and then there's....

There’s Thanksgiving and then there’s Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving seems to be one of those holidays were we and by we I mean everyone just don’t know where it comes from. Traditionally of course the first Thanksgiving was in 1621 in Plymouth, MA, with a few pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe (who in years to come would not be so thankful for the pilgrims). This seems to be the most celebrated version today. We can see it in arts and crafts in elementary schools, in parades, and television.

There are of course other first Thanksgivings. British colonists gave ‘thanksgiving’ in 1619 in Virginia. There are even apparent records that say that the first ‘thanksgiving’ celebration was done in 1565 in St. Augustine, FL.

At the website history.com it states that, “Although this feast [between the pilgrims and Wampanoag] is considered by many to be the very first Thanksgiving celebration, it was actually in keeping with a long tradition of celebrating the harvest and giving thanks for a successful bounty of crops.” It seems that Europeans and Native Americans alike have been having ‘thanksgiving’ for hundreds and probably thousands of years around the harvest of crops.

The Pilgrims didn’t have Thanksgiving each year, and not until Abraham Lincoln in 1863 was Thanksgiving declared a holiday. The holiday was set on an ideal that the pilgrims had a bountiful harvest in 1621. Without the good harvest (and the Wampanoag, of course) the Pilgrims probably would not have survived another winter.

To me the harvest between the pilgrims and Wampanoag showed great hope that Europeans and Native tribes would get along in the years to come. Instead, it would be a temporary alliance at the outset of a troubled and broken relationship between the two people groups.

Thankful source: History.com

Further reading:
Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick

i'm thankful for...

"I'm thankful that this can't happen anymore."

The photo was taken in 1968 in Michigan. More on this next week.

Life Magazine and Google recently hooked up. You can now view archived photos from Life at Google.com.

Photo by: Alfred Eisenstaedt

the shack: an un-review

No, I’m not going to review The Shack by William Young. I will let you read it for yourself with unblemished eyes if you haven’t already read it. I think the book is worth reading whether you have heard positive or negative feelings about it. I’ve recently read the book. I thought Young did a great job. I have a lot of praises for the book and also a few criticisms. I went through a few reviews on Amazon to get a general consensus and I thought one reader put it quite well: “A parable, not a text on systematic theology.” The Shack is fiction – a story. I think it draws out a lot of ideas, thoughts, and feelings on how many Christians and non-Christians alike see God. Like a story it is not a theological guide to God. I would leave something like that to the Bible or books written by theologians. But, with that said - the book is out-of-the-box.

And with being out-of-the-box it causes controversy. Just under 19% of the reviews on Amazon gave the book a one or two star. Reading through some of those reviews you could see the book-burning mobiles coming out of the garage with ashes from Harry Potter in the back and books being written in response to the theological fallacies of the book.

On the other end of the spectrum is the Left Behind series. Almost 20% of the reviews for this novel gave the book a one or two star score. Several of these reviews describe the book as one that condones hate, and it is evidently a book for ‘fundamentalists’.

Both of these books are used as ‘evangelism’ tools for non-Christians. But the stories and ideas that these books convey are almost polar opposites. Where does this leave us as Christians? Where does this leave Christians in the mind of non-Christians? Being in America’s candy box of Christianity, it is apparent that there are thousands of ideas of what Christians believe about God. Many of those divides are as simple as back in the day one part of a congregation wanted red carpet and the other wanted green. So, maybe the argument wasn’t over carpet, but the divides were just as important. Is there another dividing shift among Christians? Are we living out a modern day protestant reformation of these different theologies? Could we see visual split of churches over this? Have we already? Obviously I have many more questions than answers.

Is it okay to be gray over this issue, and that there are these disagreements? Or, are these disagreements over serious fundamental truths and that there needs to be a black and white “yes” or “no” agreement?

I ask these questions from the context of which I live in. Currently in my job I see conflicting views in Christian mission, more specifically the work being done in Sudan. What is moving forward is a peace and reconciliation ministry in Sudan. It is a ministry that seeks to heal, reconcile, and redeem a war torn country. The other side is critical of the peace and reconciliation ministry and wants purely and solely church planting done to evangelize.

The story of the Sudanese is not fictional. It is a story of violence and genocide. In this story though, God is working in the lives of Sudanese: in healing, in reconciliation, and in forgiveness. There are stories like this all over the world. These stories are of the love, grace, and mercy of the God that created it all.

october round-up

Let’s see. It’s almost Thanksgiving so that means it’s time for October round-up.

Well, not too much happened in October. It got colder so I was outside less. Small group started up at church. We’re in a small group that meets up bi-weekly. The group so far has been about six to eight people. It’s been encouraging to be in community with others and to have casual conversation about God. The food has also been good.

On the eighteenth I early voted in Chicago. It was great because it literally took me fifteen minutes including travel time. It helps that I went over as soon as it opened up and that the polling place is my local public library which is literally a stone’s throw away from my apartment.

Also, on the eighteenth a bunch of went to seek the folk artist, David Wilcox at the Old Town School of Folk Music. I had never been to the Old Town School of Folk Music so it was excellent to see the inside and to hear about all the great stuff that goes on there. Definitely check it out. And if you are into folk music or music at all I would definitely check out David Wilcox. His music is fantastic and he puts on a really entertaining concert.

One of the best parts of the month was to visit my brother who lives in Texas for a long weekend. I hadn’t seen him all year and won’t get to see him over the holiday months so it was really great to be able to visit him and his wife. We visited the Dallas Arboretum, and ate at some wonderful local restaurants including an authentic BBQ place for lunch. We saw an opry at the local theater. It reminded me of a country music American idol. The singers were very good. On Sunday we went to a Dallas Cowboys game. It was a great weekend, but too short of a visit.

Great places I ate during the month:
Rockwell Neighborhood Grill – This place is excellent. It’s off the main street, and they are known for their burgers. Which were awesome! The restaurant had a cozy ambience for a bar, but it was kid friendly. It was also one of the first smoke free places in Chicago.

Dallas Arboretum

Dallas Cowboys Game

My brother and I cooking marshmallows

redressing pc

So, I’ve been a little busy lately. That, and not knowing how to go about writing this next piece has kept me from writing for the past week or so.

The issue at hand is simply the phrase “politically correct”, and more specifically in relation to the different tribes of the First Nations in North America. I’m not exactly sure when the term “politically correct” was derived or more importantly when it became popular to use and/or “enforce”. I know that at one point in my life people began to say, “That’s not politically correct (or PC). You need to say [fill in the offensive word here].” It was a realization in the world that in the past 500 years since Columbus decided to “discover” America that what has happened since then may have not been all that good. Well, that time has seemed to pass. I’m also not sure when this started, but in the last five to ten years people have begun to say just the opposite; now it is wrong to say something PC. People now think that we should just say what we are thinking or that people are getting to oversensitive or overworked over small issues. I think for the majority of people this is a good thing. I am here to say this - that it is not.

Why? Let’s first look at what the phrase “politically correct” or P.C. means. It’s a language to correct other language. Dictionary.com states “politically correct” as,

“Showing an effort to make broad social and political changes to redress injustices caused by prejudice. It often involves changing or avoiding language that might offend anyone, especially with respect to gender, race, or ethnic background.”

The PC era was meant to do two things. First, to correct or avoid language that might offend someone. Well, we are no longer doing this because people have gotten tired of walking on eggshells with everything they say. The second part is to make social and political changes to injustice and prejudice. Do the first part and second part have any correlation? I’m not going to get into that.

However, I want to address why these two issues are so important, in the context of Native American tribes. The first part relating to PC language is simple: why we should continue to be PC. Simply put, we don’t call Germans French or visa versa and we wouldn’t call an Australian a Russian. So, why should we call a Navajo an Indian? They’re not from India. Why do we do this? There are a couple reasons I can think of. The first is we just might not know. The easy thing to do is to clump different ethnicities together like Asians or Latinos or to just name someone by the wrong ethnicity. The second reason and more at the heart of the issue is the historical context of the language and what it means.

Let’s talk about the historical context of Native Americans. By now most people know why people call Native Americans “Indians”. Because at one time people thought that they were people from India. Five hundred years later we know that Native Americans are not from India, but for some reason we still like to use that language. This is a really good example of how something such a long time ago is still affecting us today. This bring us to my point that if something as simple as continuing to use the wrong language is still common today, then something as difficult as racism and prejudice are even more difficult and influential in our lives today.

Just because people are tired of hearing “PC” doesn’t mean that we need to continue to redress the injustices that were done in history and continue today. I’ll give one great example and let you ponder from there.

Universities and high schools with Native American mascots for the past twenty years or so have been - by suggestion and sometimes by law - asked to change their Native American mascot to something non-Native American. For example, Eastern Michigan University changed their mascot from the Hurons to the Eagles in 1988. Schools continue to do this today. The University of Illinois, the Fighting Illini, began last year to stop using their mascot. Although, they will keep the nickname, Fighting Illini, they have stopped using an Illini as a mascot at football and basketball games. It seems that most people get upset over these changes and say that it isn’t offensive and that it is tradition.

But, when we begin to see where Native Americans were first begun to be used as mascots and such, we see a different story. Beginning around 1880 through about 1920 the United States began to erect statues of Native Americans around the country. Even some of the statue ideas were to be bigger than the Statue of Liberty. The statues were not to honor Native Americans or to remember them as a people. They were affected as a symbol of the nation’s past victories.1 They were a memory of a conquered people and a people that were deemed ‘backwards’ and unable to be civilized.

This history has continued on. And its memorial developed onto Universities, high schools, pro sports teams, and so on. Continued use is to keep the original intent alive. Being politically correct was an intentional effort to change and redress the injustices of this. We cannot stop being PC, but must continue to fight the injustices that still prevail today.

1: Hoxie, Frederick, Final Promise (Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 1984), p. 103.

just for wrecks

Enough politics, right? I agree. The rest of the media I don’t think feels the same, but here I will be taking a break from it for a while.

And where to go next? Well, to promote another blog of course. I don’t do it often, with the exception of the two blogs of note on the right column of my blog. But in reality I couldn’t resist. I’ve been consistently reading this blog for about a couple months now. I don’t read it because it’s informative, or even that it’s related to my field of work or interests. I read it because it is flat out funny.

The blog I’m promoting and saying check it out - even if you only read it once - is Cake Wrecks. It’s also a blogger site and it is totally devoted to cakes (and the occasional cupcake) from stores and bakeries that have gone completely, and utterly wrong. The blogger each day posts a couple photos and writes about them satirically. The mistakes can be as simple as using quotation “marks” in the wrong spot, misspelling words on the cake, or just making a cake that is indescribably awful looking. And then of course there are posts like November 5ths that are just well…see for yourself.

So, take a couple minutes out of your day to see the latest cake monstrosity.

Here are a few examples of the cakes on the site:

three words

A little inspiration to go vote...