Sunday Devotional: Irish Edition

Happy Lord’s Day!

This morning, if you are worshiping in the temple not built with hands, I want to give you two hot-off-the-presses YouTube videos from two of my favorite Irishmen in all the world – my neighbor Gareth Higgins and epistemological adventurer Pete Rollins (with special guest star Brian McLaren). Enjoy!

(Alas, those cheeky, nu-media-ignoramuses at Duke have disabled embedding! You’ll have to actually watch Gareth’s vid in another window here.)

This was originally posted on December 14, 2008. Since then Gareth has become director of the Wild Goose Festival and Pete has released his incendiary treatise Insurrection.  

7 Responses to Sunday Devotional: Irish Edition

  1. Bill December 14, 2008 at 8:45 pm #

    I enjoyed, and was challenged by, Pete’s first chapter (online) for rejesus. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the story.

  2. Bill Samuel November 13, 2011 at 3:08 pm #

    Interesting to choose 2 pieces from 2008.

    The first one was very sad to listen to, because it offered what could have been but was not. Everything in it was rejected due to fear. The little of it Obama accepted – the closing of Guantanomo – was rejected overwhelmingly by Congress out of fear. Most of it was rejected by Obama, I think largely out of fear of being perceived as being for peace, which is interpreted as weakness. If you go back & find Obama’s original speech against the Iraq War, you find he spent more time in the speech emphasizing that he was not generally for peace than about the Iraq War. It is the most strange anti-war speech I’ve ever heard, and explains a lot of the tragedy of his Presidency.

    He stopped using the phrase War of Terror, but continued the spirit of that phrase. It may have been very unfortunate that he received the totally unearned Nobel Peace Prize early in his term. It forced him to take a stand, and he felt it necessary to take a firm stance that the way of peace is impractical. He really provided no evidence of that. He basically just parroted the catch phrases of conventional wisdom. He clearly never investigated the practicality of what he opposed. In addition to fear (typical of non-veteran liberal politicians), I’ve always wondered whether another factor is that he grew up mostly on the island of Oahu, which is heavily militarized and where the ways of war – both in the ghastly uniting of the Hawaiian islands by a megalomaniac using Western weapons and soldiers and in the American history – are endlessly glorified.

    The only major party candidate for President who understands much of what Gareth said and is willing to stand for it regardless of the flack he gets is Ron Paul. Have you seen the brilliant campaign ad he did which is based on an attack by a foreign power in Texas, and how we would react to it? I can’t remember another major party Presidential candidate in my lifetime who truly asked the American people to walk in the shoes of people from another nation which Americans perceive as our enemy. Paul is trying to get us to look at our overseas adventures from a truly different perspective.

  3. Bill Samuel November 13, 2011 at 3:15 pm #

    The 2nd piece, while years old, is not bound by time like the first one. It offers some vision and some perspective which we badly need.

    I believe my church (founded by Brian) tries to exemplify what Peter called for about living Sunday morning aside from our normal differences. (And we’ve now extended that into the week, when our neighborhood discipleship groups meet – and its even better when we do that as small groups really engaging with each other than as a relatively large gathered body.) We need to look deeper than our differences where we are simply people made in the image of God all seeking to follow Christ, and also to step into kairos time and out of chronos time. If we can really do that, we may find the kingdom of God as a present reality, which is what Jesus said it was.

  4. Linda Roberts-Baca February 29, 2012 at 8:09 pm #

    I wish more young men thought like you, Peter: to see beyond appearances to the heart of the matter. Peace to you and grace.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Brian McLaren in gesprek met Peter Rollins « from dialogue to discipleship - December 15, 2008

    […] 15 december, 2008 bij 9:47 am · Ingedeeld onder Philosophy & Religion YouTube – Brian McLaren talks with Peter Rollins. […]

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  3. Sunday Devotional: Irish Edition « zoecarnate - November 14, 2011

    […] to devote some time to reading this one? It’s right here on my new blog – MikeMorrell.org. Please update your RSS feeds, bookmarks, and blog rolls. Thanks! Like […]

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