Emersion Books

Green Press Initiative Info.

Some of you have asked about our Green Press initiative that you see on all the emersion books. Here is some info. on Baker's Green Press/ Recycling.

Recycled Paper Time-line at Baker Publishing Group

2003: Baker Publishing Group begins purchasing recycled paper selectively for non-fiction paperbacks.

2004: BPG directs the printer, Bethany Press International, to permanently stock recycled paper for BPG's use.

2005: To promote responsible paper use, BPG mailed a sample copy of a book, using recycled paper, to the CEOs of all ECPA member publishers. // Baker Publishing Group becomes the only Evangelical company listed as a member of the Green Press Initiative. http://www.greenpressinitiative.org

2006 - All paperback non-fiction now uses recycled paper, both new titles and later all reprints. // The Green Press logo is adapted for use on the copyright page of all our books using recycled paper. // In November, BPG submits a stewardship advocacy piece to the ECPA e-link.

2007 - In January, BPG hosts a lunch meeting at their office for four local Christian publishers and two Michigan printers. Two representatives from Green Press Initiative lead a discussion on recycled paper choices. // BPG adds the following categories to the books using recycled paper: hardback, academic, and Short Run. // Baker Publishing Group is one of five publishers on the Leadership Council of the Book Industry Treatise on Responsible Paper Use.

Stones: By Kester Brewin

Stones

If we could all

just stop throwing stones,

and stoop, knees bent

and write in the dust,

we'd see that the dust

was once stone -

grand, and hard, and proud, and tough -

now ground and dissolved

in grace and tears.

So... how much better

to be a grain of dirt

on that kind prophet’s hands

than a stone

in the cold, accusing Temple

of the pure?

© KB 2007

I wrote this poem out of anguish, I suppose. Anguish at the terrible propensity we have for throwing stones at one another, when deep down we all know we are all worthy of accusation. I simply love that passage in Scripture, where Jesus ‘writes in the dust’. I quote in the book how Rowan Williams discusses this passage in his short meditation on being in New York on the morning of September 11th 2001.  He writes that Jesus “does not draw a line, fix an interpretation, tell the woman who she is and what her fate should be. He allows a moment, in which people are given time to see themselves differently precisely because he refuses to make the sense they want. When he lifts his head, there is both judgement and release. So this is writing in the dust because it tries to hold that moment for a little longer, long enough for some of our demons to walk away.

Emergence 2007: Austin, TX

October 19-20, 2007
Austin, TX at Gateway Church.

Speakers: This weekend conversation will feature many of the key leaders in the emerging church movement such as Dan Kimball, John Burke, Doug Pagitt, Scot McKnight, Andrew Jones, Karen Ward, Danielle Shroyer, and Mark Driscoll. View the speakers here.

Visit: http://www.zondervan.com/Cultures/en-US/NPC/RegionalEvent/ for more information.

Soliton 2007/ Kester's Release Party Photos

There are photos on Flickr from Kester Brewin's Release Party and Soliton 2007.

Kester Brewin speaking at Soliton. Click Here to see more photos...

The Falling Man | It is Finished

By Kester Brewin

Some time ago in the UK, Channel 4 showed a documentary (based on the by Tom Junod) about Richard Drew's horrific photograph from 9/11, which became known as 'the falling man.' Released and used by some in the press in the immediate reports, it then 'sank without trace' soon after in an act of seeming self-censorship.Esquire article

The documentary was a moving and challenging exploration of the history and impact of the photograph. While coroners and others appeared to be trying to revise history and deny that anyone had jumped from the towers, the programme proposed that the image ought to stand as a defining image of the absolute horror of the attacks.

Among the interviews of relatives of those who had died was one with a man who knew his wife had jumped. "After the suffocating smoke, the intense heat and lack of air, to jump must have felt like blessed relief. She would have felt like she was flying." Others didn't agree. The jumpers had 'committed suicide', and thus condemned themselves to hell. They had somehow been cowardly, not thinking of their loved ones.

Personally, I was deeply moved by the horror of the decision these people were forced to take. In one sense, this became for me a meditation on violence and technology (which I have posted on before here). In the face of an act of horrific violence, with a huge jumbo-jet slamming into a structure that had lifted people 107 stories into the air, with the smoke and heat of aviation fuel, pinned in place by broken lift-shafts and burning stairwells, these people had to chose to whether to stay and face certain death after some unknowable wait among hot steel and choking flames, or let go and chose their own exit.

Perhaps they jumped out of sheer terror. We cannot know. But the 'falling man' image, with its almost serene and calm descent, offers us the possibility that it was as a brave act of self-determination that these people stepped out into the peace of clear air, away from the terror and technology that had rounded on them. That rather than be killed by those who brought suggest terrible weapons against them, they denied the terrorists' desire to kill, and chose to take their own lives.

And thus we are turned to reflect on the other falling man, pinned in place by a terrible and crude technology, who chose to let go, defied our violence against him, opened his hands and exerted this great act of sacrificial self-determination. "It is finished," he announced, choosing his own moment to descend into hell, "And breathed his last."