Paul's Blogging has Moved!

Hey, all!

After running into platform limitations with Blogger, I've decided to move my musings over to the more powerful Wordpress software. I've taken advantage of this transition to redesign and re-title my blog. I'm quite happy with the new layout. You can look forward to a more user-friendly format, a unique domain name, and a growing list of guest contributors.

You can now find my latest posts, and all previous content from Three of Wands on the new site - Sparks and Ashes.

Threeow will stay online, but no new content will be posted.

I'm looking forward to seeing you on the new site! Please let me know what you think. Make sure to follow my new blog via email if you'd like to stay current with fresh content. I'm excited for the possibilities for communication and connection on the brand new site.

All the best,

-Paul

Happy Thanksgiving!

As we take a national day to pause and consider our blessings, I think of an old quote of Chesterton's:

"You say grace before meals.  All right.  But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink."

Let's be grateful for more than a turkey, potatoes and historical myths. Let's embrace our blessings with prayer that becomes life, and a life that becomes prayer. 

In all things, give thanks.

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The Swapping Continues...

Many of Threeow's readers know about my lovely wife Emily's significant involvement in the national foodswapping movement. Along with great friend and insigator/conspirator Bethany R., she was instrumental in founding PDX swappers, one of the most influential and media covered swapping groups in the nation. Their story has been filmed by Cooking Up a Story, covered by HuffPo, mentioned by the NY Times, and has been significant in inspiring and equipping similar events and community organizing nationwide.

If you're coming late to the party, food-swapping is a currency free exchange of homecrafted food, beverages, goods and services. 

Spawn to Be Wild

I miss the Northwest.

One of my favorite memories of living in a small logging community in the Coast Range mountains was the annual fall salmon run. Hundreds of huge fish, exhausted from their long fight from the Pacific would thrash their way up the stream in my family's backyard. Some would mate, all would die.

I was in awe.

KATU shares this video of "salmonic" tenacity.

Brueggemann on Ezekiel, Occupy, and Good Shepherding

I just came across an excellent piece by Walter Brueggemann over at Huffington Post.

As part of HuffPo's On Scripture series, Brueggemann explicates Ezekiel 34 in connection with the recent Occupy movement. The passage is a scathing condemnation of oppression, especially that of leaders ("shepherds") who fleece their flocks. The clear reading of the passage opposes leaders who exploit their position for imbalanced gain of any kind. Ezekiel takes a dim view of the 1%.


Ezekiel takes the long view though, recognizing that the abundance of abusive and mutton-hungry shepherds points (ironically) to a servant-leader, a "good" shepherd, a priest-king that will pasture the nations well, for the flourishing and feeding of humanity.

Brueggemann recognizes the potent messianic hope that the early church hailed in Jesus' declaration that he is the "good shepherd." He finishes by drawing the principles that society can learn from such an example of sacrificial leadership:

"...the news of Ezekiel is that because of God's resolve, mediated for Christians through Jesus, the Son and regent of God, it need not be so. As Israel need not have poor self-serving kings, so a democratic society need not suffer poor outcomes from an exploitative oligarchy. The promissory nature of Ezekiel's oracles articulates what good leadership looks like -- in government, in corporations, all through the private sector. That rule consists in,

-Seeking the lost,
-Bring back the strayed,
-Binding up the injured,
-Strengthening the weak,
-Feeding the hungry.

"In a word, good leadership consists in the restoration of the common good so that all members of the community, strong and weak, rich and poor, may live together in a common shalom of shared resources. The text is a powerful reminder of what might be; it is at the same time a summons to a political will for leadership that is not occupied, through ideological cant, with feathering its own nest. It is not enough to recite, in pious tones, the 23rd Psalm about "The Lord is my shepherd." What is envisioned (and required) is the formation of a different leadership that has in purview all members of the community. Ezekiel knew that is the only way to have a future that does not replicate the failed past. It is still, among us, the only way!"

It is still the only way. May the lies of the many fleecing shepherds be silenced and swallowed by the peace, the security, the truth of the Good one.

Read the full piece at HuffPo. 


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Saved through Childbearing

(C) 2005, Sisters of the Mississippi Abbey

This beautiful image was threaded through our church's liturgy this past Sunday. It especially captured my wife's imagination as we're expecting our second child any day now.

If you're familiar with biblical imagery and symbol, you'll recognize the pair as Eve and Mary. Their simple,  interplay of nakedness and clothing, shame and forgiveness, defeat and victory centers on the profound mystery of Mary's bulging belly. The mother becomes the daughter becomes the mother.

The "foolishness" of the Christ-story is much more than the passion, cross and resurrection. Central and inevitable is the mystery of God taking upon himself the brokenness, the limitation, the beauty, fragility, and mess of humanity.

It is a great, strange comfort that the lord of all things entered my world through slime, in the birthblood of an animal.

Richard Foster on Psychotic Affluence

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“We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. 'We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like.' ...It is time to awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick.”

-"Celebration of Discipline"

Well said, Mr. Foster.

Happy Birthday, Columbia River Gorge!

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area Act. As the Oregonian's editorial today points out, the law has both preserved the remarkable, fragile beauty of this national treasure, while simultaneously boosting local economy.

And there is no better place that I can think of to protect. I have lived life more fully in this 85 miles than I have anywhere else.

Just a few personal highlights of my Gorge experiences:

-My proposal to Emily in a harsh storm on the edge of Angel's Rest 

-Weekly night hikes in college (numbering in the low 100s I'd guess) with my best friends

-Many well spent days and nights at a family cabin by Bridge of the Gods
-Kayaking and fishing on Wauna Lake
-Exploring Eagle Creek with my brothers
-A dear friend's wedding on a wind whipped bluff overlooking Hood River
-Salmon fishing
-Bear chases
-Covering my body with Poison Ivy while free climbing Angel's Rest
-Foraging and eating lots of delicious natural foods
-Hiking to try and induce labor for our first kid
-Getaways from that first kid at Skamania Lodge

Many of my best memories are of the rocks, waterfalls, forests, and trails of this land.
I am profoundly and inexpressibly grateful for the preservation of the most wonderful place I have ever seen.

Beautiful Time-lapse of Portland

Simply gorgeous views of PDX at night, thanks to lens artist Lance Page.

Via the Portland Mercury