We drive across the East African plains and wonder at the moonscape they have become.  Along the roadside, the trees stand brittle and covered in a heavy coat of dust.  The faces of the little shacks along the way are the same.  Fine, powdery dust has lifted easily in the dry wind and painted everything a lifeless brown.  The monotony of color is strange and disturbing.

Even from my desk by the window in my bedroom at our house set in a watered garden, I can see the dust.  Carried on the tired wind, it billows against Mt. Meru, the quiet volcanic mountain that our city sprawls at the base of.  Instead of misty blankets of moisture, Meru is shrouded in a gritty cloud of dust. Though I don't see it coming through my window, I feel the build up on my keyboard and stop to wipe it often.

Shane Claiborne is someone I’ve been following for quite some time—someone who I greatly admire and who I believe is an important, prophetic voice for the church today. If you’ve read his books or heard him speak, you know how provocative and compelling and fascinating he is. In my book on Christian hipster culture, Shane gets more than a few paragraphs mention.

I recently had the chance to interview Shane as an online feature to go along with the cover story for the latest Biola Magazine. You can read the interview by clicking here, but here is a little excerpt:

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You are staring at the bumper in front of you as you drive to work and half listen to the radio. As you sip your hot coffee with Splenda, you hear about “Geithner’s $2 trillion plan to remove toxic assets and restore liquidity to the financial sector.” Huh? What the heck does that mean? Maybe one of the reasons we have reacted so strongly to the AIG bonuses is that at least we can understand the issue. Taking money from taxpayers and giving it to executives as a bonus for destroying a company: bad. $2 trillion for removal of toxic assets: who knows? Perhaps if we have a better understanding of this economic mess, we can hold Congress accountable for acting like Red Bull crazed 9^th graders.

So, I’m going to try to lay this out.

Geithner: Our Secretary of the Treasury, appointed by President Obama and approved by Congress. He largely works alone, since some members of Congress (who are supposed to review the appointments of Assistant Secretaries) have become so antagonistic and unpleasant that they have scared off anyone from becoming one of Geithner’s  assistants. Tough job! Lonely at the top!