From the Salmon

This past Easter, I shared a passage from N.T. Wright that I still find pretty compelling. Wright wrote that Easter marks not so much the end of an old story but the start of something new:

The gospel resurrection stories end, not with “well, that’s all right then”, nor with “Jesus is risen, therefore we will rise too”, but with “God’s new world has begun, therefore we’ve got a job to do, and God’s Spirit to help us do it”. That job is to plant the flags of resurrection — new life, new communities, new churches, new faith, new hope, new practical love…

I thought of this image over the weekend as I considered how to continue with my previous posts about the pitfalls and possibilities of this interactive medium. Is it possible, I wondered, that a humble site like this (or some of the others I visit) could possibly aspire to be a “flag of resurrection”?

I realize that’s a pretty highfalutin’ assertion. And as with my previous discussion of community, it’s quite possible that I’m taking on a tad more than I should.

And yet, over the past year or so that I’ve been regularly reading the sites listed on my sidebar and others, I’ve learned a lot, I’ve been challenged quite a bit by my interactions with others, and I think I’ve grown both intellectually and spiritually. So maybe a lofty aspiration to “new conversations” might not be too much of a stretch.

But what do I mean by that?

Well, if you remember back to the beginning of this discussion, I wrote about David Dark’s idea that the lifeblood of a vital community, be it that of the American democracy or the Christian church, is the lively give-and-take of honest conversation. Yet I went on to show how easily our conversations in this medium can become fractious and can reinforce already entrenched divisions in our society and our churches.

I propose that it doesn’t have to be that way, that we might instead pursue transformational conversations that point to reconciliation. After all, that’s what “God’s new world” is all about, right? Renewal, restoration and reconciliation.

If we are to aspire to this, I’d like to suggest that these conversations need to be marked by three characteristics: truthfulness, openness, and humility.

Tonight, we’ll look at the first of those.

Truthfulness

To begin with, I think that truthful conversation is about more than just being honest. Honesty in conversation refers to how we go about presenting ourselves. It means that we don’t engage in rhetorical trickery just to win an argument. It requires us to say what we really think, even if that means admitting weakness or confessing that we don’t know something.

And this honesty is certainly important.

But I think that truthful refers to an orientation. It means that while we are being honest, we are working to point our conversations in the direction of truth. I don’t want to belabor the mechanics of this idea, but I think it changes our conversations in a few ways.

For one thing, it gives each discussion the potential of becoming part of a journey. And that means we can’t stay in our trenches, lobbing rhetoric and ad hominem attacks at each other. We have to leave our positions of safety, approach each other (more on this later), and together move our conversation towards truth. This last part can require quite a bit of negotiation and may ultimately lead to failure. But if we’re finally able to come together, face the same direction and set off in pursuit of a common goal, then perhaps reconciliation is within reach.

One more thought on this before I move on. When Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus about the goal of unity among the people of God, he said that one of the chief ways to bring about that unity was to begin “speaking the truth in love.” While just about every English version of the Bible renders the phrase this way, I’ve read a few commentators (most recently Volf) who suggest that this translation is inadequate. They claim that the the verb is not “to speak” but rather “to truth.” Now, I’m no Greek scholar (Leighton?), but if we accept this, it means Paul is calling us to something broader than just speaking truth. He’s calling us to do truth, to live truth. And, most importantly, to do so in love. Maybe we can talk more about what this looks like later, but for now, I’m just trying to give us new ways to think about conversation, and I particularly like where this one leads.

Part 2 is now up.

My last update on Sunday night’s Katrina post was slightly relieved and even a little hopeful. On Monday morning, it truly seemed as though New Orleans had escaped the worst of the hurricane and that the predictions of catastrophic flooding had been averted.

Well, that momentary relief has turned to horror as the levees began to break this morning. With floods rising in New Orleans and cities like Gulfport and Biloxi bearing the full fury of the storm, it looks like this might be the most costly disaster in American history.

Once it flows in, the water will not drain from New Orleans because of the very levees that protect the city and that largely held during the hurricane. Those levees, built to keep water out, are now keeping the water in, and reports from across the city indicate that water levels are rising.

There was also growing concern that the floodwaters were carrying sewage, spilled fuel and other potentially dangerous pollutants.

In addition, bodies were seen floating in the rising waters, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin reported. But it was not immediately clear whether they were victims of Katrina or corpses unearthed from the above-ground tombs of the city’s cemeteries.

It now appears that those who evacuated the city may not be allowed to return for as long as a month. I can’t even imagine how confusing and scary that must be.

I posted these earlier, but here they are again:
American Red Cross
Catholic Charities USA
Others…

Maybe if stand on one foot and hold the antennas just so, I can keep this site up for more than a minute or two at a time. Sheesh.

I apologize for the intermittent Salmon.

You’ll be happy to know that those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked, have been sacked.

:: :: :: ::

Update: Good grief. We apologize again for the fault in the servers.

The directors of the firm hired to continue the Salmon after the other people had been sacked, wish it to be known that they have just been sacked.

Okay, one more perspective on Pat Robertson and then I’ll let it go. At least until the next time he makes with the crazytalk.

Anyhow, y’all have graciously put up with me, but my sister’s actually the passionate one in the family:

i think that my biggest feeling is not anger or indignation…but one of sadness. sadness that one man’s comments have overshadowed the good that’s being done by christians all over the globe on an hourly basis.

pat robertson is one man — and one man only. and granted, robertson has a major platform in the spotlight and therefore needs to be held accountable for his stewardship of that spotlight…but still, he is just one voice. and in light of that, i refuse to let his voice overshadow the countless voices of christians working to help bring an end to suffering, starvation, hunger, and violence all over the world.

it’s been been a tough couple of weeks for christians everywhere — one of those weeks where i feel like i’m supposed to apologize for being a christian. but to do so would be to turn my back on people such as jenna who’s followed god’s calling from the inner city streets of oakland to the poverty of kenya, or jacob who dodged bullets in the back alleys of palestine in order to bring the word of god’s peace to grade school students in ramallah, or to our parents who gave up a great many things to help fight starvation and infant deaths in developing nations.

most importantly, to apologize for being a christian would be to turn my back on god.

so i hear pat robertson’s voice and i accept its challenge. not a challenge to retaliate, or to excuse, or to hide…but a challenge to join others and speak the truth of christ’s love in a voice so loud that it will overcome any doubt that robertson has planted in the hearts of people everywhere.

so mr. robertson, bring it on. in the name of jenna, and jacob, and brother roger, and my parents, and most importantly, in the name of christ, i am not afraid.

Please oh please oh please oh please let Hurricane Katrina miss New Orleans. Well, unless that means it would hit just to the west of the city, because that sounds like it would be even worse. Or is it the east? I’ve heard both. Hell, it’s probably all bad.

As for the person who visited here a little while ago with an IP that appeared to be from near the Big Easy, I’m flattered by your visit, but please… get the hell out of Dodge. I pray for your safety and for that of the rest of the people of New Orleans.

:: :: :: ::

Update: (2am PDT) I’ve been listening to coverage from the CBS affiliate in Baton Rouge, and maybe, just maybe, it looks like things are weakening slightly (it’s down to Category 4, at least) and flattening out a bit. It still looks like it’s going to be terribly destructive. But any glimmer of hope is good, I guess.

I hope this isn’t as necessary as it looks like it will be:
American Red Cross
Catholic Charities USA

Also, to the folks at ABC who continue to run promos on ESPN and elsewhere in the ABC family for that “Invasion” show in September… You know, the promos that begin with the ominous voiceover: “In the aftermath of a hurricane…” Yeah. Maybe you should shelve those for a little bit. Just sayin’.

I’m going to say a few more prayers and try to get some sleep.

:: :: :: ::

Update: (9am PDT) Whew. Obviously, she’s still an awfully dangerous and destructive storm, and even New Orleans isn’t out of harm’s way yet, but it looks like Katrina shifted enough to the east that the worst was avoided. Thank God.

It’s been a while since I got in on a little meme action. But it seems I done been tagged by Nicole. For those of you who have been following my book list, a few of these answers will come as no surprise.

1. Number of books you have owned:

Well, between the two of us, we’re at somewhere over 600 at the moment. But have owned? That’s an awfully tricky one. I tend to buy more bookcases before getting rid of books. Then again, we donated a few boxes to the Friends of the Berkeley Public Library a year or two ago. And then there were all those books I sold back in college. So, I don’t know… Let’s just call it an even 1,000 give or take a few hundred and move on.

2. Last book(s) I bought:

The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde — Fforde’s ffirst book after his delightful Thursday Next series. I’m having a difficult time getting into this one. It’s still fun and still has all the signs of a Fforde book, but I haven’t yet invested myself into his new set of characters. Maybe that will change by the end. I hope so.

The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann — I have a fairly tall pile of books that I want to read next. But this has been spoken of with such reverence by so many people I’m in the habit of reading that I might need to put it near the top of the pile.

3. Last book I completed:

Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation by Miroslav Volf — I just completed it this weekend, and the final chapter is the most challenging, so I’m still processing it. There is quite a bit in this book that I found compelling, and you should expect Volf to start showing up in future posts. But he also ends with a picture of God that disturbs me for reasons that I’m still thinking through.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me:

This isn’t a complete list. Rather, it’s a quick list of books that I adore. Were I to attempt to summarize why I love each of them, this post would take me a few more hours. So I won’t. And I’m not stopping at five, either. So there.

• The Brothers K by David James Duncan
• A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
• Gilead by Marylinne Robinson
• The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
• The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey
• Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
• Bloom County Babylon: Five Years of Basic Naughtiness by Berkeley Breathed
• Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
• The Complete Stories by Flannery O’Connor
• and whatever other books make me wake up in the middle of the night and kick myself for forgetting….

4b. What are you currently reading?

The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde — (see above)

The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard — I haven’t picked this up in a while, not because it isn’t excellent, but because I got distracted by other things.

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri — A Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of short stories. I’ve been reading this slowly and savoring each story. It’s lovely.

5. Which 5 bloggers are you passing this onto?

Hmmm… For some reason, I feel weird about tagging people. Some folks just plain don’t seem to go for the memes. Many of the folks I would ordinarily go to have already been tagged, especially since Nicole gave Kevin a head start. Other folks have already done this a while ago, I think.

So if you comment here or if you’re linked on my sidebar and you feel like doing this but haven’t been tagged, have at it.

Blue Girl, Red State (via Kevin Drum) tells the story of a friend who just came back from serving Sudanese refugees in Chad:

What she dealt with daily goes beyond the pale…beyond the nightmares of most people; Children with all four limbs hacked off right above the knee or below the elbow. Twelve year olds who died in childbirth after being gang-raped by the Janjaweed. Women who gave birth to rape-babies who were then cast out by their families for shaming the family name, leaving only one avenue of survival for themselves and their children after the camps: Prostitution.

What is fucking her up is the desperation, and the fact that she worked herself to death for over a month, and she still didn’t really save anyone. Now that she’s gone, it’s like she was never there. Even the ones she helped keep alive, she didn’t save. You try dealing with that reality.

And women are the preponderance of victims. Men do not leave the villages to go to the countryside to gather firewood and other necessary items of sustenance. Women venture out, even though every time they leave their villages, they are at horrific risk of being beaten and raped and disfigured. The reason they go instead of the men? The women are only attacked, the men are killed.

One thousand or so international aid workers are in Sudan and Chad. Those in Sudan are increasingly targeted by militias. Even those not targeted battle emotional exhaustion like the woman described above. They need our prayers, their organizations need our financial support, the American television media need to at least pretend like they care, and NATO needs to think about sending peacekeeping forces.

For starters.

Blue Girl, Red State finishes her post with this:

If you want to do something to show your support, give a few bucks to Darfur action by Amnesty International, or to Doctors Without Borders, or to the Quakers medical missions. Or the Red Cross, for cryin’ out loud! If you do, leave a post and we’ll let her know about your action.

And if you can’t donate money, that’s no hinderance to contributing to the common good. Just look around you and see something that needs to be done; be it picking up a candy wrapper in a parking lot or carrying an old ladies purchases to her car. And then step up and do it.

Update: 60 Minutes will be doing a segment about Darfur on Sunday night.

Before I read Pat Robertson’s attempt at an apology on Wednesday, I was actually going to write a fairly different post. I’m not sure how I was going to flesh this out, but I originally intended to explore the question of whether Pat’s call for assassination was really all that different from a pastoral or otherwise Christian support for the preemptive invasion of Iraq.

In the end, I’m glad I wrote the post that I did, particularly since Caleb at Mode for Caleb addressed a similar question much more articulately than I would have.

Caleb starts with an even more interesting observation:

I also think, however, that these kinds of public pile-ons, where everyone and his dog hastens to agree that so-and-so is a dog, have limited value. Yes, Robertson’s remarks deserve to be — must be — condemned by every right-thinking person. But that’s just the thing: because everyone agrees about that, condemning Robertson’s remarks easily becomes a reassuring kind of confirmation that “I am a right-thinking person.” And when that happens, when criticism becomes so unanimous and overweening that the offender stands alone with his sin, the ability to examine ourselves quickly weakens.

Now, while our cats have yet to register their opinion (maybe dogs are more judgmental?), I think Caleb is on to something here. As we sputter our well-justified outrage, how much is due to the abhorrent nature of the violation and how much is our own attempt to prove to ourselves or to our readers that we’re somehow “better” than that?

Don’t get me wrong. When a prominent voice claiming to speak for Christianity says something so clearly contrary to Christian teaching, then it is the duty of the Church to highlight the offense and call that person to repentance. But, like Caleb suggests, I think that we need to be careful that that’s all we’re doing.

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable….

In joining the chorus of condemnation, are we holding a fellow Christian accountable? Are we humbly declaring to those who might think otherwise that this is not what the Church is about? Or are we exalting ourselves, thanking God that we are not like Pat Robertson?

I don’t think it’s too presumptuous to say that we all succumb to that latter instinct. In a medium that is disproportionately fueled by indignation, we often seek to define ourselves to our readers by clearly delineating how much we are not like the latest crazy politician or wacky religious figure. And, frankly, it can be a lot of fun. After all, how can you not laugh a bit at a 75-year-old man who can leg press 2,000 pounds! (h/t Slacktivist)

But let’s not let that fun get in the way of our ability to examine our country, our church, and ourselves.

Brother Roger, who founded the Taizé community in France, was stabbed and killed during a prayer service earlier this week. I’m ashamed to say that I knew very little about this man or his community before his death.

But Meg at Bridget Jones Goes to Seminary did, for she spent time at Taizé only two months ago. Today, Meg finally wrote about Brother Roger’s death, in a post that is as confessional as it is beautiful.

Ultimately, Brother Roger’s gruesome death at the hands of this woman has been difficult for me to face head-on. I kept hoping a tidy, little theodicy would pop into being and make sense of it all. How does a man committed to God and exemplifying godly peace to the world, die at the hands of human violence? How will a community committed to reconciliation respond when the wrong is so gross and so intimate? How do I go through life in this sin-soaked world knowing that a moment and space I had trusted to be an oasis of peace has been marred by the raw evil I can acknowledge anywhere but there?

Let us be under no illusions, the entire cosmos groans with longing and expectation. Sin permeates every molecule of this world, even our most sacred spaces. Not to put too fine a theological point on it: life sucks. There are no garunteed happy endings, not even (or especially) for followers of Christ, who is the Crucified One.

And yet…

And yet.

I love those two words. Meg does, too.

Read the whole post.

Dear Rev. Robertson,

I’ve wrestled in the past with how I should feel when prominent Christians say, advocate, or do things that clearly violate the teachings and example of Jesus. Earlier this week, when you used your television broadcast to advocate the assassination of another human being, I once again felt the sadly all-too-familiar mix of frustration, anger and sadness.

Look, Pat, we all make mistakes. We all say things we probably shouldn’t. We all fall short of the glory of God. And when we do, the Bible calls us to something — something I know you are familiar with, because you keep claiming it’s what our country needs.

Repentance.

I’ll admit, I’ve watched with interest to see how you would respond to the controversy caused by your statements. As destructive as they were to the image of the Church, particularly in South America, they gave you an opportunity to demonstrate to the world what genuine Christian repentance looks like. It wasn’t an opportunity that in any way redeemed your original statements, but it was an opportunity nonetheless.

Actually, let’s make that a missed opportunity.

You started out by claiming that you had been misinterpreted:

I didn’t say “assassination.” I said our special forces should “take him out.” And “take him out” can be a number of things, including kidnapping; there are a number of ways to take out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted by the AP [Associated Press], but that happens all the time.

Then, when someone no doubt pointed out that you actually did say “assassination,” you issued an apology on your website:

Is it right to call for assassination? No, and I apologize for that statement.

That was certainly a good start, but if your goal was to model Biblical repentance, the rest of your statement was a profound failure.

You first turned to rationalization. But Hugo Chavez is really, really bad, you said. You reasserted your bizarre claim that the US should “wage war against one person” because it’s cheaper than war against a nation, a claim that sounds remarkably similar to advocating assassination.

Then you shifted to a “but Dietrich Bonhoeffer said…” defense. Which sounds good, except for the part where it’s an insult to Bonhoeffer. For one thing, Chavez is not Hitler. And Bonhoeffer wrestled profoundly with what his Christian duty might be, a struggle that followed him to jail and to his execution. Your proclamation was a self-described ad-lib from the comfort of your own television studio.

But you saved the best for last:

There are many who disagree with my comments, and I respect their opinions. There are others who think that stopping a dictator is the appropriate course of action. In any event, the incredible publicity surrounding my remarks has focused our government���s attention on a growing problem which has been largely ignored.

If you’re truly sorry, you don’t just “respect” the opinions of those who disagree with what you said. Those are the words of a man who still thinks he’s right. You don’t point out that other people think that your words were “appropriate,” unless you are admonishing them to join you in repentance. And you certainly don’t get to finish by claiming that some sort of good has come out of your actions, as if that somehow redeems them.

True Biblical repentance requires a deep humility: Have mercy on me, a sinner. And that’s it. There’s no Have mercy on me, but… There are no excuses, no rationalizations.

I know this is hard. Honestly, I’m not very good at repentance either. In fact, I pretty much suck at it. But I also know it’s essential. And I want to get better at it. I hope that, even after 75 years of life, you do too.

That’s why I urge you, while the world is still watching, to give it another shot.

P.S. One more thing, Pat. greg makes a good point: do you think it was appropriate that your apology, flawed though it may have been, only appeared on your website? Shouldn’t you apologize on your television broadcast to the people who first viewed your offensive statements? Maybe this could be your chance to get it right.

Every once in a while, I discover a product or a news story that, in a better world, would clearly be satire.

The latest such find? Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed!

This delightful tale is quite possibly the only children’s book ever to get a back cover blurb from Grover “Bipartisanship is another word for date rape” Norquist.

According to the publisher, this ain’t exactly Goodnight, Moon:

This full-color illustrated book is a fun way for parents to teach young children the valuable lessons of conservatism. Written in simple text, readers can follow along with Tommy and Lou as they open a lemonade stand to earn money for a swing set. But when liberals start demanding that Tommy and Lou pay half their money in taxes, take down their picture of Jesus, and serve broccoli with every glass of lemonade, the young brothers experience the downside to living in Liberaland.

Boy, it almost makes me wish I had kids so I would have someone not to read this to.

(Via Bookslut)

I used to enjoy a website named “The Shins Will Change Your Life.” Sadly, it seems to have vanished.

It was a kind of Hall of Shame for hyperbole in music review. You know, the kind of review that claims that this new band or new album is so transcendent that it will radically change reality as we know it in some dramatic fashion.

I miss that site already, because as I’ve started to write about music, it served as a good reminder of how easy it is to get caught up in a kind of dramatically escalating praise race when writing about music. It’s not enough that an album be good or even be great. It has to be the greatest thing ever, an album that will brighten your teeth or reverse the course of rivers.

I mention this because the next album that has the potential to send me into that dangerous territory is takk…, the upcoming album from Sigur Rós. The album isn’t out until September 12, but the boys from Iceland recently released “Sæglópur,” an advance track from the album, on iTunes.

I recently got an email announcing the release of “Sæglópur,” and it appears that the publicists have mercifully set the hyperbole bar so high, they’ve still given me lots of room for breathless praise:

A piano picks out a pretty riff, a glockenspiel plays an almost-not-there top-line and Jonsi’s airy vocal gently levitates above all. But then, just as you’re settled back soaking up the loveliness, the band launch an exocet missile into the middle of proceedings and, out of a clear blue sky, an intense bombardment begins.

Jonsi’s bowed guitar finds the power to instill the fear of God, while the bass and drums thunder alarmingly round your head and the piano takes on demonic overtones. Then suddenly, there is a melodic gap in the clouds and a chorus bursts forth only to be subsumed once more in the sturm und drang of this most powerful piece of music. Around the five-minute mark, however, the storm subsides for good, and open vistas of vast orchestral plains open up over the song’s last couple of minutes, suffused all about with an eerie heavenly glow.

The first time you hear this, it is a real-life hair-raising experience; your blood seems to run a little quicker and your skin goes properly prickly. There may be a tendency to feel somewhat lost for words for a few moments afterwards. In this regard, ‘Sæglópur’ may well be the purest distillation to date of the chemistry Sigur Rós have at their collective fingertips.

It is well documented that the group are eminently capable of spellbinding melodic delicacy and also bewildering towers of rock power, but never before have they been so effectively brought together in a way that leaves the listener quite so emotionally undone. ‘Sæglópur’ — as simple as its guitar, bass, drums and keys ingredients are — feels like a record of near divine inspiration.

Wow. If you say so.

I guess all that’s left is for you to download it.

If you dare.

I’m heading out the door for the weekend. Here are the first ten random songs that will be playing on my iPod as I drive:

1. Nothing Better (Styrofoam Mix) - The Postal Service
2. Don’t Get Me Wrong - The Pretenders
3. Fake Palindromes - Andrew Bird
4. History - Joseph Arthur
5. Mysterious Ways (Solar Plexus Club Mix) - U2
6. One Step Inside Doesn’t Mean You Understand - The Notwist
7. Hvalir I Utrymingarhaettu - Sigur Rós
8. Title and Registration (Original Version) - Death Cab for Cutie
9. The Tired Words - Norfolk & Western
10. The Jokes on Me - Power of Dreams

Gotta go. Have a good weekend.

I got the chance to see Erin McKeown and Kris Delmhorst tonight at The Independent in San Francisco. I’d seen Erin before, but it was maybe 3 or 4 years ago, when she was opening for Peter Mulvey at The Palms in Davis. She was witty, charming, and played well off of Peter. But even with the bluesy electric guitar, she was definitely doing the folky singer/songwriter thing.

Well, that didn’t quite prepare me for tonight. The girl’s five feet of rock star now. And I mean that in a good way.

Having a Neil Cleary on drums and the ubiquitous Julie Wolf on keyboards certainly helped fill out the sound. And The Independent isn’t exactly The Palms. But the biggest difference is Erin’s guitar work. She’s playing with all sorts of energy and confidence and aggressively attacking songs in a way that has left the f-word in the dust. It was a night of power pop, and it was truly enjoyable.

I didn’t have a copy of McKeown’s latest album, We Will Become Like Birds (iTunes), until I bought it at the show tonight. So I wasn’t familiar enough with the newer material to bother trying to keep a setlist. But the highlights were when Kris Delmhorst added her remarkable voice to the mix for a few songs, most notably “Air,” which closed the concert. For the encore, all four were back for the tear-up-the-floor-bring-the-house-down two-step revival of “La Petite Mort.”

I was never much of a beer fan in college. It wasn’t until much later that I realized it was because what I was offered bore little resemblence to actual beer. Over the past few years, I’ve enjoyed exploring the wider world of fermented hops and malts. I’ve meant to write more about that exploration, but I keep forgetting to do so.

Earlier this evening, Brandon posted a comment about Belgian and belgian-style ales that I thought was worth breaking out and expanding on a bit, because, well, I can.

Chimay, Duvel, Achel, Orval, Westmalle, Rochefort, Westvleteren, Hoegaarden Wit (the mother of all white beers, and a beer that’s taken off in the states, recently).

If anyone, other than me, is interested in Belgian style beers, you can check out a few of these more widely available in the states that are brewed in a Belgian style:

Bell’s Oberon
Hennepin
Three Philosophers (actually a lambic/ale blend, I believe)
Hoegaarden (as I mentioned, becoming more available)
Celis White (now brewed in Austin, Texas…but it’s good anyway)
Blue Moon
La Fin du Mond (a french Canadian beer, one of the Unibroues)

Look for them in a specialty beer/wine store. There are lots more, these are just what I suggest because I’ve had them. Chimay, though a belgian trappist ale, is pretty widely available in the states. Though for the price, you should honestly be drinking Chimay out of a goblet in order to maximize your drinking experience. Also, if you’re going to be pouring Chimay, you should do so carefully as there’s a fine yeast layer that you’d be wisest to leave in the bottle.

I’m by no means a beer expert, and I’m still learning a lot. But what has drawn me to belgian ales is the variety and complexity. When I first started learning about beer, I thought that belgian was kind of a category, like pale ale or stout. But there’s actually a pretty broad range within belgian-style ales: ambers and goldens and wheats and others. Many (but not all) belgians are double- or triple- or even quadruple-fermented, each time with a different mixture of hops and malts. That gives you flavors that most other beers can only dream about.

Another thing I like about belgian ales is that many of them come in a corked 750ml bottle, which is kind of fun. And while it can be pretty hard to find an extraordinary 750ml of wine for 5 or 6 bucks, you can get some pretty amazing beer for that price.

Of those that Brandon listed, I’ve had Chimay and Duvel of the Trappist ales. And Hennepin, Three Philosophers, Hoegaarden, Blue Moon, and Fin du Monde of the belgian-style.

All the others I’ve tried have also been belgian-style, not true belgian (except I think I’ve tried something from Affligem. hmmm…):

• Ommegang in Cooperstown, NY (which makes Hennepin and Three Phil.) makes at least two others: Rare Vos and Ommegang. Both are worth tracking down.
• Unibroue, which, as Brandon said, is Canadian, makes a number of intriguing brews, but I’ve only tried Fin du Monde and Terrible (which is a lot better than it sounds).
• New Belgium in Colorado (makers of Fat Tire) have a few so-called belgian-style ales, but nothing that’s caught my fancy.
• North Coast here in northern California makes an ale called PranQster that is pretty tasty.
• Allagash in Portland, Maine, makes several ales. I’ve actually only tried their Quadrupel, which doesn’t seem to be listed on the web site. That was pretty fascinating, and definitely worth hunting for.

Anyhow, this is more a list than anything else. I don’t have time tonight to do more than that.

Feel free to suggest others. Brandon’s list certainly added a few that I’d like to track down. I’d be happy later to share more individual opinions in the ripples (although I might be slow to get back to you for a few days). I haven’t taken extensive tasting notes, so if I don’t remember, I might actually have to find me a little “refresher” before answering. And wouldn’t that be a shame?