Too bad I'm not available....

No responses yet-- so check it out:

Photo: I'm not including a photo. I'm sure this will cost me some points, but I hope I can make them up elsewhere on the form. It's sort of a bold move, don't you think? Kinda makes a statement about the impermanence of the flesh and the temporary nature of our physical existence. Besides, I never seem to show up in photos... or in mirrors. Hmm.

Age: 34-ish. (When we finally tracked down my mom, she couldn't remember the exact year she left me at the YMCA)

Disposition: Intensely laid back, which sometimes manifests in a fiery, uncompromising Savonarola-like fury. But hey, whatever.

Ideal Mate: Someone just like me, except sorta foreign-looking.

Hobbies: Long walks in the forest with my trusty band of society's offscouring, robbing from the rich to give to the poor. I can take apart and reassemble a zither in under 8 minutes. I also collect stamps. And I'm a member of the Pheidippides Heritage Society, whose members run marathons hoping to die at the finish line.

Religion: Episcopalian. Wait-- scratch that. High Church Episcopal. But actually there's a strong vein of Calvinism that I picked up during my summer missions project with the farming family in Iowa. In fact, intertwined with the Calvinism (which is coming back-- see Time Magazine's March issue) is an equally intense dedication to social justice. But, hey, certainly not Liberation Theology. Ha, of course, if that were true I wouldn't tell YOU! Anyway, see the attached pdf with my thesis-length theological musings, or read my latest blog posting at www.skippy'sjesus.com. (Do not feel pressured to visit my online store for t-shirts or coffee mugs)

Education: Four years at University of Texas at Elm Mott. (One semester as cheerleader for the Fightin' Fire Ants! Yay!) Still working on my last remedial basketweaving course-- after that they'll send me my diploma, I think.

Employment: Poet-in-residence at our local public library. This is currently not a paid position, but there are a lot of perks. Access to the bathroom is a big perk. And the research information librarian will answer most any question I have. Really, it's a pretty sweet deal. The intern pays me 5 cents a book to help him reshelve while he curls up in the corner for some Second Life on his iPod Touch. That keeps me in Mountain Dew.

Turn Ons: Naked women usually do the trick, although as I get older, I sometimes need to slam down an extra Mountain Dew.

25 Random Things About God

1. Jeez, I never thought this "25 Random Things" deal would get so big when I first started circulating it.

2. Why's that airline pilot getting all my glory? After all, I put the Hudson river there.

3. I love getting up in the morning to watch the universe rise.

4. My Addictions: Coffee, "Lost," ultra-marathons (40 years is my limit), my crackberry, wreaking vengeance.

5. TODAY'S TO DO LIST: Start interfaith dialogue (always forgetting this), clean up environment, take out that terrorist training camp at 34 degrees 33'56.80 N 73 degrees 56'31.25 E.

6. I'm really sorry I took a short vacation--just a long weekend, really-- and caused that world financial crisis. Last time I took a vacation I came back and found Bush had stolen the election. Darn! But don't I deserve some time off?

7. Found out this week the music of the spheres is in the wrong format to load on my iPhone. Wouldn't you know it?

8. And yes, I have both a Blackberry and an iPhone. Are you really surprised?

9. My secret fear is that my solution to the problem of evil won't stand up to peer review.

10. I miss the Neanderthals.

11. Prosperity preachers may be surprised that I spend most of my time talking to chaiwalla slumdogs.

12. Don't worry, I'm planning to explain everything on the 400th anniversary of Darwin's birth.

13. Using the Sumerian numerical system, shouldn't I be through now?

14. I'm still a little nervous about that Large Hadron Collider.

15. Can someone please tell me where I left the Ark of the Covenant?

16. Lately I've been stitching together random DNA strings. Started out as a bracelet, but who knows what I'll end up with.

17. Sometimes I flash on being a sunflower and imagine I'm looking at myself.

18. I've been tinkering around with a new moral code. Here's an example: You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours... until you beg for mercy. (Hey, it's just a draft version).

19. What if I were the god of a universe that was really tiny and inside a much bigger macro-universe, controlled by a much bigger god? And what if that god were me, too? This is the kind of thing I think about just before I go back to sleep.

20. I'm tired of this. So I'm reversing the arrow of time, recalling all the world's "Random Things" postings, renaming them "20 Random Things" and chopping off the last five items to conform to what is now my new template. You'll never know the difference. (Most people don't realize it, but I do this sort of thing all the time).

---Skippy R., The Wittenburg Door

Next, the 'Soylent Green' Bible

The Green Bible has sprouted on the religious publishing scene, and has even received a stamp of approval from the Sierra Club. The new version, which costs $29.95, "will equip and encourage you to see God's vision for creation and help you engage in the work of healing and sustaining it."

This New Revised Standard Version published by HarperCollins highlights environmentally significant passages in green, is printed with soy ink on water-coated recyclable paper and bound in a cloth-and-linen cover.

The only drawback is that the book is not totally edible.

If Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis and the Sojourners crowd are "Red Letter" Christians, then who are "Green Letter" Christians? Well, Brian McLaren explains "Why I Am Green." And Matthew Sleeth, N. T. Wright and Desmond Tutu contribute, along with Earth-conscious essays and poems from Wendell Beery, St. Francis of Assisi and Pope John Paul II.

Why do we need a Green Bible? Because "with over 1,000 references to the earth in the Bible, compared to 490 references to heaven and 530 references to love, the Bible carries a powerful message for the earth."

On the other hand, out of the 773,692 total words in the Bible, "and" is used almost 70,000 times. Forgive my quibbling, but the scriptures carry a powerful message for conjunctions, too.

In one essay by J. Matthew Sleeth, a good point is made that the Bible starts with a tree in Genesis and ends with one in Revelation. That's cool. I like that. I also understand most of the green-highlighted passages I read in the online sample-- they call it the "Green Bible Trail." Sort of like W. A. Criswell's "Scarlet Thread through the Bible" except about landscaping instead of salvation.

But I'm confused about why some passages were left out.

For instance, in the sample given from the book of Ruth, nothing was highlighted in green at all. In the story about Ruth gleaning in Boaz's field, it says he "heaped up for her some parched grain. She ate until she was satisfied, and she had some left over. " Why isn't that in green? Is it because people are messing with nature here, taking dominion over it, using it to feed themselves?

Just askin'.

Don't get me wrong, I certainly don't want us to all have to scramble for survival on a planet blighted with toxic waste, choking on pollution and divorced from nature by our technology. (Oh yeah, never mind, that's already happening). But don't cheat me by rationing my green-highlighted Bible passages!

Environmental checklists can get ridiculous. At the bottom of the screen on the publisher's web site, I noticed it proudly proclaims: "This site was made without using paper."

A website without paper!

I wish that would catch on, because I'm tired of getting ink all over my hands when I click through the New York Times headlines links. Thanks, HarperCollins.


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The Olympics, and achievement just out of reach

Before our morning Bible study some of us walk up to the local coffee shop, bypassing Starbucks. We're friends with the owners and the staff and we've been walking up there almost every day for a decade.

When Bill opens the place, he takes some time to banter with us, mostly making fun of our friend Gary. With nonstop Olympics coverage this week, Gary's been regaling us with stories of his glory days when he almost made the U.S. Olympic team in gymnastics in 1964.

Many of us have such stories-- the if-only tales of fame and success just out of reach.

Gary was amazed that the gymnasts were doing routines that his generation never even imagined were possible. A French guy's "Victoria cross" the night before was especially shocking, he said. He shook his head. Gary is 65 and somewhat out of shape, but occasionally he does a handstand for us, and all the change falls out of his pockets. It's pretty funny and sort of amazing, too.

If-only tales. We've learned to embrace these missteps in life, because without them, we might have missed God along the way. Instead of being bitter about getting a silver medal instead of a gold one, Gary is just happy for what he's been given. That's rare.

But stories of almost-success will never be the same for us now.

A chance encounter

A few weeks ago, Bill said he'd been riding his bike around the lake when he heard someone shouting or crying, he wasn't sure which. He turned the bike around and pedaled back down the road and saw a woman inside a security fence that enclosed one of the large estates that face the lake.

She explained her daughter was out of town, and she had come by her house to check on things, and the electronic gate had shut and she didn't have the code to get out. She was trying to reach her husband on her cell, but there was no answer. She broke into tears.

The real cause of her distress was her son-in-law, she said. He had been hiking and climbing in the Sangre de Cristo range in Colorado, and his family had not heard from him for a few days. They were all greatly concerned.

It was a rare moment of transparency and weakness shared between two strangers. Bill used his phone to get in touch with the husband, and finally got her out of the gate. Then he continued on his bike ride.

A few days later he found her husband's number in his phone and decided to call to check on the situation.

No, the husband said, they still hadn't heard anything. They were assuming an accident had happened.

Life can be strange

We'd been following Bill's bulletins on the situation since his first encounter. I prayed for the guy and his family as we walked home that day, if memory serves.

A few days after that, the report came in-- the man had fallen off a mountain during a hike and was missing.

Today, as Gary was ending his Olympics story of how gymnasts used to do things in the old days, Bill came over with the newspaper. There was the obituary. The man had fallen 1,700 feet to his death. He was 44.

Another tale of success just out of reach, I guess. This time a true tragedy.

As we lamented the man's fate and expressed amazement at Bill's happening upon the mother-in-law and the whole quirkiness of coincidence, Bill mentioned he was getting ready for his long-planned vacation next week.

Maybe he hadn't connected the dots on everything until that moment, but we did, and we sort of just looked at him, blankly.

Bill's going to Colorado to climb Long's Peak.

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Maybe I made a mistake

Maybe I made a mistake.

Summer finally caught up to us a few weeks ago, just as my bike commuting was becoming routine. We've had 17 straight days of triple-digit heat. It's taking me longer to recover, and it affects my judgment.

For instance, last week I was wheeling through downtown one afternoon, past City Hall, past the homeless hangout, into the Farmers' Market district. There's a flower market there that's sort of an oasis on my trek. It's beautiful, especially in contrast to the baking heat of the concrete around me.

I jumped the curb to get a better look, lost control of the bike and slammed directly into a concrete post on the sidewalk. With my cat-like reflexes I embraced the impact and did a controlled collapse, ending up hugging the street. The bike's fork was bent and wouldn't roll. I was scratched and bruised, but nothing was broken.

It was late enough that the market area was pretty deserted. Like many urban areas, downtown Dallas goes dead after work, although that's starting to change. Still, the sun was up just high enough to fry me. I tried to drag the bike into a patch of shade. At more than 100 degrees it was starting to sap my energy.

I called my wife. This concrete post sort of jumped out in front of me, I told here. She said she'd come pick me up after she finished watering the garden. Fine.

I couldn't sit down because the concrete was too hot. I wanted to go over to the flower market, but I didn't want to leave my bike. I was embarrassed and sort of stunned.

In an instant, my whole afternoon had changed.

I was about to lodge a private complaint to the Lord about my condition, when I noticed Big Bob.

I'm calling him Big Bob, but all I saw was a large homeless man, clutching a beer bottle in a paper sack shuffling past me down the sidewalk. He didn't acknowledge me, and he didn't pass close enough for an exchange of greetings.

I almost felt like Bruce Willis in Sixth Sense. We were in two separate dimensions. Although I was sweaty and haggard-looking by this point, I was obviously not from his world. I was dead to him, and under normal circumstances he would have been to me. So, what was God trying to tell me here?

Big Bob walked over toward the wall of a building, until he almost had his nose to it. What the...

He unzipped and peed right against the wall. Broad daylight. Didn't even set down his bottle. Then he shuffled off.

Gee. That puts a cap on today's experience, I thought.

What brings a man to the place where his city serves him merely as a latrine? What mistakes, wrong turns and blind alleys in life brings you to this place?

Well, maybe in an instant, his whole life had changed.

And that bottle in a bag. One thing we learned early on when our community started taking in homeless people is that when they tell you they only had a few of beers, they're not talking about that little frosty bottle of Heineken you share with a friend at the local pub. They're talking about a 24-ounce bottle of Bud from 7-11. Two or three of those better explains why they, for instance, might have set fire to a dumpster.

One man who lived with us for several years explained that the bottles also come in handy at night. Just before you lie down under the bridge, you very loudly smash the bottle, making sure everyone else sees the remaining jagged edges of what's left in your hand just before you curl up. And the leftover broken glass can serve as a warning if anybody sneaks up on you while you're asleep.

But I didn't have to worry about any of that. I just had to get what was left of my bike back to my renovated two-story home in an old East Dallas historical district.

No wonder Big Bob relieved himself on his city.

Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe we all did.

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Beastie: Tip of apocalyptic iceberg

There's am alarming development that I see eventually causing the breakdown of civilization as we know it.

Consider the story of Dr. Arnold Kim, physician-turned-blogger.

Sure, blogging can be emotionally rewarding and intellectually stimulating. It can also be addictive, a huge time-suck and eventually grind a person down into millions of cynical bits. Usually it produces a weird combination: the blogger doing Leonardo DiCaprio's "I'm King of the World!" on the doomed Titanic.

But there's something socially and morally wrong about Arnold Kim, who heads up MacRumors.com, the website of Apple gossip and rumor, leaving his medical practice ...to blog.

That's right. He stopped treating kidney disease, abandoning the sacred role of the healer, to practice his blogging hobby full time.

Of course, it's a lucrative website-- he can draw a six-figure salary at either job (something we at The Door know nothing about).

But as a society, can we really afford to have valuable contributors just drop everything for the brief thrill of seeing their name in print? In the past, writers and journalists toiled for years hoping they'd eventually offer as much to humankind as a doctor does on his first day out of medical school.

Forget about rising oil prices, terrorism and Brokeback Mountain. This truly fills me with dread.

Think of the consequences if this catches on. Do we want our firemen ignoring the bell just to spellcheck their latest blog entry? Homeland Security agents working on their trout fishing blog while aliens sneak into the country hassle-free? Judges turning in their robes merely to service the Internet uber-feed? Engineers fiddling with their youtube subscriptions as bridges collapse under rush hour traffic?

Someone call Sen. Grassley! This can go nowhere good. The vision is disturbing, even here in my cozy cubicle. Affected as if by the strange, deadly malaise in The Happening, people will start jumping off of buildings, texting their posts as they drop. I'm sure this is mentioned somewhere as a sign of the apocalypse.

No, better to leave blogging to the desperate and wicked social substrata of geeks and losers who currently dominate the field.

When the smart, the successful and the beautiful begin to post their opinions in the blogosphere, the real world is put in deadly peril.

And we bloggers might then have to take some responsibility for it.

LOL! As if!

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Help us cease from striving

If you're burned out on televangelist appeals for money, megachurch ministry-bloat and evangelical politics, it might be refreshing to take a look at an organization that's trying to give a life-long, no-strings-attached hug to a few million of the poorest, dirtiest, most despised people on earth.

I dropped in on Gospel for Asia's annual conference last weekend at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas. Their main topic was how to accommodate more poor people in their churches.

It seems that back in 2001 about a gigagillion Dalits-- India's lowest-caste "untouchables" -- got together and announced that Hinduism just wasn't doing it for 'em any more. The thrill was gone. So they offered the Christians, the Muslims, the Buddhists and any other religion an opportunity to pitch their version of spiritual reality to them.

The result is that GFA is scrambling to establish thousands of schools and churches around India to accommodate an increasing influx into their ranks of people who literally define the word "outcast." The word Dalit actually means "broken people."

Dalits can't be squeezed for big tithes and offerings. They don't bring anything to the table. In fact, they always show up with deep and often tragic needs. One Dalit who spoke at the meeting recalled how his parents somehow managed to claw their way our of grinding poverty to get him into a school, but he was only allowed to sit in one little spot in the corner on the floor away from the others. He wasn't allowed to drink from --or even get near-- the water faucet. "I experienced poverty, starvation and untouchability," he explained. "Now I am touched by the gospel of Jesus."

When I traveled to India a couple of years ago with GFA, I saw hundreds of these poorest of the poor along the roads everywhere doing the dirty work, squatting over little cooking fires, begging, defecating at the side of the road, scrounging for scraps of plastic or bits of cloth. These probably aren't the outsourced customer service guys from India you talk to when your computer goes on the blink. They're what St. Paul called the "offscouring of the earth."

The apostle understood, like GFA does, that these are the very people Christ died for. And He can only touch them through us.

But then, this Dalit's prayer caught me off guard: "Lord, help us cease from striving."

Huh? Isn't that what evangelism is all about-- striving to get the main thing done, accomplishing the mission, working the plan, doing it right?

Maybe not. The speakers all seemed to be talking about servanthood, being bondslaves. Slaves don't have many plans, and the pay isn't very good, besides.

At one GFA session, Gayle Erwin, author and a member of the GFA board, understated the case when he observed, "nobody comes out of GFA with million-dollar homes." In other words, Sen. Grassley is not interested in this group. It has too much obvious integrity. Despite the decreasing value of the dollar, there was little agonizing over the economy at the conference. The only mention of it was a suggestion: "You better hurry up and give quick."

GFA President K. P. Yohannan eloquently described the plight of the Dalits, but didn't mention that he still drives his early '60s VW when he's in the States. No air-conditioning. A native of India, Yohannan started GFA back in the 1970s after studying for the ministry in Dallas. Since then he's gone from looking goofy to looking grizzled, but carries himself with an air of peace and self-detachment that puts everyone around him at ease. GFA now has more than 16,500 native missionaries serving in 11 countries in South Asia. You can support one of these native missionaries for a ridiculous total of around $50 a month.

These Gospel for Asia people take Jesus very seriously but without our western/American overlay of overachieving busy-ness, guilt, arrogance or attachment to political causes. In the Indian state of Kerala, where GFA's largest seminary campus is located, the government is run by communists who sometimes work in cooperation with Christian groups. Yikes! Jerry Falwell's rolling over in his grave. It's a different world. Of course, GFA is as conservative as can be, except when it comes to the poor. Then they're liberal in the New Testament sort of way, with the emphasis on "liberality."

Lots of news came out of the meeting. One native leader from Burma told about delivering aid to victims of the devastating cyclone and people being saved as unburied bodies littered the fields. One of the native missionaries in Nepal who served time in jail for his faith described radical changes that have opened up that country to religious freedom.

And the media noticed one interesting angle-- while hundreds of supporters of Gospel for Asia prayed and sang, hundreds of Harry Potter fans at the opposite end of the hotel gathered--in full costume-- to role-play, buy Quidditch sticks and Hoggwart's capes and hear speakers delivering scholarly papers on the book and fantasy film series. (The two groups' wary interaction was discussed by the Dallas Morning News Religion Blog).

For me the big news from the conference was, when faced with a world of screaming need, the only effective response is to pray like the Dalit convert did, "Lord, help us cease from striving."

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