Part of being a disciple of Christ is learning to live in God’s governance; his new economy. In America, we tend to see capitalism as the foundation for our society - production and consumption are the backbone to its market economy. Capitalism tends to put competition at the top of a short list of values for its citizens. We see the vicious, unjust effects of this all the time - the rich are taxed much less than the poor, unemployment, concentration of political and economic exploitation, and environmental rape.

Maybe its time in God’s Kingdom to function more organically in a new economy.

I just found out about time banks! They are really sweet way to use the currency of time to provide services to a local community.

The concept is simple. For every hour you give in service to another Time Bank member, you earn one Time Dollar. You can now use this Time Dollar to spend on a service someone else offers in the time bank community.

Time Dollars are a community currency that members earn by using their time, energy, skills, and talents to help others. Time Banking is about local individuals, organizations or business’s helping each other in one-to-one exchanges or in group projects. Members help rebuild neighborhood networks and strengthen communities. There are lots of time bank communities that set up shop on the internet as a way to search available services and meet their neighbors.

What an amazing way to (1) save money (2) participate in a local, neighbor centered economy and (3) experience the redistribution of wealth and resources. Imagine seeing a white collared businessman doing taxes for a Mexican immigrant family who earned their Time Dollar repainting their black neighbor’s house, who got his Time Dollars by going grocery shopping for the elderly woman across the street. Imagine the crime rate going down as neighbors get to know each other and watch out for each other. Imagine an investment into your own local economy!

“Give and you shall receive” - God’s economy doesn’t include dolla billz, he was talking about relationships!

Maine Time Banks - a time bank up in Portland, Maine

Start Your Own! - no matter how big or how small, why not begin one in your neighborhood?

Living In Story- Reciprocal Missionality in the Image of God - Ron Pate’s participatory seminar that clued me in to time banks. He is a part of SCUPE (Seminary Consortium of Urban Pastoral Education) in Chicago. SCUPE helps communities in Chicago start timebanks (they call it Abundance in the Beloved Community, or ABC’s).

I’ll get back to talking about brain dumping again soon. I promise.
In the meantime, I want to share with you a little Christmas cheer. The other day I had my good friend Jennifer over. She was telling me about how she is planning on heading to meet with family for Christmas. Apparently, her parents rank at the top of the stack for dreamers at Christmas time. They want it all - -and they send her an itemized list prior to the holidays, so she can prepare… and save up her money.

Well, this year, she decided to buy them a llama. “A LLAMA?!?” You heard me right: a llama. I could hardly contain myself. Her logic went something like this, “Well, Katrina… It generously helps a family in the south, and it cost about the same amount of money I would have spent on them, and if they complain about it, they’ll have to live with themselves… it’s great.”

Needless to say, I could barely stop laughing out loud. At first, I thought she had physically bought them a pet. Then she mentioned Heifer International. She proceeded to describe a little toy llama she had bought for her family as well. “I’ll put in a box with a card, so they’ll have something tactile.” Brilliant. And the heifer website gives you a printout of the gift you’ve purchased, too. It’s great.

I knew about Heifer before this, but I never connected it with Christmas time. It’s great if you’re doing some last minute shopping. You don’t have to walk into any stores— you just print the card and hand it over. And it’s a great conversation piece. Merry Christmas!

So much is happening.  It looks like today’s post might be one of those eclectic, A.D.D. posts.

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Last weekend Katrina and I drove all the way up to middle Tennessee for a family reunion retreat in the middle of Natchez Trace State Park.  It was an amazing journey up (including submitting a paper for a class by email while sitting in a Super 8 Motel parking lot!), and Katrina and I had a lot of time to talk a bunch of big things through.  The weekend itself was very nostalgic/avant-garde.  My family is a mixture of ultra-conservative non-institutional Church of Christ folks, and a branch of extreme-prophetic non-denominational neo-charismatics.  And then there’s Katrina and I who “don’t go to church anywhere”.  So its always interesting when we bust out the song books and break out in worship.  Good ole’ unity in Christ.  I guess Paul said we were “one” in Christ, not one in church.  Surprisingly, we had a lot of people get really excited about our mission work, and committed to praying for us.  Awesome!

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This Saturday is Wikicclesia, a chance for people who are living on the edges of God’s Kingdom and/or leading communities of God to come together and share what they’ve learned so far.  That’s why we’re calling it “Wikicclesia” - “cclesia” since that is the Greek word for gathering or church, and “wiki” because its set up not as a lecture-conference, but with lots of round tables, markers, and huge sheets of paper for brainstorming.  Everyone is encouraged to share what they’ve learned, which informs how the day goes - think of the day as an article on Wikipedia - the whole thing takes shape under the leadership of many, and truthfully, under the leadership of the Spirit.  Cool!  If you’re in the area and would like to attend, follow the link above and contact those at that email address.  Or just leave me a comment.

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We’re reading some great books, thanks to a little book on speed reading.  Here’s a few on our list right now:  Deep Economy: the wealth of economies and the durable future,  Global Chicago, Wikinomics: how mass collaboration changes everything, and The Jesus Way: a conversation on the ways that Jesus is the Way.   Speed reading has been such a “freeing” tool for me and her lately; we have so much we want to learn (and remember) and speed reading helps us through the stack of library books before they’re all due.  And the TV can just stay off for all I’m concerned.

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Yesterday I went out with Kent and Miller to the 411 Project.  Miller and others have been working hard!  Much of the land has been cleared, simple shelters and structures have been erected, goats have a real pen, chickens have their roost…and the well is being dug.  Miller plans to use the dirt dug out for the well to make compressed earth blocks for his family’s house.  It was great fun learning and working with him on the making a few of these powerful bricks.  I’ve not written on this before, but Katrina and I are keenly interested in this type of building as a sustainable and durable alternative (not to mention affordable!) to traditional stick-and-insulation homes for our own living situation.  While the project is just getting started, I can say already that the 411 project has brought beauty out of a forgotten land, and is restoring it to a state that brings glory to God.

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I suppose that’s what I’ve got time to toss up here for now.  I keep waiting for the summer to slow down so I can get in a more blogarific mood, but I’m still waiting I guess.  Time to catch up on reading your blog!

Last night was an amazing time of intergenerational “discernment of the Body”.

One of our great friends here in town, Karen, had invited us to meet with her church family because Father had moved her to pray for the people in the state of Texas. Trina and I are always looking for excuses to hang out with Karen and her husband Kent (my prof and mentor), so we asked our church to come along with us.

The conversation was incredible. Meeting with several older couples was very enriching to our group. After some time of solid prayer and singing (how long has it been since our church has done any a cappella singing?) Kent mentioned that it might be a good time to hear what we have been hearing from the Spirit in our own lives…then he corrected himself and said we really need to share what we’d heard from him, since it edifies the whole Body…then pausing, he said, “so you’d jolly-well BETTER NOT hold back!” with a smile on his face. That really got the conversation rolling.

While we came to focus on the state of Texas, we found ourselves moving toward issues of climate change and how industrialized nations are “raping the earth” in their quest for economic prosperity and political supremacy. The utilization of fossil fuels has allowed nations like the United States to live on the “high hog”, careening through a lifestyle that capitalizes on resources that have been building on this planet for millions of years, and tearing through the majority of them in just the last 100. One man said that as he was flying home from Europe two weeks ago, he looked down on Greenland, once a huge sheet of solid ice, now has massive blue lakes all over its surface. This fresh water is boring down through fissures in the ice and becoming a lubricant for the ice on top to slide into the warm ocean. He went on to say that for the first time in recorded history, Antarctica’s peninsula failed to connect to the larger ice formation last year, meaning we have reached a threshold that is now impossible to recross.

The times they are a changin’.

As we talked about our earth, and the greedy lifestyle of so many industrialized nations, I just kept getting a picture of the Prodigal Son. For years he has lived “high hog”, blowing his inheritance on reckless living, and now he (we) are just beginning to wake up, staring down at the bottom of an empty trough, wondering how we got here.

“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it,” the LORD said to a riotous Israel. I believe we as a nation are hearing these words afresh.

I guess you could say I feel sort of jipped. I mean, what do I say to generations who went before us, who put personal wealth before their call to nurture the earth? My theology of creation has shifted.  No longer will I simply “have dominion” over the earth.  Being a follower of Christ for me now is inextricably linked with a nurturing relationship to the Earth.  With everything that I have in me, I want to pray for and protect “sister earth”.

A prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:

The Canticle of the Creatures

Most High, all-powerful, all-good Lord,

All praise is Yours, all glory, honor and blessings.

To you alone, Most High, do they belong;

no mortal lips are worthy to pronounce Your Name.

We praise You, Lord, for all Your creatures,

especially for Brother Sun,

who is the day through whom You give us light.

And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor,

of You Most High, he bears your likeness.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Moon and the stars,

in the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.

We praise You, Lord, for Brothers Wind and Air,

fair and stormy, all weather’s moods,

by which You cherish all that You have made.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Water,

so useful, humble, precious and pure.

We praise You, Lord, for Brother Fire,

through whom You light the night.

He is beautiful, playful, robust, and strong.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Earth,

who sustains us

with her fruits, colored flowers, and herbs.

We praise You, Lord, for those who pardon,

for love of You bear sickness and trial.

Blessed are those who endure in peace,

by You Most High, they will be crowned.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Death,

from whom no-one living can escape.

Woe to those who die in their sins!

Blessed are those that She finds doing Your Will.

No second death can do them harm.

We praise and bless You, Lord, and give You thanks,

and serve You in all humility.

The Future of Food is the name of our most recently watched documentary that has us leaning even further toward neo-hippyism (I just love making up words).

Apparently for the last 30 years, a multi-billion dollar company named Monsanto has been genetically modifying crops, developing a insecticide-resistant plant that is genetically part corn, part pig-virus. (Sounds delicious, eh?) This is good in the sense that it has allowed many people groups from worrying about plagues of locusts or other pests destroying whole crops - and has supposedly brought some out of poverty situations.

But it has also come with a price. Just like any multi-billion dollar company, they are out for a buck, anyway they can find it. These new crops are called genetically modified organisms (GMO’s) and are patented (humans are patenting life now?) by Monstanto and local farmers (in America and abroad) are forced to pay for a liscense to grow their product.

This is problematic, because Monsanto sends out inspectors into fields all over the world, checking for their patented crop. If they find any (even if the farmer is unaware that some Monsanto-seed has blown onto their field) the farmers are penalized with outrageous fees and usually puts the farmers out of business or in debt to Monsanto forever. In truth, no one is getting out of poverty; they are simply getting into debt with Monsanto. Think of this as your typical comic-book global domination strategy.

Not only this, but insects and crops are growing resistant to the insecticides sprayed on these crops, so farmers are now having to use chemicals which are very similar to Agent Orange (insert YIKES! here) just to keep the bugs and weeds away, making the food we eat very dangerous.

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All of this makes me think - there’s got to be something spiritual going on here. We may be avoiding famines, but are we really eating food? Allergies, infant deaths, obesity, emotional disorders, and crime are on the rise. Pick out which of these you think might just be related to GMO’s. I’d be inclined to say that they are at least indirectly related to ALL and more.

What sort of company patents life? Right now they have patents on corn and have homogenized the species. 150 years ago, America grew over 200 types of corn, now we have 4, and most are GMO. Where will patenting stop? The US constitution originally stated that no one could patent a living organism, on moral grounds. Now Monsanto is pushing to patent most everything you can buy in the produce section; can human life be far behind?

Call me crazy, but I believe in good fresh soil growing good fresh produce. It seems that we have tried to industrialize the earth, and it is refusing to cooperate. Carson’s Silent Spring still speaks to us, and Jesus’ words about the sower, his seed and the soil speaks too.