Saturday Morning Brunch

It's not morning anymore, I know.  But I couldn't get to it this morning, I had other things to do.  Like play Irish folk music at a pub (not kidding).

So unsurprisingly late, here is a summary of some blogs and articles I have read this week that I find interesting:

First, from Rachel Held Evans, is a pair of posts that I personally resonated with quite a bit about her "journey" in search of a spiritual home.  As someone who is not quite sure what "category" I fit in either, I had quite a bit of empathy for how she feels here and here.  I also found reading this from someone else (and not merely thinking it in my own head) comforting in many ways.

Second, from the New Ways Forward blog, is another pair of posts, the first about the necessity of having a safe place for "doubt," and the second about the danger of seeing doubt as a virtue.  Together I think they make an interesting pair.  I'm not quite sure where the balance of the two leaves us, though I think good points are made in both posts.  Would be very interested to hear what some others think about this issue.

Next, David Fitch wrote a very interesting post about a phenomenon that I have seen a good bit of in my experience with Southern evangelical churches, which is the church-plant-turns-into-"mega-church"-with- a-personality-cult-surrounding-its-leader phenomenon.  I find it very difficult to talk to people who have been swept up in this phenomenon because of the "personality cult" aspect of it and I think Fitch does a better job explaining why this is dangerous than I have ever personally done, so I will in all likelihood defer to him from now on whenever this issue arises.

From the Her-meneutics blog comes an interesting reflection on the difference between "love" and "attachment" which I found helpful and suspect others might too.

A few articles that caught my attention this week:

An opinion piece on Republican political tactics (especially tea-party tactics) that appeared in the New York Times.  Its very long and obviously very one sided, but there are some very interesting and insightful points in there which are worth considering.

An interesting set of maps showing the "global impact" of 9/11 put up on the BBC's website.  Particularly I was struck by the Guantanamo Bay map, which shows the countries around the world whose citizens the United States has imprisoned since 9/11.  This strikes me as a stunning case of "American Exceptionalism."  What is also interesting is to notice which countries have not had their citizens imprisoned- you can see some clear indications, I think, of what parts of the world are outside of what America considers its strategic sphere of influence, and notice that most of those countries are economically "under-developed."

On a lighter note, there is this article from the Onion about a new GOP strategy in next year's election.

And my favorite news article of the week is this one about a drunk Elk in Sweden.