CSA or 2007 Farm Bill: What to Do?

So today our family picked up our fruit and veggie boxes from Angle Organics, our local CSA. And today, via Church World Service, I learned that the House is about to vote on the new Farm Bill (learn more about the farm bill and whose involved) and I through them I contacted by representative and let him know what I thought.

So I did two things: 1) supported local economics via the ALMIGHTY DOLLAR, and 2) tried to influence national/global economics via DEMOCRACY (or something close to it).

Which is better to do?

Or course the answer is both/and, right? Left, I mean wrong. The way I view the world right now is economically. Of course I view the world that way, they want me to. But what I mean is that I really dont' think that Big Government can do as much to change things (or at least i don't have enough time to MAKE Big G care about what I think, and TIME is MONEY afterall).

But how I spend my money is very much something that I can control and will have an impact. I could lobby Big G to help out the small farmer (and therefore my assistance and my values are mediated thru someone else), or I use my money and ensure that I help them and that I am living by my values.

They same is true for clothing. Let your dollars speak, and if necessary and convenient, speak through the Government.

What do you think? What did I miss?

2/3 World Economics and the Church

Africa: Churches Reject New Trade Pacts With Europe --This is a very interesting article discussing African Trade, the UE, and WTO trade standard. Sure that might not sound very interesting, but it is significant that many churches in Africa are involved in what is going on concerning fair trade, domestic and foreign and global markets.

Oh that the Church in the US would get involved .

The Gift in Stranger than Fiction

Please go check out Eric Austin Lee's The Gift in Stranger than Fiction, pt. 1 over at church and pomo. It's talking about that grat movie Stranger than Fiction, and then reading it through both Derrida's and Milbank's understanding of 'gift'. Today is Derrida's turn and Wednesday is Milbank's. This is good stuff.

Help! Global Church News Aggregator?

I really want to figure out how to get all my news through the church instead of either Fox or NPR. Can anyone help me?

I was challenged recently that we should be listening to the global church to find out what is going on in the world instead of mega-news agencies who think only through the lenses of economics and state-craft.

Does anyone know how to gather together multiple news sources into one home page or something like that? I'm not smart enough to figure it out.

Where is the presence of Christ?

I once preached on this, in relation to the story of the road to Emmaus. And I still want to say something close to it. That Christ is found everywhere his ministry is continued, everywhere his actions are imitated, everywhere his gestures are followed.

I certainly want to uphold a high sacramental position within the Church as the Body of Christ for the life of the world. Too often it seems people are all too ready to jump the ecclesial body and find Christ in the world, separate out the Church and the Kingdom, instead of distinguishing between them. This lead to a lot of misguided political activity.

And yet I do in a sense want to locate the body of Christ beyond the sacramental body (in the Eucharist) which makes the ecclesial body (as the Church). I want this because the story of the Road to Emmaus, with the disciples eyes being opened to see Christ is not merely a Eucharistic reflection, but a continuation of Jesus’ own hospitable table fellowship. And even the narratives of the Last Supper are not merely institution narratives which begin the Eucharistic practice, nor are is it an elaboration on Passover or the Day of Atonement, but they are continuations of Jesus’ revolutionary table fellowship, a radical hospitality toward the loss, excluded, and marginalized. And this table fellowship becomes both the test of discipleship in Matthew 25 (the Sheep and the Goats) as well as the test of the presence of Christ. In Matthew 25 it is not only a question of who are the true disciples (those that mimic and extend Jesus’ table fellowship and hospitality through the giving of food, drink, clothing, and time), but in this process of being like Jesus we discern the presence of Jesus.

But again, I don’t want to disconnect this discernment of Christ in the world from the Eucharistic discernment of Christ in the Sacrament. Indeed to do so is to loss the resources of both discerning Christ and power to be like Christ. Therefore to know Christ’s body (in the world) one must first be Christ Body (in the Church).