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Writing about the nature of Christian community Nouwen says:

“Community has little to do with mutual compatibility. Similarities in educational background, psychological make-up, or social status can bring us together, but they can never be the basis for community. Community is grounded in God, who calls us together, and not in the attractiveness of people to each other. There are many groups that have been formed to protect their own interests, to defend the own status, or to promote their own causes, but none of these is a Christian community. Instead of breaking through the walls of fear and creating new space for God, they close themselves to real or imaginary intruders. The mystery of community is precisely that it embraces all people, whatever their individual differences may be, and allows them to live together as brothers and sisters of Christ and sons and daughters of his heavenly Father.”

http://www.viralforest.com/watch-1000-years-european-borders-change/

SCOTUS ruling

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-dark-knight-of-the-souls/372766/

and how ISIS is breaking them. Salon

Study on vaccinations and human belief

 False beliefs, it turns out, have little to do with one’s stated political affiliations and far more to do with self-identity: What kind of person am I, and what kind of person do I want to be? All ideologies are similarly affected.

Facts and evidence, for one, may not be the answer everyone thinks they are: they simply aren’t that effective, given how selectively they are processed and interpreted. Instead, why not focus on presenting issues in a way keeps broader notions out of it—messages that are not political, not ideological, not in any way a reflection of who you are?

Which war you ask?

 This piece tracks with what I’ve been able to read in other places too.

I’m disturbed by mainstream media reports (not just Fox news) that want to portray this as “the terrorists winning…” so somehow we need to… like we did before. ugh. Fear is so wonderfully effective in the American media market place when advertising dollars are in play.

Obama has been less imperial than GWB of course. It seems that we’re watching the continued demise of colonialism. Colonially imposed nation states dissolve as empires not longer care enough to enforce them. It seems the Kurds are hoping their long patience pays off here, to the dismay of Iran and Turkey. You’ve got the US left willing to let the killfest continue as long as there isn’t any more blood on our hands and the libertarians in their mix of isolationism and “let people do what hey want to…” philosophy leaving the Imperial NeoCons out in the cold. They really hated that we didn’t “keep” Iraq after we “paid for it” when the fiction of “welcomed as liberators” melted like an ice cube in Fallujah. Their narrative has worn thin and they don’t have many friends for a “coalition of the willing”.

The US has the powerful man’s moral dilemma. Why do we lament our passivity in Africa (while still remaining passive) in their killfests while we throw up our hands with “not my problem” in the Middle East? We still dream ourselves to be gods in Africa while we learned in HD clarity that what we could and couldn’t do in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Deeper narratives rumble along. Does technological disruption undermine the monopoly of violence that has supported the nation state model in the West? Americans blithely celebrate their “right to bear arms” while being horrified as the fruits of this supposed right play out in Shia, Sunni and Kurdish hands. Ah the delicious ironies of old Tom Jefferson.

The old powers of religion and kinship seem to rule in other places while the west lacks the means or the will to continue to impose its brand of reality upon them.

We never do really know the future. pvk