Dawn Xiana Moon: Melodic folk pop infused with passion and honesty. From Chicago.

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Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Jim Wallis, the Bible, and Poverty

(Note: The blog-eating monster struck again and I had to rewrite this post from the beginning. I imagine the version you're reading now will be somewhat condensed.)

A couple of months ago my dad sent me an article--"Watch For The Religious Left Sock Puppets On TV And Radio!"--from a conservative news source with his comments, claiming that "[Jim] Wallis and the Religious Left are trying to train liberals to speak like religious Americans. Sounds like wolves in sheep's clothing, in my humble opinion." I wrote him a lengthy email in response (what follows is an excerpt--and yes, I refrained from dissecting the article's ridiculous title):

I don't know a ton about Sojourners, [the group that Wallis runs, which I've since come to know more in depth] but they are highly respected for their work in social justice, specifically poverty. This is not a purely liberal value. The most prominent themes of the Old Testiment, in order, are idolatry and poverty. One of every sixteen verses in the New Testiment is about the poor. In the Gospels, the figure changes to one in every ten. God is incredibly concerned about poverty, and it's to our deteriment that the American church by and large has done little--statistically Christians contribute less to charity than non-Christians. Something is very wrong.

Of course, he emailed me back soon after, questioning the source of the statistics. When I did a little research and realized that they came from Wallis himself, I knew that for this discussion, they were inadmissible as evidence:

During his seminary days in Chicago, he and few of his classmates decided to do a study to find every biblical reference on one particular subject--the poor and oppressed. Thousands of verses later, and to their astonishment, they discovered that those who are marginalized, mistreated, abandoned and forgotten by everyone else fill the Bible.... In the Gospel of Luke, it's one of every seven [verses], and in the book of James, one of every five verses" (Jim Wallis, The Soul of Politics).

So tonight I finally finished a project I'd been meaning to start for some time: I went through James and Luke myself, highlighting every verse that referenced poverty and the marginalized. In the course of doing this, I realized that to some extent it's subjective; for example, does "But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peaceloving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere" (James 3:17) meet the criteria? How about the many verses that talk about Jesus healing the sick? Or verses that condemn hording riches on earth?

In the end, my count was similar to Wallis's: I counted one in every seven verses in the Gospel of Luke and the same for the book of James. The sheer number is astonishing; these are verses that the Religious Right would do well to remember when making the issue of gay marriage a higher priority than feeding the poor. These are verses I would do well to remember when determining how I spend my time, my money. Perhaps the challenge can be summarized in James 1:27: "Pure and lasting religion in the sight of God our Father means that we must care for orphans and widows in their troubles, and refuse to let the world corrupt us."

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Sunday, April 24, 2005

April (Snow) Showers

In Michigan, March is usually chilly, with the occasional snow; it's April that traditionally heralds spring, with daylight savings time and all the anticipation of summer that comes with more sunlight, regardless of what the calendar claims. But it's well into April now--almost May, in fact--and the weather has decided to grace us with a last (or at least we hope it's the last, one never can tell around here) hurrah: it snowed today, and will continue to snow tomorrow. Apparently drivers have already forgotten how to handle the wet fluff; on our way from Ann Arbor to Dearborn and back again, a 45-min. drive to teach swing dancing at an event, Jamie and I saw at least two major accidents.

Just a couple of days ago it was 83 degrees. I was wearing sandals. Now we may get as much as seven inches of snow tomorrow. So much for spring and warm weather. Who wants to move to California?

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Saturday, April 16, 2005

In the Tip Jar

Just a quick note about last night's show at Foggy Bottom: someone left a $100 bill in the tip jar! Alex pointed this out, and stood laughing with the cafe's staff as they watched my mouth drop (they'd discovered this before I had). "We were thinking you'd jump up and down and scream." "But I never jump up and down and scream." "You should see the look on your face." (Which would have been total shock and amazement.)

The extra funny part about this whole situation (besides that someone loves me--yay!) was that before the show I'd prayed for a couple of things, one being that I'd make at least $50 because one of my house's bills is due early this month and the money would be useful. When the turnout wasn't huge I figured it wasn't going to happen, which was a little disappointing but not terrible. But I guess God was hanging out at the concert too. :-)

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Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Fluting and Rambling

After neglecting my flute for months--I don't think I've played since December--I surprised my roommates tonight by practicing for an hour. ("I didn't know you played the flute!" remarked Sasha. Sigh. And once upon a time I planned to make a career out of classical music.) Or perhaps more accurately, I tried their patience by practicing for an hour--there was a time when I could feel a difference in my playing when I didn't practice for a day, but these days my embouchure is shot and I crack notes all over the place. But I was gratified that most of the sounds coming from my instrument were decent, and by the end of an hour the notes were smoother, even if my lips were rather tired. And I realized that I miss playing. There's something different about playing a wind instrument as opposed to a piano or guitar, something about how you breathe, how the metal resonates. (If you ever get a chance, talk to a double bassist about that--their instruments resonate throughout their entire bodies.)

It's interesting to think about how one person can form disparate connections with various musical instruments, even playing them for years. The flute was always my technical instrument, the one in which long strings of fast notes required relatively little effort, as opposed to the piano, which has always been my emotional one (most pianists are highly technical creatures, studying theory from the beginning--but technique was always my bane). I've heard of renowned musicians bored with their first instrument, what ever it was that their parents encouraged them to try at an early age, and suddenly blossoming on another, the one that made them famous.

Alright, it's late and I'm done rambling for today. Check out the new photos and let me know what you think.

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Monday, April 11, 2005

Three

It's not that I haven’t had anything to blog about. In the time since my last post, I planned a campus-wide event at the University of Michigan; sang and fronted a band without playing an instrument myself for the first time--for some reason, I have a tendency to hide behind my instruments in certain contexts, but not having to play one was suddenly freeing (I had a wireless mic, which was also fun); broke my cell phone on accident--dropped it too many times--turning the silver flip phone into the two-piece mess of circuitry that is currently sitting on my desk; reverted to my old, already-being-held-together-by-duct-tape phone from three years ago; bought a replacement from Ebay that I'm quite excited about; heard difficult news on at least two fronts; wrestled with God; convinced Dan Vaillancourt and Katie Arnold to play a concert at my church (if you're in Ann Arbor, University Reformed Church on Tuesday, April 19th at 8pm, it's free and he's probably the best guitarist I know); finished teaching my first set of swing dancing lessons with Jamie; competed in a goofy lindy hop competition, the fifth Battle of the Swing Cities, to Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong's "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off"; sang a lot of musical theatre; saw two bands, one modern dance performance, and an art show; discovered Christian Matjias, a U-M professor who writes incredible piano compositions; wasted hours on the computer; and bemoaned the fact that I'm not a modern dancer (I've wanted to learn for years, but thus far it's still on the to-do list, kind of like my ever-growing reading list, an Excel spreadsheet with over 150 entries--and I was a lit. major). So there you go, three weeks neatly encapsulated into one (very) long sentence.

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