grace.kindness.peace.disruption.pain.processing.rinse.repeat.have a nice day.

 The community center of The Simple Way, a (unfortunately) unique community that serves in one of the poorest communities in Philadelphia, was struck with a seven-alarm fire yesterday. Eight families are currently homeless, and several small businesses have been destroyed as a result.

Some of you may have heard about The Simple Way through the writings of Shane Claiborne, the author of The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. Shane and another member of The Simple Way lost all of their belongings.

If you would like to help make turn this tragedy into something beautiful, you can make a tax-deductible donation to the rebuilding effort or to support the families affected through one of The Simple Way's partner organizations, EAPE. Tax-deductible donations can be made at https://www.tonycampolo.org/online_donation.php. Be sure to check one or both of the boxes to direct the donation to TSW (The Simple Way) funds.

Also, if you're up for learning more about The Simple Way, and/or up for a compelling read, get a copy of Shane's book, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. You won't regret it.

…

Note: Thanks to Dwight for the heads up on this story.

What do you think of when you think of justice? Do you think of justice? Are you just? What does that even mean? How does your faith in God relate to what you believe about justice?

In my mind, justice was relegated to thoughts of criminal convictions for about the first 25 years of my life. I would celebrate, mildly as it was, events in which I thought justice has been achieved. "Justice" was even a cheer that I would yell when one of the players on my high school basketball team would make a free throw after being fouled. Needless to say, I didn't think too deeply about the full profundity of this word and its ramifications at that time. In college I had several friends that were interested in justice issues. I thought they were weird, but only because I didn't understand their passion or motivation. I respected them greatly, and even thought some of the females quite cute. But I digress …

Over the last many years justice has become more important to me. I cannot remember what it was that opened my eyes, but the topic gained a brand new importance when I began to understand that the God I claimed to follow found it to be ever so important. If I could continue to claim that I followed Jesus, I would have to make justice a part of my life. And it's bold, but I believe it: if you claim to follow Jesus, and do not find justice important, you have seriously misunderstood him and do not understand his message. And it's worth taking another look into both.

There's a new book out that prompts this little reflection. I've only read the free excerpt so far, but its content and premise give me much hope. It's called Justice in the Burbs: Being the Hands of Jesus Wherever You Live by Will and Lisa Samson. There's a pdf excerpt available from the publisher. It gives me hope for a few reasons. First, it reminds me that I'm not alone in wrestling with this dangerous message that God is a god of justice that calls all to be agents of his justice in the world. Second, it provides another opportunity to wrestle with being an agent of justice, both as I read the book to challenge myself, and as I take its challenges into conversation with others. I long to desire justice more, and to desire more justice as life-giving acts of obedience and worship to God. And I hope that this book will help me with these desires.

I hope that you will join me in this conversation, whether you read this book on justice, another book on justice, the Bible (yet another book on justice), or a drink coaster. Challenge yourself by pondering why you value justice when you see it, why you do or do not seek it out, and what it means to live justice.

Here are a few quotes from the excerpt that resonated with me:

Somehow, as we became adults, we did not see the story of justice as a part of the story of God. How did that happen? And why? (p. 12)

But something does drive each of us, doesn’t it? That something can be personal preservation. It can be economic gain. It can be love. It can be hate. It can be fear. But what lies behind those values? We believe that beneath those surface values, every person holds a particular view of God and how he would have them act in the world. (p. 14)

… they were seemingly destined to live lives of busy insignificance. (p. 23)

But perhaps we have forgotten, or perhaps we never knew, what a life lived justly might look like. (p. 25)

The English language is beautiful, but we have a peculiar problem in English. In Spanish, French, Italian, and most other human languages, the New Testament word dikaios is always translated "justice," a sturdy and social word that evokes fairness, integrity, right treatment, and equity in human relationships. But in English, translators often choose to translate dikaios as the word "righteousness." This is unfortunate, even tragic, because many people hear the word "righteousness" and think only of personal and private "piety" or "religiosity" or "personal morality." As important as these things are, they are not dikaios. (p. 30-31)

How would your interpretation and application of Scripture like Matthew 6:33 change if translated in English, "But seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things will be added to you." Would it?

Seeing as I soon will be going jobless again to enter the halls of academia, I'm looking for ways to save cash. To help me in this endeavor my parents offered to put me on their Verizon family cell phone plan. I'm very thankful for their offer as this should save me about $40 a month – which in Seattle equates to many pounds of salmon. Now I'm not (too) picky, but there are a few phone features that I will want. Ever since my Siemens S46 (may that battle horse rest in peace) I have enjoyed address book syncing between my home computer and my phone. I will never go back, if I can help it. And today, I can help it. The choices of Verizon phones that sync with Macs is limited. My choice came down to the pink RAZR V3m or the silver V3m. Having recently donated all my pink clothes to Goodwill, the choice was obvious. Stephanie, a somewhat glum sales associate for Verizon, pulled my silver V3m out of the box at the store. Twenty minutes later Verizon sent me a message to inform me that I was indeed on their network. My days at Cingular were over, at least for the next two years.

When I arrived home, I put on my geek hat and began the process of syncing my phone via Bluetooth. After pairing the device via Bluetooth Preferences, I opened iSync to transfer data. To my chagrin, the calendar syncing option was greyed out. No bueno. On a positive note, the Address Book synced smashingly.

But then I slept. And dreams of complete cellular satisfaction caused me to rise with new motivation. Forty-five minutes of web surfing later I found a long rant, from which I mined some gold. It turns out that my phone was recognized as a RAZR V3c, instead of a V3m. I came to learn that this didn't matter, as calender syncing was, by default, turned off for both. But to fix it I'd have to modify one of the system files. If you're not sure what you're doing, then find a geek. They're around.

1. Close iSync if you have it open.
2. Open a Terminal window (if you don't know what this is just spotlight "Terminal")
3. From the command line run the following (it's small, but it's there):
   • vi /Applications/iSync.app/Contents/PlugIns/ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/Contents/PlugIns/PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin/Contents/Resources/MetaClasses.plist
4. The file you need to modify should now be open in the text editing program called "vi".
5. Then type a colon (":"), the number 1863, and hit enter. This takes you to line 1863.
6. Disclaimer: I don't know what version of OS X you have, or what version of iSync. This may or may not work for you. Do not blame me. These steps worked for OS X 10.4.9 and iSync 2.4.
7. Ok, look up about 16 lines. There should be a line that says something like "RAZR V3c". If not, you're file is different from mine. Find the section for the RAZR V3c. If you don't know how, find a geek. If you don't know one, donate some money to my grad school fund (forthcoming PayPal link) and drop me an email.
8. At this point line 1863 should say false (within < />) and should be just below a line that says "supportsCalendarsSync" (within tags that say "key").
9. To change the false to true, use your mad vi skills. If you don't have mad vi skills, first try the following:

• type a colon (":")
• copy the following and paste it in the Terminal window: s/false/true/
• hit enter
• "false" should now be "true"

10. you'll want to save and close the file by doing the following:

• type a colon (":")
• type "wq" and press enter

That's it. Now open iSync and tell it to sync your calenders with your phone.

I hope that setting your V3m to sync calendars is as easy for you as it has been for me. There's no guaranteeing this, as I've seen many people complaining on the Internet over this very issue. However, we must remember that Verizon is the real culprit here as the phones they sell are designed to do these tasks, but the man locks them down so that the functionality doesn't work, or you have to pay per service. O how I would like to copy my own ring tones and pictures to my phone, but Verizon says otherwise.