T-Shirts For Sale.

I’ve got some t-shirts for sale. I’ve been wanting to do a design for myself for a while. So I did one based off this little poem/retelling of Genesis that I mixed with Eugene Peterson’s telling of the creation account.

This is the first shirt of a hopeful series of shirts that I will do based off the acts of creation, co-creation, and recreation.

I have less than 30. In small, medium, large, and XL. If you want one send me an email and you can either send me a check or use PayPal.

They are printed on white American Apparel shirts. Which from what I hear uses fair trade principles and practices fair labor ethics. They have that soft, vintage feel to them.

I’m selling them for $10 plus $3 for shipping and handling. I paid $8 to get them printed (it was a small run and the AA shirts are more expensive because they aren’t made by Hondurans). So I’m only making $2 a shirt. Not trying to scam anybody. Just wanted to give it a try.

So if you want a soft, vintage summer shirt from a fair-trade company . . . email me and send me $13. Sorry for the 2nd sales job in 2 days. Click on the shirts to enlarge.

 

Oh yeah . . . here’s the poem/retelling I mentioned . . .

In the time between the firsts and the middles,
When all was as it was,
He created.

Everything was a big soup of nothingness,
A bottomless emptiness, an inky blackness.
Which goes to say that it was dark. Hollow.
Heavy with
dark
hollow
SILENCE.

Then . . .

Brooding like a bird over the water . . .

Breathing in thunderous whispers . . .

Glow!
Heavens!
Separate!
Green!

And it was good.

a 9/11 prayer.

father
your eyes and your heart
do we need

naivety, romanticism
entertainment and retribution
these things from the deep
that color my eyes

for we are a people of reaction
instead of action
we respond with fists to the air
voices to the airwaves
you respond with a cross on your back
and nails through your hands

your heart breaks
over injustice
as in blind patriotism
as in our injustices

i am the enemy
i am the terrorist
i’d stand at a distance
stone in hand

we are one
we are the same
we are distorted pictures of you

the pain is deep
but you know this
innocence was lost
but you know this more

love is a louder song
grace is a better way

wounded
haunting
desperate
your bones break backward
your flesh tears forward
your blood spills presently

chastisement for our peace
bruised for our hate
through your stripes
we are healed

Tags: 9/11, September 11th

My Easy Christ Has Left The Church.

My Easy Christ Has Left The Church (ht: Jessica)
by Calvin Miller

My easy Christ has left the church.
Who can say why?
Maybe it’s because His video-logged apostles all
read diet-books, travel agency brochures
and Christian fiction thrillers
on how the world should end
But none read books on what the starving ignorant
should do until it does.
He left the church so disappointed that Americans
could all spell “user friendly”
but none of them could spell “Gethsemane”

Can we say for sure he’s quit?
Oh yes, it’s definite, I’m afraid:
He’s canceled his pledge card.
I passed him on the way out of the recreation building
near the incinerator where we burn
the leftover religious quarterlies
and the stained paper doilies
from our Valentine banquets.
“Quo Vadis, Domine?” I asked him.
“Somewhere else,” he said.

My easy Christ has left the church,
walking out of town past seminaries where
student scholars could all parse the ancient verbs
but few of them were sure why they had learned the art.
He shook his head counfounded that many
had studied all his ancient words
without much caring why he said them.
He seemed confused that so many
studied to be smart, but so few prayed to be holy.

Some say he left the church
because the part-time missionaries were mostly tourists
on short-term camera safaris,
photographing destitution to show the
pictures to their missionary clubs back home.
I cannot say what all his motives were.
I only know I saw him rummaging through dumpsters
in Djakarta looking for a scrap of bread
that he could multiply.
“Quo vadis, Domine?” I asked him.
“Somewhere else,” he said.

He’s gone – the melancholy Messiah’s gone.
I saw him passing by the beltway mega-temple
circled by its multi-acred asphalt lawn,
blanketed with imports and huge fat vehicles
nourished on the hydrocarbons of distant oil fields
where the poor dry rice on public roads
and die without a requiem, in unmarked graves.

Is it certain he is gone?

It is.

We saw him in the slums of Recife,
telling stories of old fools
who kept on building bigger barns,
oddly idealistic tales of widows with small coins
who outgave the richer deacons of the church.

I saw him sitting alone in a fast-food franchise
drinking only bottled water and sorting through
a stack of world-hunger posters.
He couldn’t stay long.
He was on his way to sell his
old books on Calvin and
Arminius to buy a bag of rice for Bangledesh.

My easy Christ has left the church.
I remember now where I last saw him.
He was sitting in one of those new
square, crossless mega-churches
singing 2x choruses and playing bongos
amid the music stands and amplifiers
with anonymous Larrie and Sherrie.
He turned to them in church and said
“I am He! Follow me!”
But they told him not to be so confrontational
and reminded him that they
had only come for the music and the drama,
and frankly were offended that he would dare
to talk to them out loud in church.
After all, they were only seekers, with a right to privacy.

I followed him out through the seven-acre vestibule,
where he passed the tape-duplicating machine
where people could buy the “how to” sermons
of the world’s most famous lecturers.

He left the church and threaded his way
across the crowded parking lot,
laying down those whips and cords
he’d once used to cleanse the temple,
and looked as though he wanted to make
key-scrapes on Lexi and huge white Audis
and family buses filled with infant seats.

He stooped and shed a tear after
and wrote “Ichabod” in the sand.
In a sudden moment I was face to face with him.
“Quo vadis, Domine?” I asked him.
“Somewhere else,” he said.

My easy Christ has left the church,
abandoning his all-star role in Easter pageants
to live incognito in a patchwork culture,
weeping for all those people who
cannot afford the pageant tickets.

He picked up an old junk cross,
lugging it into the bookstore
after the great religious rally,
and stood dumfounded
among the towering stacks of books
on how to grow a church.
“Are you conservative or liberal,” I asked him.
But he only mumbled, “Oh Jerusalem…”
and said the oddest thing about a hen
gathering her vicious, selfish chicks under her wings.
He left the room as I yelled out after him,
“Lord, is it true you’ve quit the church?
Quo vadis, Domine?”
“Somewhere else,” he said.

Tags: Calvin Miller, My Easy Christ Has Left The Church

Today..

In a mini-celebration of 10,000 hits and the fact that you guys are all some of the most superb people I’ve ever/never met. I thought I would do a simple redesign on the site (if you can’t see it, you need to clear out your cache). I was getting tired of all the color and the dark red everywhere. Plus you’ll notice that I switched the sidebars to make it flow better.

But I also wanted to give you a brief short history of time, as it relates to my new blog home.

Many of you guys have been around since that very first fateful day back in August of 2002. You guys were with me as I blogged through the most backwards school/seminary on the face of the planet as I shared my frustrations of wanting to burn the place down and my fears of getting crucified. You were with me as I blogged through some of my good and bad relationships. You were there as I shared about the excitement of getting to know my best friend in a deeper way and you were there when I pulled the ring out of my pocket and put it on her hand.

You’ve been with me as I have shifted, sorted, traveled, dreamed, and thought.

You were with me as I closed down the late great Josh Brown Blogspot (here are the full archives of my old blog), and opened IAmJoshBrown.com even though I’ve never really developed any of the other sites besides my graphic design site. We started a cooking blog as well. And a really kick-A podcast.

 

 

We’ve had some good conversations: on homosexuality, on the suburbs, on slow living, and on house church, to name a few. And this has all been in the last 5 months!

We’ve met but never met some really great people: one of my best friends who has been around since the beginning and I’ve only met once, Sharon, our best friends Nick & Leslie, the D10’s, Eric & Heather, Tank & Jessica, Mike & Jill, the Pattons, the Bostonites (Dr. James & Gentry), Mike from the OC, Tabitha Jane from Portland, Corey from Seattle, the Canada boys Jamie and James, and Trevor, to name just a few. We’ve also pulled in local friends Kimberly, Seth, & Kristen. As well as adding new people who are joining in the conversation everyday. (side note: I hope you all appreciate the massive amount of time it took to link all of you)

All of that to say, I couldn’t be more grateful for you guys. I know blogs are a very difficult medium with a couple shortfalls as it relates to community, but I wouldn’t have made it to where I am today without the support of this community and conversation.

And I can’t wait to see you at GatlinBlog’07!

So this is my tribute to you all. And if I had a Celine Dion song, I would play it right . . . about . . . now!

 

Tags: Community, Josh Brown, Welcome To The Story, Nick & Josh Podcast

 

 

 

The Beatitudes.

If you’ve never heard of or been to The Matthew’s House Project, you definitely should. It’s a writing collective exploring themes in culture and religion. And is home to some very good writing.

This piece was done by Kristen McCarty. And like with any good writing, she takes something familiar, turns it, and recasts it in a fresh new light.

Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them, saying:

Blessed are the poor in spirit:
the welfare recipients, those who cannot make rent.
Blessed are they that stand in line at soup kitchens
and sleep in the streets on January nights;
the Kingdom of God belongs to them.

Blessed are those who mourn:
the small-town pregnant teenage girls.
Blessed are the AIDS victims.
Blessed are the nursing home patients;
they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek:
the illegal immigrants
with no voice, no vote, no hope of change,
reviled and powerless;
they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those that hunger and thirst after righteousness:
in pouring out blessings on the poor, the meek, the sad-
they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful:
merciful to the violent and to those who make war
in their own lands and in the lands of strangers;
they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart:
the children before they are taught to hate,
who still believe in forgiveness and love;
they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers:
those who fill God’s house with the unloved and unwanted.
Blessed are they that open their hearts wide enough
that the whole world falls in;
they will be called the children of God.

Blessed are those who are criticized for
loving too much, forgiving too much,
opening God’s house and his feast to sinners, pariahs;
theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

© June 2006

Technorati Tags: Matthew’s House Project, The Beatitudes