Saturday, December 22, 2007

Where I've Been Lately

This has been a busy season for us...really, a busy year or so. Our lives stay at some pace of busy generally, but these last several months have been sped up considerably. I am amazed that I still have no gray hairs. The gods favor me I guess...or wait, perhaps they don't favor me and it's that I have no wisdom...anyway.

These last several months have had us very involved with a book project that some friends are writing. It's a provocative socio-political book dealing with the subversiveness of what it might mean to follow Jesus. The book is entitled JESUS FOR PRESIDENT: Politics for Ordinary Radicals. Chris and Shane work hard, distilling eons of rich Christian wisdom and tradition to help us find our way today.

The gist? Perhaps you cannot be a "good patriot" and a "good Christian". Perhaps the call of Christ is to somehow transcend (while even inhabiting more deeply?) the culture you are a part of. Leaving behind old definitions of family and tribe for newer, more expansive Kingdom language where we are all family and of one tribe.

The book is about allegiance...to ideals, ideologies, parties, nation-states, religions, etc.

Anyway, that's what the book is about. Our involvement was primarily translative and interpretive...and perhaps secondarily slightly editorial. We gave visual enhancement or richness. Color from black and white characters on a page. I'll eventually throw some of the designed pages up here, but I think it too soon for that.

It's been an amazing project to work on, albeit incredibly consuming. But all-consuming meaningful work has its own rewards.

And as it would turn out, Barnes & Noble are going to feature the book on a cardboard standalone thingie. Cool.

It's been amazing to work with friends as contributors...we ended up with a moving art piece of 368 pages. Wow. I cannot believe we pulled that off.

The book will be out in Spring '08 if I have my calculations correct. You can pre-order it on Amazon here.

The next several days will be full of edits, technicalities, and other such tasks. But as of January 4th, it's off to the printers...woo-hoo!

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