She was asking if anyone knew of a place that purchased DVDs. The DVDs she was holding were worthless (titles from a $2 bin at Walmart). A sadness and desperation in her eyes made me probe into her situation. A woman had given her work today doing some cleaning. However, when she was done, she was given DVDs as payment instead of cash. Her boss apologized saying she thought she had cash to pay her, but she didn’t, so she’d have to take the movies instead.

The name alone is worth the price of admission.

The internships are open to Orthodox Christians (male or female) over the age of 18. The internships are for one calendar year commencing September 2008. Interns will be expected to commit themselves to full participation in each and all of 4 aspects of the Lived Theology School as given below. The practical work (diakonia) of the interns will be carried out at the St John the Compassionate Mission in Toronto. The liturgical life of the intern will be at both the Mission and the St Silouan of Athos Mission parish attached to the Mission. The study programs will be conducted at the Mission and elsewhere. The interns will live in their own community house.

A click-though brings us to some of the most wonderful pictures of Orthopraxis I’ve seen in a while. The letter of invitation from the School is… wow.

Granting, for a moment, the claim that doctrine is important, one must admit that Jesus spent a lot of time talking about what we would call “social justice” issues and – again, granting the argument – if nothing else, doctrine was as important as justice.

Every once in a while I hear of something – Fr J wanted to give hospitality at the front door of our rented space, or a parish might work with a food programme. But not as much as I hear of it in the rest of the church (I doubt there is a Roman or Anglican parish that doesn’t have some kind of outreach programme). Yes, I speak mostly of convert parishes rather than cradle ones, although I get the perhaps mistaken sense sense from the net that many charitable groups in ethnic parishes tend to be charitable only to one ethnicity (ie, “us”) but this isn’t true in all cases, maybe.

But news of this… heck, if they’d let Anglicans in, I’d think about it.

So far today, I have received 39 pieces of personal hate mail of varying degrees of literacy, all because I was rude to a cracker. Four of them have included death threats, a personal one day record. Thirty-four of them have demanded that I be fired. Twenty-five of them have told me to desecrate a copy of the Koran, instead, or in some similar way offend Muslims, because — in a multiplicity of ironic cluelessness — apparently only some religious icons must be protected, and I would only offend Catholics because they are all so nice that none of them would wish me harm. I even have one email that says I should be fired, that the author would like to kill me, and that I only criticize because Catholics are so gentle and kind.

OK, Bill, thanks for making the rest of us look like Jackasses. Dear world: trust me – the rest of us are not always that stupid or superstitious. But maybe. Jesus – who forgave people for diving a nail into his hands and feet can, I think… protect a cracker if he wants. Although I see no reason to imagine he does. He fed Judas. He feeds me. Hell, I think he can deal.

Then there was this story in the New York Times that made me weep for joy – a real Catholic church caring for the weakest in the community, those who are here because of the economic slavery our nation has produced in their home.

A few volunteers from the old Postville, descendants of the Irish and Norwegian immigrants who settled here more than a century ago, set out food. Others took turns standing watch at the church door, as if the sight of an Anglo might somehow dissuade the feared Migra, as the immigrants call Immigration and Customs Enforcement, from invading their sanctuary.

Already, members of the church staff and a Spanish teacher from a nearby college were tallying the names of the detained workers. Father Ouderkirk conducted his own version of a census. Gone were all but two members of the choir he had assembled over the years. Gone was all but one of the eight altar servers. Gone were the husbands from the weddings he had performed, and gone were the fathers of the children he had baptized.

As for the mothers, many of them also worked at Agriprocessors and had been arrested. In a putative show of compassion, federal authorities released them after putting an electronic homing device on each woman’s ankle to monitor her whereabouts. These mothers were, in the new lexicon of Postville, “las personas con brazalete,” the people with a bracelet.

These people are risking life and limb to protect the Body of Christ from crackers. I’m guessing Jesus is on their side – even though the Government isn’t. I’m betting my soul on the idea that Jesus is more hung up on justice than he is on issues of doctrine. The latter may be nice, but the former is most-all he talked about: even his decrees on morality can be seen to be about Justice taken in the light of the Jewish tradition.

I will yield to those who say Orthodoxy is important – but only if Orthodpraxis is the first Doctrine. With out the praxis the doxis is useless while even without the doxis, the praxis can lead to our salvation.

Otherwise we’ve made Jesus out to be just another upper class Roman oppressor: he might as well have been Pilot.

Listening to the sermon today, in a standard sort of liberal broad church, about the idea of fasting while smiling or giving alms in secret, the preacher took us to a different place. Her sermon seemed rather open ended: I felt like I had got to a precipice and she was asking me to look over (and maybe leap).

She ended her sermon…

Because no matter what our laws say, or refuse to say about taking care of the marginalized, no matter how others who also worship God may approach the sacred texts we share in common, the sacred texts that we read one way to tell us this is important, the sacred texts that they read another way to say that other things are more important, no matter that our society, our community is not yet at that ideal place of institutionalized justice for all that we value so much in theory, no matter… if what Jesus was trying to say was be hospitable, rather than alienating when it comes not just to people you know and love, but everyone else around you, be hospitable rather than alienating… if what Jesus was trying to say was be humble, rather than arrogant, when it comes to the things God is not requesting, but requiring of you, be humble rather than arrogant… then perhaps this reading is incredibly relevant for us, today, here, right now.

And I spent a good part of the day wondering about that – not “how is it relevant” but rather “WTF am I going to do about it?”

And when I knelt before the rector, and he put the ashes on my head and said, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” I nearly cried: given my current emotional state – and the low blood sugar I was having – I’m kind of surprised I made it.

This is what comes to me on Ash Wednesday:

What do we mean when we say “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”?

It seems to me there are two different ways of emphasising our mortality, two radically different ways to understand the implications of our status as Sons of Adam (earth) and daughters of Havvah (life).

On the one hand it seems to say “this life is way short so focus on things eternal.”

This is the standard reading, I think, for Christians. This life is short, don’t focus on the the flesh for it passes away, but instead focus on the spirit for it is eternal. Don’t focus on this world – focus on the next.

There are two logical ends to that line of thought: monasticism or nihilism. If you accept the implications, everything becomes a monastic choice – marriage, celibacy, food, social life, line of work. Podvig. Struggle. Not struggle in the way that Genesis implies – all of life is struggle – but a specific kind of spiritual struggle to “overcome the world”. If you reject the implications of this way of thinking (but if, as St Ignatius implied) your twenty-plus years of brainwashing schooling have made it impossible to think in any other way, then in rejection you’re left with the root of nihilism: there is no spirit and this life is too short. Party on dude, there is no morality of any lasting import.

What if there is another way?

Is there a way to hear “Dust you are…” as a teaching that Life is important, we have something to do, and damn it, we’d better get busy!?

Can we hear it as if we – like some in Jesus’ day – maybe not “reject the Resurrection” but live as if it wasn’t important? Is it possible to live a Christian life agnostic about “the next world” and as if we must spend this life in Tikkun Olam, healing the world? Not in preparation for something else, mind you, but because this life is all there is and if I don’t make this world better by being here, I’m just a waste of space, air, time and energy.

Having done that – having ridden this life into the ground making things better – if there is something else, mightn’t I be better prepared for it?

As my mind wondered across this pattern, looking at it sideway and longways and on the Diagon Alley. I think that, if we take repair of the world to be important, it is our podvig, it is our spiritual journey. It becomes the only thing worth doing, in fact.

I’ve looked for a Jewish Drash or commentary on “dust you are” and I can’t find one (I’m open to suggestions). But as my Muslim Brother pointed out, this is the Muslim teaching – as well as the Muslim understanding of Jesus’s teaching. That we are in this world in order to do good – in preparation for the next.

I find it interesting that the Liberal/Broad Church understanding is in the same ball park as Islam and Judaism, while the conservative Christian understanding (Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant) is different.

We use this as an excuse to blow off Jewish and Muslim ideas of “clean” and “unclean”. And while I think it might have been a good way to win converts from the pagan world (I mean, really, who wants to give up pork?) even the Church didn’t like the idea of “eat whatever”: that’s why half of the Church’s calendar is spent as a vegan.

Having said that, what if we limited our food to things that were just instead of clean?

What if we limited our food intake to only those items that were produced in a just relationship:

With God (instead of idols… but that’s your call)
With Creation – sustainable, local and, as needed, low-tech (as in those cases where Genetically Modified foods “escape” and ruin surrounding environments or kill other species).
With other persons – requiring just pay, just competition, safe working conditions
With ourselves – healthy.

Imagine refusing to eat in a way that did not show love to God, Neighbour and Self.

This is what fascinates me about the Heksher Tzedek movment.

The Hechscher Tzedek Campaign is an initiative of the Conservative Movement of Judaism to improve the working conditions, treatment of employees, environmental standards,and business practices in kosher food-producing businesses.

By definition, kosher food is in line with Jewish dietary ritual laws. This campaign will bring kosher food in line with Jewish ethical law and social justice values.

FreeRice. Go play.

How does it work? Here’s from the F.A.Q.:

If you have all this rice to donate, why don’t you just give it to the hungry people right now?

We are not sitting on a pile of rice―you are earning it 10 grains at a time. Here’s how it works. When you play the game, advertisements appear on the bottom of your screen. The money generated by these advertisements is then used to buy the rice. So by playing, you generate the money that pays for the rice donated to hungry people.

Who distributes the donated rice?

The rice is distributed by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). The World Food Program is the world’s largest food aid agency, working with over 1,000 other organizations in over 75 countries. In addition to providing food, the World Food Program helps hungry people to become self-reliant so that they escape hunger for good. Wherever possible, the World Food Program buys food locally to support local farmers and the local economy. We encourage you to visit the United Nations World Food Program to learn more about their successful approach to ending hunger.

Will the rice I donate make a difference?

The rice you donate makes a huge difference to the person who receives it. To a mother or father watching a loved child die in their arms from hunger, the rice you donate is more precious than anything in the world.

(Props to JewSchool.)

Border bullies of San Diego / Minutemen, other groups spread anti-immigrant invective (via SFGate):

In a harshly worded statement, Catholic League President Bill Donohue insisted that there are legitimate ways to express an opinion, but that this wasn’t one of them. “By succumbing to anti-Catholic bigotry and harassment,” he said, “the San Diego Minutemen have discredited their cause and have no moral grounds upon which to make their appeal.” This group and their tactics, he said, should be opposed “not only by Latino Catholics, but by all Catholics.”

(Props to Fr Jim.)

Also Tikkun Ger writes more on Eco-Kashrut.