God and universal truth are not in the sky and the stars, nor in theories, ideologies and ideals. They are hidden in actual people, in flesh, mud and matter. They are hidden in the poor and the weak who cry above all for recognition and communion. Just as some of the purest and most cleansing substances come from things that are rotten - wine and alcohol from fermented fruit, penicillin from mold - and just as the earth is nourished by animal manure, so our hearts and inner brokenness are healed through communion with all that we have rejected and are afraid of: the poor and weak, enemies, strangers. --Jean Vanier
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Sunday, November 18, 2007
6 months ago, 6 months from now....
This is the half-way point. I have been Home Life Coordinator of the Highland House now for 6 months, and in 6 months time, I'll be finishing up here at l'Arche. Also, Dave and I just celebrated 6 months together yesterday. We decided to sign up for another 6 months. Interesting to think that two major life changes occurred around the same time. In fact, the night Dave came for dinner, May 1st, was my first day as HLC (Diane had moved out the day before).
It's wild to think about l'Arche no longer being a central part of my life. When I first start, one month after graduating from Gordon, everything felt so foreign and I felt so inadequate. In school, I was valued for my intellect, my ability to think "big thoughts," to theorize and conceptualize. Moving into l'Arche Nehalem in Portland prompted me to confront a part of my self that I had rarely, if ever, encountered. In l'Arche my theories and big thoughts, my writing skills and verbal fluency mattered little. Instead, my ability to tangibly care for others, to be patient and listen well, to enjoy the small details of life have been primary. The transition was disconcerting. Interacting with bodies was more difficult than interacting with ideas. In some ways, this still remains true for me, but I recognize now how important it is for people like myself, so easily caught up in their heads or their future plans, to be pulled down to earth.
I remember being so angry and reactionary my final year or two at Gordon, and I felt myself slipping into disillusionment and bitterness. There is a passionate anger that can drive us to do justice and love mercy, but there is also a destructive anger that burns like wildfire and can consume us if we aren't careful. Passionate anger yearns for righteousness. But the anger I was beginning to feel sought to destroy. I've seen this anger in a lot of disillusioned Gordon grads - this is the process of dying to Self. But what of rebirth? Most of us are living in limbo now, not dead but not reborn.
There are many ways we can climb out of our graves and receive new life. I think living in l'Arche, or any other community centered around the Beatitudes, helps people to be reborn. The Eucharist allows us to participate in our own death and resurrection every Sunday. Relationships, whether romantic or platonic, help us experience the newness of life. Confessing our sins and receiving forgiveness, confronting our weaknesses and accepting them, caring for others and being cared for in return are all ways in which we can be reborn.
I feel I was reborn in l'Arche -- the burn of my cynicism has no place here. I am instead called to peace, to patience, to yearn for justice and mercy, to convey great love with small actions. This does not mean that rebirth is easy or even pleasant. It calls us to let go of our certainty, our egos, to let the seed die in order for new life to take root. It sometimes calls for humiliation and always calls for surrender.
If all goes according to plan, I will be at Duke Divinity School in Durham next year. I can only imagine, of course, how different my perspective of school, and the Academy, will be when I return. Will I feel alienated? Invigorated? Will my time in the classroom feel irrelevant or life-giving? Will l'Arche be a distant memory or a vivid recollection? Will I enjoy my new-found freedom or feel smothered by it? I am interested to discover how my time in l'Arche and impending time in the Academy can coexist, maybe even reconciled.
It's wild to think about l'Arche no longer being a central part of my life. When I first start, one month after graduating from Gordon, everything felt so foreign and I felt so inadequate. In school, I was valued for my intellect, my ability to think "big thoughts," to theorize and conceptualize. Moving into l'Arche Nehalem in Portland prompted me to confront a part of my self that I had rarely, if ever, encountered. In l'Arche my theories and big thoughts, my writing skills and verbal fluency mattered little. Instead, my ability to tangibly care for others, to be patient and listen well, to enjoy the small details of life have been primary. The transition was disconcerting. Interacting with bodies was more difficult than interacting with ideas. In some ways, this still remains true for me, but I recognize now how important it is for people like myself, so easily caught up in their heads or their future plans, to be pulled down to earth.
I remember being so angry and reactionary my final year or two at Gordon, and I felt myself slipping into disillusionment and bitterness. There is a passionate anger that can drive us to do justice and love mercy, but there is also a destructive anger that burns like wildfire and can consume us if we aren't careful. Passionate anger yearns for righteousness. But the anger I was beginning to feel sought to destroy. I've seen this anger in a lot of disillusioned Gordon grads - this is the process of dying to Self. But what of rebirth? Most of us are living in limbo now, not dead but not reborn.
There are many ways we can climb out of our graves and receive new life. I think living in l'Arche, or any other community centered around the Beatitudes, helps people to be reborn. The Eucharist allows us to participate in our own death and resurrection every Sunday. Relationships, whether romantic or platonic, help us experience the newness of life. Confessing our sins and receiving forgiveness, confronting our weaknesses and accepting them, caring for others and being cared for in return are all ways in which we can be reborn.
I feel I was reborn in l'Arche -- the burn of my cynicism has no place here. I am instead called to peace, to patience, to yearn for justice and mercy, to convey great love with small actions. This does not mean that rebirth is easy or even pleasant. It calls us to let go of our certainty, our egos, to let the seed die in order for new life to take root. It sometimes calls for humiliation and always calls for surrender.
If all goes according to plan, I will be at Duke Divinity School in Durham next year. I can only imagine, of course, how different my perspective of school, and the Academy, will be when I return. Will I feel alienated? Invigorated? Will my time in the classroom feel irrelevant or life-giving? Will l'Arche be a distant memory or a vivid recollection? Will I enjoy my new-found freedom or feel smothered by it? I am interested to discover how my time in l'Arche and impending time in the Academy can coexist, maybe even reconciled.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Alternative Christmas gifts...
Thought I would compile a list of some alternative/charitable/equitable gift ideas for the Christmas/Hanukkah season. Enjoy.
- Church of St John the Baptist in Cairo - food packages and immunizations for refugees, literacy classes, etc.
- Art Enables - paintings and prints by disabled artists, including the works of Sonny, Mo, Mike and Eileen, 4 core members in the l'Arche DC community.
- Heartbeats - handcrafted items (jewelry, soaps) and fair trade products from minority and developing world women artists
- Koinonia Farm - baked goods, chocolate, pecans, books, and fair trade coffee and tea
- World Vision - farm animals, water pumps, fruit trees, malaria medications, and more!
- Ten Thousand Villages - program of Mennonite Central Committee, one of the oldest and largest fair trade organizations in the world, selling fairly trades items from diverse cultures
- Angel Tree - give gifts to children of incarcerated parents
- Heifer Project - flock of ducks, trio of rabbits, trees, goats, cows
- L'Arche Noah Sealth of Seattle - cards, candles made by community members
- Putumayo World Music - international music label that contributes to non-profits in countries where music originates
- Mercy Corps - family garden kits, child health kits, women's small business kits, etc.
- Global Exchange - fairly traded crafts from around the world, fair trade action kits and holiday gift baskets, books and cds
- Oxfam America - school desks, can of worms, spinning wheels, sheep, mosquito nets, and crocodiles!
December 20th, 2004...
I really enjoy reading old journal entries; doing so helps me remember where I was, what I was thinking, what I was struggling with at various times in my life. And very often, I find that my Past Self has much to say to my Present Self, insights that I've neglected to remember as time has passed. This isn't to say that my Past Self hasn't been terribly and utterly misinformed, which can make encounters with my past journal entries somewhat painful or embarrassing. But, all in all, I find the practice of reflection and remembering worthwhile.
This is part of an entry I posted in my old Live Journal blog many moons ago - December 20th, 2004. To give context, I was a junior at Gordon, back at school after a semester in Uganda, and the US/Iraq war had been raging for about a year and a half. Spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually, this was a particularly tumultuous time in my life....
"i'm sick and tired of christians, on another note. or at least christians conformed to the pattern of this world (pro-war, pro-consumerism, pro-republican). i'm pretty much done with identifying myself as an evangelical. for a while, i thought such a statement would land me in hell. and then i realized that was exactly my problem with the evangelical church. sigh...we are so finite....we are merely specks on the shore. how can we even fathom the wholeness of truth, let alone claim to hae exclusive access to it? i know that Jesus is the clue to all of history, all of eternity...but i know so little about him. i could tell you more about paul than jesus, the incarnate God. so many things he says shake me up...and yet i do nothing. we sit in church and here the word read in such a ritualized way (not that im not in love with the liturgy) and yet we remain like lumps of puddings in the pews. the word is supposed to chew us up and spit us out into new beings. every time Jesus speaks about money and violence and hate...i should feel utter conviction. but i dont. i legitimize, reprioritize, deny, ignore, turn away. i feel perfectly fine about buying 'christian' tshirts made by cambodian children chained to their sewing machines. i feel perfectly fine about buying christian cds from corporate monsters. i enjoy riding in my SUV the guzzles gas and raises the prizes on oil so that we are more dependent on other nations and thus feel the need to make up lies, invade, and capitalize all in the name of "freedom" and "liberty" that was never under threat in this nation in the first place. obviously, i'm being facetious. i dont wear 'christian' tshirts (cite derek webb) and i dont listen to 'christian' music and i definitely dont own an suv. but, i identify myself with a white, suburban, protestant, heterosexual subculture that does and i am by no means exempt. we are individuals, yes, but little do we in america like to realize that God holds us up to a communal judgment; that, as the Church, we are responsible for what members of the Body do, and that includes consumption and choosing violence over resolute peace. yikes. this is some heavy stuff. and this has been my entire semester. when they showed Fahrenheit 9-11 at school, steve and i just bawled. and when W won the election, my roommate couldnt stop crying. honestly, i would have cried no matter who won....because with the state of this nation and the state of this world, we should all be on our knees mourning. 60 people died to day in Iraq in a car bombing. i dont care whether they were americans or iraqis...it's time we stop measuring the "success" of war based on how few of 'our boys' have been killed. God calls us to mourn the death of any human life, whether in the womb or in a terrorist attack or whether on the enemy front. man...thats so hard. but, life is so complex....so much more than we want to make it out to be. i guess it means we can never be comfortable with easy answers!!"
This is part of an entry I posted in my old Live Journal blog many moons ago - December 20th, 2004. To give context, I was a junior at Gordon, back at school after a semester in Uganda, and the US/Iraq war had been raging for about a year and a half. Spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually, this was a particularly tumultuous time in my life....
"i'm sick and tired of christians, on another note. or at least christians conformed to the pattern of this world (pro-war, pro-consumerism, pro-republican). i'm pretty much done with identifying myself as an evangelical. for a while, i thought such a statement would land me in hell. and then i realized that was exactly my problem with the evangelical church. sigh...we are so finite....we are merely specks on the shore. how can we even fathom the wholeness of truth, let alone claim to hae exclusive access to it? i know that Jesus is the clue to all of history, all of eternity...but i know so little about him. i could tell you more about paul than jesus, the incarnate God. so many things he says shake me up...and yet i do nothing. we sit in church and here the word read in such a ritualized way (not that im not in love with the liturgy) and yet we remain like lumps of puddings in the pews. the word is supposed to chew us up and spit us out into new beings. every time Jesus speaks about money and violence and hate...i should feel utter conviction. but i dont. i legitimize, reprioritize, deny, ignore, turn away. i feel perfectly fine about buying 'christian' tshirts made by cambodian children chained to their sewing machines. i feel perfectly fine about buying christian cds from corporate monsters. i enjoy riding in my SUV the guzzles gas and raises the prizes on oil so that we are more dependent on other nations and thus feel the need to make up lies, invade, and capitalize all in the name of "freedom" and "liberty" that was never under threat in this nation in the first place. obviously, i'm being facetious. i dont wear 'christian' tshirts (cite derek webb) and i dont listen to 'christian' music and i definitely dont own an suv. but, i identify myself with a white, suburban, protestant, heterosexual subculture that does and i am by no means exempt. we are individuals, yes, but little do we in america like to realize that God holds us up to a communal judgment; that, as the Church, we are responsible for what members of the Body do, and that includes consumption and choosing violence over resolute peace. yikes. this is some heavy stuff. and this has been my entire semester. when they showed Fahrenheit 9-11 at school, steve and i just bawled. and when W won the election, my roommate couldnt stop crying. honestly, i would have cried no matter who won....because with the state of this nation and the state of this world, we should all be on our knees mourning. 60 people died to day in Iraq in a car bombing. i dont care whether they were americans or iraqis...it's time we stop measuring the "success" of war based on how few of 'our boys' have been killed. God calls us to mourn the death of any human life, whether in the womb or in a terrorist attack or whether on the enemy front. man...thats so hard. but, life is so complex....so much more than we want to make it out to be. i guess it means we can never be comfortable with easy answers!!"
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