Three Mile an Hour God

Product Information

Water Buffalo Theology is probably Koyama's best-known work. The book was partly inspired by Koyama's work as a missionary in Northern Thailand. [4] His works of Mount Sinai and Mount Fuji and Water Buffalo Theology are, in part, an examination of Christian theology within the context of Thai Buddhist society, growing out of Koyama's missionary experience in Thailand. Koyama was an editor of the South East Asia Journal of Theology, for which he himself wrote a considerable number of articles. Koyama published at least thirteen books, including "On Christian Life" (currently available only in Japanese) and over one hundred scholarly articles. Koyama's work has been described as helping to bridge the boundaries between East and West, between Christianity and Buddhist thought, between the rich and the poor. It has been pointed out that he has no overarching system in this theology, which shows commitment to serving a "broken Christ trying to heal a broken world" [ citation needed]. He was named as an important figure for the development of a world Christianity. [2] God matched our steps as we realized we sin, mindlessly destroying the environment and the homes of our fellow walkers, Oluwatosin, José, and the people of Sahel, whose water wells, already miles away, are either drying up too early in the season or being destroyed by torrential rainfall instead of reserving water when it’s available. And yet, however strange and perhaps even deforming it must have been to grow up in that setting, Kierkegaard’s “imaginary walks . . . did nothing to hamper his creativity.” Indeed, Buchanan suggests, they “prepared him for the real thing” (when he grew up, he walked the streets of Copenhagen daily). They “made him more awake, more attentive, more humble, more curious, more approachable.” And then we’re able to see how Kierkegaard’s imaginary walks bear on the theme of “Walking as Flight”: “For your next walk, imagine you are that person, that man, that woman, that child,”—in other words, a walker “displaced by war or hunger or catastrophe.” Love has its speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. It goes on in the depth of our life, whether we notice or not, at three miles an hour. It is the speed we walk and therefore the speed the love of God walks.’ There is no indication here that God does this in judgement. God simply says that he does it. I don’t know what that means, but, at a minimum, it indicates that the God who creates the universe and loves it into existence, the God who is love, is deeply implicated in human difference, not in terms of judgement, but as a loving, creating presence.

Three Mile An Hour God is broken up into four parts: personal spirituality, global reflections, national-level reflections, and call to social justice. Again, each centers around the slow God: how does the slow God meet us in our most present needs, concerns, and aliments?Now, I will confess I never read the book. I feel like I spent enough time with Dale while he was still doing ministry to understand the main idea.

If you have read Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust, you will recall a striking and oft-quoted passage that Buchanan refers to in his first chapter, when he suggests that we walk not only for utilitarian reasons but to be “closer to reality”: We didn’t get here overnight. This country has been divided racially for hundreds of years. Those structures are still there and will still be there until Jesus comes again. But, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this if from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.”Koyama confronts both the West and the East of their obsession with technology -- especially its convenience and the idol of efficiency at the expense of others. He is both moral and spiritual in his call to action. He names the evil within our idolatrous thinking and lifestyles -- like a good Lutheran! He is sharp yet not inaccessible -- in fact, his writing is surprisingly accessible for English as his second language.

The seed of this book was annoyance, or grief, or something in between. I was annoyed or grieved or whatever it is that lies between that many spiritual traditions have a corresponding physical discipline and Christianity has none. Hinduism has yoga. Taoism has tai chi. Shintoism has karate. Buddhism has kung fu. Confucianism has hapkido. Sikhism has gatka.We walked over 200 miles in 15 days from the headquarters of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in Louisville, KY to the gathering of the 223rd General Assembly in St. Louis, MO, to ask the PC(USA) to divest from fossil fuels, learn more about climate change, and minimize our own carbon footprint. Each day went something like this: eat, worship, sunscreen, walk, sunscreen, talk, repeat, … and then we would collapse on our host church’s floor. Upon arrival at the end of each day, across Indiana and Illinois, we were welcomed to eat, fellowship, and worship with our host congregation. At a pace of about three miles each hour, we were walking every day from 7:30 in the morning to about 2:30 in the afternoon. I love these four words from John 9:1: "As he passed by . . ."A great many events in the gospels happened, “as he passed by,” along the way. On the road. In the marketplace. Out in the countryside. By the city gate. On the shoreline, by the water. In a home, at the dinner table. Very little of Jesus' ministry took place "at church," in the temple. Jesus’ ministry happened while he walked, “as he passed by.” When you travel at three miles each hour, you can’t avoid the beauty—the God—in the details. You embrace the shade of clouds, you respect the oozing blisters on your feet, you feel the asphalt heat bathing your face, you smell the scent of the wildflowers, and you get the name of the woman mowing her lawn at eight in the morning. We witnessed the details, and in doing so, we were reintroduced to the imago Dei (image of God) in ourselves, the imago Dei in each other, the imago Dei in southern Indiana, the imago Dei in southern Illinois, the imago Dei in East St. Louis, the imago Dei in MRTI, and the imago Dei in a fossil-free PC(USA). He cites Luke 24:32, a scripture passage from the Emmaus Road where travelers remember how Jesus walked and talked with them. Jesus is a walking God; God is a ‘three mile an hour God.’