Send Us All

Not like the vaulted cathedrals,

Not like the pews with names and reservations,

Not like the hair-sprayed televangelists,

Not like the nice churches who say nice things to nice people,

Here at our doors shall stand a sign: All are welcome!

Open hearts, aflame with the burning love of God,

Open, open, open, to all who come.

Keep, O normal churches, 

your nice people, 

your beautiful people, 

your people who have their shit together and put on pretty faces.

Give us your freaks and your punks, 

your hippies and granolas, 

your Goths and your bikers.

Give us your homeless and your unemployed,

your job-hoppers and bed-hoppers, 

your addicts and your hard drinkers.

Give us your hookers and your strippers,

your gamblers and smokers,

your dippers and your chewers.

Give us your church-haters and your liberals,

your atheists and agnostics,

your fundamentalists and your prudes.

Give us your gays and your lesbians,

your transvestites and transsexuals,

your offenders and your victims.

Give us your polluters and your tree-huggers,

your executives and lawyers,

your tax-evaders and your tax-collectors.

Give us your doubters and your name-it-and-claim-its,

your hypocrites and holier-than-thous,

your skeptics and your relativists.

Give us your seekers and your strugglers,

your lovers and haters,

your saints and your sinners.

Send us all of these, for they are like us.

We lift high the cross of Christ, 

Brother of exiles, Friend of sinners.

His nail-pierced hands shout world-wide welcome

For all who long to breathe free,

For all who long to find home,

For all who didn't measure up, 

For all who need a new start,

For all who want a new world.

We lift high the cross of Christ,

So that we will all be transformed together.

100 Things I Love About Korea: #70 - The Slow, Unsteady Opening of North Korea

This is a repost from July 14, 2011.  I had hoped to be here when North Korea opens up.  I guess there's better than a 50/50 chance it will happen within the next 10 years.

Coca-cola and KFC have recently signed deals to establish operations in North Korea.  (Short article ... slightly longer article).  So far, they will be limited to hotels and tourist locations serving foreigners.  However, make no mistake about it, this is a step into the future.
Communism can only survive within a closed system.  Dictators maintain power by limiting information.  (And yes, all communist leaders are dictators of one variety or another.)  With external contact comes information.  With information comes power.  With power for the people comes the fall (slow or fast) of all dictatorships.  Once people know there is an outside world where life is far better, they demand to participate in that better-ness, and they rid themselves of their ineffective leaders.
This is how it went in Eastern Europe.  This is how it happened in Africa and Latin America.  This is how communism has slowly been transitioning to capitalistic democracy in China.  And this is the beginning of the end for North Korea.
Actually, this is not the first crack.  Mass starvation, mass illegal immigration, and mass corruption were the first real cracks.  Porous borders with China brought black market capitalism and information (in the form of cell phones and DVDs).  International aid workers were a steady drip, drip, drip of outside influence.
But now, now, after these subterranean foundation shifts, we see the crack going up the wall, and it looks like the Coca-cola trademark wave.