticed. We giggle to ourselves every time we visit.                                 

Both Amanda and I have learned a lot through this having-a-baby business. Like, for one, spitup stains cowboy boots. And, second, babies like sucking on their mom’s boobs better than reading Edward Abbey (whose Desert Solitaire I highly recommend, by the way!) with their dad. But at the end of the day, I know the time will come when he’ll like both books and boobs. And in this I find comfort.

Life in KC has been pretty decent so far and it’s getting better every other day or so. But what we lack is a good church. No matter how we swing it compromise is in order. Here’s a quick list of what we’re hoping for…somewhere:

Urban
Wise Old People That Love Kids
Artsy
Holistic Teaching
Thoughtful
Liturgical Sensibilities
Reformed(ish)
Children Welcomed in Church
Beautiful
Weekly Communion

Ideally we are hoping to find a church where the good news of redemption is 1) preached with an understanding that it is for the whole of man – his body, spirit, and all that he does in this world and the next, 2) breathed into the community through local action, art, and love, and 3) lived out within the church community with support from regular communion celebration, common prayer, and singing. Yes, that’s a lot to ask for a church and really I’d be happy if we found a church that at least gave lip-service to these things.

It’s funny how many of us in the Church have made such a big deal about all our pet issues. It’s been especially noticeable to me now that I’m out on the prowl. Some groups think that the 5-points of Calvinism make up the bare requirements for a “good church”. Others hold to some nebulous “Spirit Filled” criteria as a basic requirement. Some publish books with lists of what’s wrong with every other Christian group out there – they alone, of course, have it right.

Oh well, I guess I’m just like them with my slightly more hip list and fanciful ideal. I wish this church search stuff didn’t have to be so damn hard. Why do we need so many options anyway? I think we’d all be better off if there was only one church in town and we had to deal with it. Forced unity. Sure would make moving to a new place easier. May also force some of us (me) to see how petty many of our differences are.