Wide Spread vs Isolated

I may not know many of you and so I'm not sure if my choice of discussion will really even be relevant, but I didn't really feel like getting into discussion about if we should morally choose to buy Christmas presents over helping to feed a starving child in Namibia or help give clean drinking water to the poor in India.

The two terms I use above are adjectives often used to describe weather systems that bring storms. During the storm season of 2007 in Arkansas, I was completely intrigued with the weather systems that came through this state.

I'll preface this by saying that I've always been a weather geek. When I was in my early elementary school days, I would grab the news papers in our house and flip straight to the weather sections to see what I could expect outside. It wasn't until my parents broke it to me that meteorologist were being replaced by computers that I decided on a degree in IT.

I had never before seen what happened in 2007 and it definitely led me to some questions and potentially a revelation. Weather systems generally move from West to East in America, however that year, they didn't seem to move at all. Storms would pop-up across the region, and then they would kinda stay stationary until phasing out to nothing again. There weren't very many major frontal boundaries, just one big "unstable atmosphere" for many month's it seemed.
I was completely dumbfounded at why there was no movement to so many of these storms.

What I came to make of it that has completely changed my perspective on the weather is that God noticed that there were area's of the Earth that had too much water and some that didn't have enough and so He decided it was time to take one season out of the year and even up the score in a few places.

To imagine that God has such specific control over where rain drops fall really shook my paradigm that the rain just falls wherever it wants to.

So here's the relevance to my pondering: How does this weather theory(or theology) explain extreme floods and droughts? Can we admit to believing that God has such specific control over the weather even when the human devastation is so broad?

If this topic is too weird to discuss, feel free to talk about the difference between being Broke vs being Poor.

Politics

Yesterday, on a classically dreary November night, I happened to be in Chicago again.  I drove along Lakeshore Drive and to my left through my rain-blotted window were the bustling, twinkling streets of skyscrapers when suddenly I noticed to my right the blackness of the lake.  I could only see a few blue waves wildly crashing close to the shore.  I clutched the wheel and turned onto Clark Street.  There I met a good friend of mine and over Vietnamese food he gave me our next topic.  

Not being religious, he is deeply troubled by the fact that every politician has to at least profess faith to be elected in America.  The odds are that many of them have lied (even, maybe . . . Obama and McCain!).  Additionally, the segment of our population that has the highest intelligence also has the highest rate of atheism, and so brilliant people from the scientific community, for example, are barred from being elected.  These two factors seem to limit the chances that we can have leaders who are both honest and intelligent, or either.  He faults religion and America's hypocritical demand for it from leaders for producing bad ones like Bush and potentially Palin, who in his mind are neither honest nor intelligent.

This prompted me to think about whether it is even possible to helm a country like America as a Christian.  Do any of you really believe our politicians are faithful?  If not, why do we have this requirement for them?  Should Christians expect to see a Christian leading America?  On the other hand, could you elect an atheist?

So I guess the big question is: what role does faith have in American politics?  The small question is: if Obama broke the race barrier, what "transformational figure" will break the religious barrier and is that a good or bad thing?

Welcome! and Community as a Topic

TEA NIGHT is simultaneously a continuation of the meetings that a few of us held a couple years ago to discuss philosophical ideas and a resurrection of Dave's attempt to get us talking about the books we are reading.  For now I will ask a different person each month to post an introduction to a topic and a brief rundown of the books on their mind.  Then we will all comment.  This can be our own NPR This American Life, our own Wall Street Journal editorial, our own digestion of life together.  I hope that through this we can 1) continue to connect with each other, 2) broaden and develop each other's and our own reading and thoughts, and 3) leave a permanent account of how we are maturing.

So I'll begin this week with something on my mind.  Traveling seems to clip a person's opportunity to form community, but at the same time travelers invigorate the communities they pass through like bees pollenating flowers.  Is it worth it?  Allison and I are hoping to spend our lives in as many places as God will take us, but coming off our year in China, what we want most is community.  I wonder if we have wilted, I in Boston where I made few deep connections, and she in China.  China for me was even worse because I again made deep connections like I did in college but had to severe them almost immediately.  We plan to stay in Portland for three years so that we can feel established, make and benefit from some good nurturing friendships, and recharge before leaving again for a year long trip.  Will three years be long enough?  Will it end up being just even more painful than leaving China or Harding was?

I want to say that what makes community is similarity, but I actually believe it is variety that makes community worth while.  I like the image of bees and flowers.  What I got out of my years at Harding was exposure to what was outside of me: you guys.  I had plenty of exposure to differences in Boston.  What was missing was commitment I suppose.

So what makes community, what do we miss by missing community, and what is God's vision for his people and community?  

I think I feel like I SHOULD stay put somewhere and commit to a community and wonder whether I can GET AWAY with traveling my whole life.

As for my reading these days:

Annie Dillard's An American Childhood has impressed me with her usual transformation of the mundane into the extraordinary.  The best part of the book is the fact that she has awakened a deep desire I never had before to see Pittsburgh.  She renders it with such beauty while still showing its crustiness that there is hope for my hometown popping out in my writing too.

W.D. Howells' The Rise of Silas Lapham has bored me and I've pretty much stopped it.  However, it is interesting as an artifact of the growth of the middle class in America.  I never could enjoy Realism until I realized it was an attempt to apply democracy to literature.  These days I am struggling with whether democracy is a Christian idea or not.

Erik Larson's Devil in the White City about the intertwined stories of the architect who built Chicago's 1893 World Fair and the serial killer who preyed on its visitors I listened to on CD as I drove 23 hours from Boston to Arkansas this week.  I was hoping that it would teach some Chicago history, but I knew if that failed, at least its morbidness would hold my attention and it did.