what do john the baptist and jabba the hutt have in common?

Star Wars Shortened...

posted by Christina @ 7:24 AM 1 comments

Hooray for Free Museum Day!

The Second Annual "Museums Free-For-All"

Free Admission Day: October 1, 2006

Twenty museums - presenting art, cultural heritage, natural history, and science - will open their doors wide and invite visitors free of charge* for the second annual 'Museums Free-For-All'.

Participating Museums:
• Armory Center for the Arts
• Autry National Center's Museum of the American West
• California Heritage Museum
• California Science Center
• Craft and Folk Art Museum
• Fowler Museum at UCLA
• The Getty Center
• Hammer Museum
• Japanese American National Museum
• Laguna Art Museum
• Long Beach Museum of Art
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
• The Museum of Television & Radio
• The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA)
• Museum of Tolerance
• Norton Simon Museum
• Orange County Center for Contemporary Art
• Pacific Asia Museum
• Skirball Cultural Center
• Southwest Museum of the American Indian.

"Museums present different ways of looking at the world." commented a Museum spokesperson, "On October 1st we're saying: come explore, see all we have to offer - for free."

*Regular parking fees apply. General admission only. Does not apply to ticketed exhibitions.

posted by Christina @ 7:08 AM 0 comments

Instrumental Minatures

Presenting a two-hour streaming collection of jazzy, twinkly and theatrical instrumentals brought to you by RADIO DAVID BYRNE, with artists like Jon Brion, Brian Eno, Cafe Tacuba and Philip Glass, and featuring songs from some of our favorite movies, including Mon Oncle and La Strada. ENJOY!

posted by Christina @ 8:03 AM 0 comments

The Hunger for Relationship - Jason Wilson

Jason provided me with his notes from Sunday, for your reflection:

“The Hunger for Relationships”
Within the series “Communicating the Gospel”
For The Gathering at Grace Long Beach
By Jason Wilson


Connecting story on beauty: “Come Celebrate Jesus” (Klamath Falls, Oregon) vs. St. Peter’s Cathedral (New York, New York)


SESSION I
I. Simply Christian (N.T. Wright)
a. “echoes of a voice” SC p. x (top)
i. God-shaped instincts that, if followed to their ends as a whole, will either lead us into perplexity or into the heart
of God himself
1. the longing for justice (Eric Balmer)
2. the quest for spirituality (TBA)
3. the hunger for relationships (Jason Wilson)
4. the delight in beauty (John Anderson)

II. What are relationships?
a. “Under the Bridge” (The Red Hot Chili Peppers)
b. SC p. 31 (top)
c. Do you hear the “hunger for relationships” echo? In what ways?
d. What kind of relationships do we long for?
e. What do we want out of each type?
f. What are relationships for?
g. SC p. 33 (middle)

III. Relationship gone wrong (cut off from God)
a. original sin and the four separations
i. ourselves
ii. others
iii. God
iv. nature
b. co-dependence
c. unfulfillment (not filling the God-shaped hole)
d. abuse
e. divorce
f. gossip
g. Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee)

IV. Relationships under the rule of Christ
a. How are relationships an echo of Christ?
b. How does the gospel address this echo?
i. the pluralism of one God
1. Genesis 1:26: Let us make man in our image
2. Throughout the gospels: “I do as my father instructs”, “Father, why have you forsaken me?”,
“ Take this cup from me,” etc.
3. Acts 1:8: I am sending you the Holy Spirit
ii. Genesis 2:18: It was not right for man to be alone
iii. OT: The twelve tribes of Israel
iv. the gospels: the twelve disciples
v. the letters of the NT: The churches of the New Testament
vi. Revelation 21:10-11: the New Jerusalem as the new city
c. The future kingdom can break in now (if we want it to).
d. Kingdom-purposed relationships lead to diversity and largeness whereas natural ones lead to sameness and smallness
e. SC p. 200 (all)
f. SC p. 201 (top)
g. SC p. 210 (top)
h. SC p. 211 (bottom)

posted by Christina @ 6:56 AM 0 comments

Upcoming: Fielding and the Cold War Kids

posted by Christina @ 9:29 AM 0 comments

Salon Takes On Mars Hill

Come as you are

At Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Snoop Dogg figures in sermons, housewives cradle babies in tattooed arms -- and religious fundamentalism rules. Meet the Disciple Generation, the fierce new face of American evangelism.

By Lauren Sandler

Sept. 13, 2006 | SEATTLE -- It's Father's Day and Mark Driscoll is blessing babies. A stocky, square-headed figure in a black shirt and jeans, with a leather cord around his thick neck, Driscoll stands against a backdrop of a giant brushed steel cross and a phalanx of electric guitars, praying over the "lovely wives and godly husbands" lined up on the stage of Mars Hill Church. Located in a former warehouse in Seattle's hip Ballard neighborhood, where drive-through espresso joints out-number churches ten to one, Driscoll's megachurch is a sprawling industrial space of corrugated steel, painted charcoal and muted taupe. Inside, the walls are hung with a member's graffiti art, lit by Starbucks-style colored glass fixtures blown by a congregant...

Anyone want to take a crack at this? -- Christina

posted by Christina @ 6:59 AM 1 comments

On Echoes of Beauty - Jon Anderson

A big thank you to Jon Anderson for his four-week series on Echoes of Beauty, as a part of the ongoing discussion in the Gathering.

Here are some notes and reflections on Jon's series:

In seeking out aspects of life like friendship, money, respect, power, relationships, health, recognition, safety/security, justice, prosperity, acceptance, beauty, love, intimacy, meaning/purpose - these can both point us toward and prevent us from reaching that "Shalom" -the fulfillment of the kingdom of God.

Jon defines Beauty as 'that which produces pleasure in order and harmony' and identifies a framework for "engaging" Beauty in these ways:

1.) How do we "see" - and what do we pay attention to?
2.) What do we "do" - in outward orientation?
3.) What do we "make" -action/activity?
4.) What do we "think" - in contemplation of?

We interpret Beauty through a harmonic order - i.e. the Golden Section and through these frameworks of logic:

1. Logic of Affection -
How does Beauty affect/influence our hearts ? There is no neutrality, for there are always values, ideologies wrapped up in our ideas of Beauty. Where Beauty deeply changes us, it changes the framework of our response.
2. Logic of Interpretive Community -
Beauty involves relationship to Intelligence - Jacques Maritain. What (in)forms the framework? The Life of the Church is formed to be an interpretive community, which can be seen in ways both good and bad.
3. Logic of Incarnation -
Through Christ and the Church, Beauty contains our Theology in story, narrative, images, flesh, relationship.
4. Logic of Liturgy -
We always participate in a kind of liturgy via work, interaction, day-to-day life - what values shape this liturgy, as the divine and mundane are always interconnected, intersecting? In the affirmation of physical space/presence, we live out the liturgy of Beauty.

Beauty, via the sacred and mundane, finds its completeness in Shalom. In the process of practicing Benevolence, the fulfillment is to seek redemption in order and harmony, within the heart of each person, while always holding in tension the disjointed and broken, alongside the good and beautiful. All we see must shape our understanding of the world - the goodness revealed within the Original Creation.

We were always made to pursue the pleasure of the Shalom of God, in identifying and incarnating what is important to God - therefore embodied belief must include a Theology of the Beautiful.

Our work and our call then is to recognize/realign the shape and practice of Beauty, to point back to Shalom.

How can we as individuals and collectively, within the Gathering, recognize this call in our day-to-day experiences, within our community, and throughout the world?

We would love to continue this discussion on Beauty, and invite you to post your questions or comments here.

posted by Christina @ 5:08 PM 0 comments