A New Idea
Stories
Lectionary Tales For The Pulpit
Series IV Cycle C
The Utne Reader (named after its founder) is not at all like the Reader's Digest. Like the Digest, they reprint articles that have appeared elsewhere. But the editors see themselves as part of the alternative press, offering their readers articles, essays, and features culled from obscure and little-known underground presses. Flip through the Utne and you'll find articles like "Meaningful Ritual," "In Praise Of Idleness," and "Animals Are Us."
Last year, the editors sponsored a Great Ideas Contest. They invited their readership to submit cool ideas for brightening up the world and making it a better place. If the world is broken, they said, what would you like to do to fix it?
The ideas poured in. The results were creative, although frequently idealistic and incapable of actual fulfillment. Still, they were all provocative and to that extent helpful in furthering the public debate about what ails our world and what might be done about it.
Tracy Bee, of Bloomington, Illinois, suggests that we let the world vote for the U.S. president. Most Americans don't vote anyway, and since the president is one of the most powerful figures in the world, why not let the world vote?
Amy Rose Dobson thinks auto manufacturers ought to equip cars with friendlier horns. Not that the loud, warning blast should be done away with, but other options should be available. Perhaps you want to gently remind someone that the light has turned green, or apologize for inadvertently cutting someone off in traffic, you blow a slow, mellow, and playful horn instead of the brassy, loud one. Sort of the honking equivalent of saying, "Oops! Excuse me!"
One wrote in saying that street corners should be designated for public discourse. Laws that prohibit loitering actually tear at the fabric of social intercourse thus further isolating us from one another.
Mazal from Silverthorne, Colorado, thinks that everyone should be given two or three airline tickets to spend over a lifetime in order to travel on a special occasion, perhaps a wedding or a funeral. This would give low income people an opportunity to fulfill their dreams of a trip to the big city or a vacation at the ocean or in the mountains.
New ideas. They're born in the hearts and minds of people who dream dreams.
Like the people who came to hear John the Baptist preach. They, too, had a dream. Now, as they watched and listened to this charismatic and prophetic figure, they waited "expectantly" and they "wondered in their hearts." John raised their expectations, their hopes. He led them to believe that a new era was about to be ushered in. They dared to think -- they dared to believe -- that he might, just might, be the New Idea, the Christ, the hope of Israel.
Of course, John set them straight. He was not the one, but he could point them to the One. He was the One with new ideas, and his program would be so revolutionary, so radical that he would not survive.
But the world would never be the same.
Last year, the editors sponsored a Great Ideas Contest. They invited their readership to submit cool ideas for brightening up the world and making it a better place. If the world is broken, they said, what would you like to do to fix it?
The ideas poured in. The results were creative, although frequently idealistic and incapable of actual fulfillment. Still, they were all provocative and to that extent helpful in furthering the public debate about what ails our world and what might be done about it.
Tracy Bee, of Bloomington, Illinois, suggests that we let the world vote for the U.S. president. Most Americans don't vote anyway, and since the president is one of the most powerful figures in the world, why not let the world vote?
Amy Rose Dobson thinks auto manufacturers ought to equip cars with friendlier horns. Not that the loud, warning blast should be done away with, but other options should be available. Perhaps you want to gently remind someone that the light has turned green, or apologize for inadvertently cutting someone off in traffic, you blow a slow, mellow, and playful horn instead of the brassy, loud one. Sort of the honking equivalent of saying, "Oops! Excuse me!"
One wrote in saying that street corners should be designated for public discourse. Laws that prohibit loitering actually tear at the fabric of social intercourse thus further isolating us from one another.
Mazal from Silverthorne, Colorado, thinks that everyone should be given two or three airline tickets to spend over a lifetime in order to travel on a special occasion, perhaps a wedding or a funeral. This would give low income people an opportunity to fulfill their dreams of a trip to the big city or a vacation at the ocean or in the mountains.
New ideas. They're born in the hearts and minds of people who dream dreams.
Like the people who came to hear John the Baptist preach. They, too, had a dream. Now, as they watched and listened to this charismatic and prophetic figure, they waited "expectantly" and they "wondered in their hearts." John raised their expectations, their hopes. He led them to believe that a new era was about to be ushered in. They dared to think -- they dared to believe -- that he might, just might, be the New Idea, the Christ, the hope of Israel.
Of course, John set them straight. He was not the one, but he could point them to the One. He was the One with new ideas, and his program would be so revolutionary, so radical that he would not survive.
But the world would never be the same.
