More Mas

Hey, uncovered some goodies tearing down the panelling that was in the room. It is pretty gnarly. We are just going to frame out this wall-the blue wall, and put sheet rock up; not a bad plan.




Found a door, and yes, all those lines that look like cracks and spots that look like holes, that is what they are indeed.

Be well.

New Intro for Moribayassa

Hey, check out this video of Moribayassa. We are currently learning this intro. It sounds really good. We are playing a first Friday event at Circle on September 4th. Groovy.

Renovation Is Underway

Did you ever see that funky green carpet we have in our front bedroom upstairs? It is funky.

I started pulling it up on Saturday, to expose the hardwood, so that we can refinish the floors upstairs.

Of course they are really gnarly and will need a lot of work. It looks like an old dock or something.

I also removed the drop-tile ceiling. That will give us another foot or so overhead.

Here's more floor.

You can see the corner near the ceiling in this funky picture.

Like everything else, this came up really fast, Sarah and I talked about it one day, the next, I am ripping up carpet.

We are going to do the second floor-except the bathroom in one whack. We hope to be done by the middle of October. Sweeeeet!

When I Get Mad, I Write it Down On a Pad

Sarah and I went to a spoken word event at Circle the other night. It was a lot of fun. It really made me curious why I had never been interested in going to anything like it before. Sarah read a poem she wrote about the lost and found a the medical library she works at. It was so good. People really enjoyed it. She had read it to me once before at our house, it gave me chills. I heard it differently on Saturday night. I got up and told a Craig Henderson story. It felt good. It made me want to write my stories down and continue to share them. That will make some people happy.

Listen well.

Do No Harm

Interesting stuff is afoot in the homeland. I am being quite affected by the Ched Myers. Yesterday in a post I mentioned the Myers video titled Let Them Speak Many Languages. In the discussion, Myers brings up Mark 6, when Jesus sends out his disciples to carry out the "good news," in which Jesus' instructions for evangelism are very clear.

Jesus Sends Out the Twelve

Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village. 7Calling the Twelve to him, he sent them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits.

8These were his instructions: "Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. 9Wear sandals but not an extra tunic. 10Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. 11And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them."

12They went out and preached that people should repent. 13They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.

Mark 6:6-12

Myers brings up a couple of interesting points from this passage, namely the mandate to carry little or nothing with you and if you are not welcome in a place, then leave. He uses these as an argument against the advance of empire and the assimilation and oppression of "subject" populations. He points out that it is hard to subjugate people if you have nothing and rely on them for your sustenance.

Jesus also instructs that if you are welcomed, stay, if you are not, leave. Well put Jesus. Myers points out that he does not instruct the disciples to punish, enslave, kill or in any other way persuade dissidents. He doesn't instruct the disciples to set up schools, disrupt indigenous beliefs and practices, steal their land, build a town or mine their natural resources.

Where did we go wrong? Please forgive us.

Yes, I am a little excited about Ched Myers. I think it is neat-o that I learned of Myers shortly after I started reading all these Chinua Achebe books. At the moment I am reading one titled Arrow of God (watch that link, it may be a spoiler). In a nutshell, it is about the colonization and subjugation of the Ibo people of Nigeria by both the British government and Christian missionaries. Imagine how conflicting and confusing it would be to have your beliefs, language and way of life devalued and villainies and replaced with ones that offensive and disruptive to your entire being. Welcome to the plight of millions.

This is who we are, this is our cultural heritage. It is necessary and helpful as we go forward, to recognize this fact.

Be well.

The Empire Strikes Out

Hey, I watched this great video today of Ched Myers talking about multiculturalism. It is a very interesting and provocative discussion. He uses two stories from the Bible (the Tower of Babel and Pentecost) as evidence for God's dislike for centralized power and monoculture. He makes a pretty strong case against empire and using the Bible and/or Christianity to institute and advance empire and domination-of any sort. The stories in the Bible are the stories of oppressed minorities, Israelites and Christians, not the elite. As Myers says, good news for some, bad for other. It is definitely worth a listen.