history as our school teacher

I have never understood why I encounter so many innovators who fail/refuse to stand on the shoulders of the giants who’ve lived a full life ahead of them and the great stories of history that lie in wait to be told. On my recent trip, I looked up some distant relatives to drop in on and do a bit of family history note taking, while I was visiting my sister in South Carolina before the Yoder reunion in Florida and the adventure in St. Augustine de la Florida and the misadventure finale at the Atlanta airport.

Florida was great. But I had the best time meeting up with my great uncle’s sons and hearing them tell stories of my grandfather and their father. My great-uncle Harvey’s legacy deeply fascinates me. It drew me in. And somehow it seemed as though my philosophy of life or approach to organization resonated with the evidence he left behind. My own underdeveloped leadership took notes on the surprising particulars of his legacy which demonstrates good organizing, linking and establishment of businesses, schools, churches, charitable organizations and communities. I was able to see things linked together in ways I’d never seen before. The whole community called him granddad—Mennonite and non-Mennonites. Somehow I feel like he is one I must model my life after—the cross-cultural, cross-denominational things he did while retaining his own identity. He established a business to support a camp school for troubled teens. One camp was for boys and one for girls. He started several Mennonite churches in communities that were strangers to the Mennonite way of life. He established an orphanage in Haiti and used the expansive Mennonite connections to put out the call for volunteers to serve at the orphanage and also at the camps. All this he did without being an ordained minister. And if you don’t understand Mennonite community structure, it is quite difficult to become an influential leader if you are not an ordained minister, ordained by lot in the tradition of the casting of lots in Acts. You have to be quite innovative if you are to be successful in any one of the following: business, church, community and charity work. And Uncle Harvey did them all successfully, while raising a family of 6-8 children, moving them on to a new place once the projects were successfully established and running in the previous community. It was as though he moved in, looked at the terrain of a community, put pieces and people together brought in new elements and left a carefully crafted social machine behind that continues to run to this day.

Where have I been?

Yes, It's been great and wonderful as pictured above but also hard.
(Pictured is the Atlantic shores on the outer banks, just north of St. Augustine de la Florida--the oldest settlement on the continental USA.)

neighborhood stage

So, there’s this alleged gang in my neighborhood, according to the neighborhood granny watch.* According to the granny watch report, there is a middle aged man who is moving out because his teenage son got jumped by the Asian gang that lives in the house immediately behind my property. In a report to the neighborhood crime complaint person entitled, “Trouble in Paradise” she talks about how those kids have been intimidating this man’s teenage son, so he wants to move out ASAP to where the gang can’t find his son. And he won’t report anything because he’s afraid of retaliation. She goes on to talk about me and how I was on the council and would have an inside perspective but “who knows? for all [the granny watch] knows I might be a member of the gang.”

I decided to respond...

I talked with M last night, who lives in the house across the street from the "house of Hmong kids who jumped his youngest." I've also been keeping an eye on them and talked to M and others about the possibilities in approaching the problem. We could do it the "Revival Row" way or we could get the city involved. If we get the city involved, it would just be a matter of reporting the house as an unregistered duplex and the property owners, which live in the upper portion of the house would get fined and all that good stuff. Then they most likely would reconsider renting out the bottom part to the said "gang." It is also very likely that the home is over-crowded and the new landlord licensure laws would crack down on them pretty hard. So, if we want to go about it this way, we would have to find out for sure if the property was registered as a duplex, which I am assuming it is not.

However, part of me feels badly about tattling on my neighbor to my big brother city and using good tax dollars for something we could see about resolving ourselves. Especially since we don't know exactly what is going on there. Remember *** H. Street. It was the problem property of the neighborhood 5 years ago. Everybody wanted them out. Everybody complained about them. Yet 4 years ago we could have just called the city on them and run them out of the neighborhood, but Revival Row decided that wasn't really the Christian thing to do. So, we befriended them, made inroads into their lives, took care of their kids. We went to their family reunions and invited them to our parties. We did all this while the drugs and alcohol and the police calls and the violence flowed freely under our noses--but we got some good barbecue out of it and some second hand highs. And look now, they've moved somewhere else and decided to go to rehab and live a different life.

Maybe we can talk to the family that owns the “new problem property.” Ask them what is going on with their renters. I have conversed with the lady and done business with her ex-husband. Her present husband snowblows my sidewalk, for which I am tremendously grateful. And yea, maybe I should go "become a member" to this "gang" and give everyone the insider scoop. :)

Incidentally, it was granny watch who named my little community “Revival Row.” She is agnostic but she likes us and has taken under her wing all those kids from that previous problem property. She does more for them than we do now.

* What is the neighborhood granny watch? Well, it’s all quite high tech. It’s that "granny" that sits in her rocker with a cat on her lap, looking out her window at all the goings on in the neighborhood. It’s a really good idea to be friends with the granny watch, because she helps you and she is quite entertaining. Bring her a plate of food every now and again so she won’t have to make her own supper. And if you are her friend the worst she’ll ever do is call the police on your friends who stop by for dinner because they just look like trouble. She will also notice when you come home at 3 am after a late night study session. And she might put out a rumor about the reason your whole house is full of women is because everyone is gay. So, you just tell all your roommates to invite a guy friend over and walk down the sidewalk in front of her window and hold hands. I love granny watch! And by the looks of it, I will be granny watch some day.

when everything is broken

When everything is broken

Last weekend I biked to the gas station up the street to put air in my bike tires. The air at the gas station was broken so I biked to the next gas station 10 more blocks further up the street. I got air in my tires there but when I went to the cash machine to get cash, it was broken. So, I biked to a third gas station to get cash. When I went to the Y last night for the kickboxing aerobics routine, the instructor couldn’t get the sound system to work and his headset connection was hit and miss. The pool was closed because something was broken and when I went to take a shower the showerhead was broken too.

It’s not that broken things inherently bother me. But when the volume of broken stuff around me reaches a certain threshold I start to get a bit huffy. So, when I want to scream, “why is everything broken?” I realize the protest is really…I refuse to be broken with all this stuff that is broken!

mystical experience

So, it is sort of part of my testimony that I had a mystical experience, of sorts...once—a sort of unearthly experience that interrupted my normal existence, showed me something fantastic and then gave me back my “normal existence”—although my normal existence wasn’t quite so normal after that. It catches my attention that in Stage 2 of Rambo's conversion process there is a reference to mystical experiences as contributing toward "Catalyst for Conversion."

I had a few reactions to that mystical experience. First, I ignored it. Then once I could ignore it no longer, I went on a rampant search for the meaning of it. I looked everywhere for an answer. I turned people up-side-down for an answer and out came nothing and so I turned them up-side down-again. I hope they are still doing fine. Then I gave up. I quit my frantic search and said, “Lord, I am yours.” What do you want with me.

(It’s a marvel that God gives anyone at all a sort of grace for a mystical experience.)

sin

Sin is always a little like a baby mistaking a gun for a pacifier.

my interview

Michael Westmoreland-White is doing a series of interviews on his blog to publicize other peace based blogs. His interview with me is posted this week. Click in here. Check out the rest of his blog as well. It's an information packed blog on peace and justice issues, including political perspectives and data. I admire people who can process that volume of information.

what I deserve

I have very quickly become weary of the phrase "I deserve _______ (whatever item)." It's shocking what we give verbal assent to selling ourselves for in these little statements. I also cringe a bit when friends declare for no particular reason, "I'm going to treat myself." What about the blessings and the treats of the self-sacrificed and stuff-sacrificed life? I see these little declarations as indicative of the false worldview we so quickly buy into. This is only the beginning of how we don't live as we should, with regard to daily pleasures. Not that we shouldn't enjoy life but rather that we should enjoy life...with an open hand and without exploiting others. How can we do what is right when it becomes a matter of life and not livelihood. For a good Amish Mennonite sermon to convince yourself of what you already know...that it's not all about you, go here for the transcript.

Matt 10:38 and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Rambo's Model of the Conversion Process

Here we have a very detailed schema of the conversion process. This is what I love about Western academics...so thorough! This model also applies to paradigm and worldview shifts that often happen in the course of a lifetime.

Stage 7

CONSEQUENCES

Personal bias in assessment

Nature of consequences

• Affective
• Intellectual
• Ethical
• Religious
• Social/political

Sociocultural and historical consequences of conversion

Religious landscapes

Unintended sociocultural consequences

• -Nationalism
• Preservation of the vernacular
• Secularization

Psychological consequences

• -Progression
• Regression
• Stasis

Stories of conversion

Theological consequences

Stage 6

COMMITMENT

Decision making Rituals

• Separation
• Transition
• Incorporation

Surrender

• Desire
• Conflict
• “Giving in”: relief and liberation
• Sustaining surrender

Testimony: biographical reconstruction integrating personal and community story

Motivational reformulation

• Multiple
• Malleable
• Interactive
• Cumulative

Stage 5

INTERACTION

Encapsulation

• Physical
• Social
• Ideological

Relationships

• Kinship
• Friendship
• Leadership
• Discipleship/teacher

Rituals-choreography of the soul

• Deconstruction
• Reconstruction

Rhetoric-systems of interpretation

• Attribution
• Modes of understanding

Roles-reciprocal expectations and conduct

• Self and God
• Self and others

Stage 4

ENCOUNTER

Advocate

• Secular attributes
• Theory of conversion
• Inducements to conversion

Advocate’s strategy

• Strategic style (Diffuse, Concentrated)
• Modes of contact (Public/private, Personal/impersonal)

Benefits of conversion

• Systems of meaning
• Emotional gratification
• Techniques for living
• Leadership
• Power
• Advocate and Convert
• Initial response
• Resistance
• Diffusion and innovation
• Differential motivation and experiences

Stage 3

QUEST

Response style

• Active
• Passive

Structural availability

• Emotional
• Intellectual
• Religious

Motivational structures

• Experience pleasure and avoid pain
• Conceptual system
• Enhance self-esteem
• Establish and maintain relationships
• Power
• Transcendence

Stage 2

CRISIS

Nature of crisis

• Intensity
• Duration
• Scope
• Source: internal/external

Catalysts for conversion

• Mystical experiences
• Near-death experiences
• Illness and healing
• Is that all there is
• Desire for transcendence
• Altered states of consciousness
• Protean selfhood
• Pathology
• Apostasy
• Externally stimulated crises

Stage 1

CONTEXT

Macrocontext

• Systems of access and control

Microcontext

• Degree of integration and conflict

Contours of context

• Culture
• Social
• Personal
• Religious (Valence of dimension)

Contextual influences

• Resistance and rejection
• Enclaves
• Paths of conversion
• Congruence
• Types of conversion (Tradition transition, Institutional transition, Affiliation, Intensification, Apostasy)
• Motifs of conversion (Intellectual, Mystical, Experimental, Affectional, Revivalism, Coercive)

openings from the Lord

from the Journal of George Fox

After the Lord had “opened” to him, George Fox regarded less the leaders of the established faith community. He was drawn rather to folks who were dissenters.

Among them he saw those who possessed a tenderness, and many of them came afterwards to be convinced, for they had some openings. But as I had forsaken all the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those called the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could tell what to do, then, Oh then, I heard a voice which said, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition,” and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy….And this I knew experimentally.

Now though I had great openings, yet great trouble and temptations came many times upon me, so that when it was day I wished for night, and when it was night I wished for day; […]

But my troubles continued, and I was often under great temptations; and I fasted much, and walked abroad in solitary places many days, and often took my Bible and went and sat in hollow trees and lonesome places till night came on; and frequently in the night walked mournfully about by myself, for I was a man of sorrows in the times of the first workings of the Lord in me. […]

There are times when we long for somebody be our rescue for whatever trouble we have encountered. Whether sorrow and trouble are from “the openings” that God has initiated or whether they are life events.

There are times when God sends the help through another person. And there are times when God himself is only sufficient and wishes himself to be the answer, erecting in those moments of his working abandonment and abuse by all others. Because of our destitution, self-respect and protest at being abused is does not even rise to defend us, we become like the least of these, whom the world has rejected. Then, only then can the Lord come in to be our defense. Then and then only can the Lord rise and be valiant for us. We will see his power and will rise up refreshed for our healer is with us always. He makes our wounds into mere scratches overnight.

Oh Christian, be careful not to distract those who walk about with long faces under the heavy hand of God. Do not offer to take their burden from them. Do not insist they see the doctor for a condition of the soul. Do not offer to give an answer to all the troubles. Do not pray for the trouble to be lifted and the weary soul to be relieved to quickly. Do not be like Job's friends who offered no support. But Christian, be God’s accompaniment in whatever he does with your brothers and sisters in the Lord. Oh Christian, be aware when the Lord is doing his work in sorrows and in joys.

When you walk through the grass as opposed to the beaten path, you get funky things in your shoe.

cheap living

A friend pointed me to an article America’s cheapest family. Here it is. A family of 7 spends $350 per month on groceries. $3400 is their budget for the month—1/3 of which goes to charities.

While this is amazing, I am sure one can do even better. I hunted down a Mennonite critique of mainstream budgeting at http://dorcassmucker.blogspot.com/2007/04/food-stamps.html

This woman claims to have fed her family of 8, with $1 per head in the poor days. That is $240 per month. She critiques Oregon’s $3 per head, per day, family food stamp allotment. In this state the, one with the poorest food stamp program, lawmakers and the governor were challenged to stay within this food budget for 3 weeks and she quotes their published comments about the experience. She’s not really impressed.

I also remember poor days. I remember $100 food budgets per month, while my father worked an extra job in the winter in addition to maintaining a dairy farm so we could pay the mortgage on the farm, during the farmer depression of the 80s. There was a lot of hot milk soup and hamburger from the cow that broke her leg and was of no value to the slaughter house. Many other farmers around us went under. My parents simply down-sized to practically nothing and they survived. They didn’t live on credit. They didn’t buy clothing. They didn’t use any technology outside of what was absolutely necessary for their business. These folks do well but one could do better.

Now, I understand, that Good Morning America, could have just snagged the first Amish or Mennonite they encountered and the figures would have been even more surprising. But that wouldn’t have done anything for their viewer audience. “Of, course the Amish live ridiculously cheaply, we always knew they were from another world.” It wouldn’t have done anything for convincing the average viewership one can survive off less—a lot less.

As a GenXer living in the shadow of the Boomer from a culture I never banked on living so closely to, I agonize with my fellow Xers, whose budgets chaff painfully with the habits of abundance many learned from their parents or peers. It’s incredibly difficult to down-size. It’s even more difficult if down-sizing requires one to radically change habits and move cultural pillars. Yet the opportunity for growth in humility and abandoning one’s self into God’s purging abyss makes the soul a much more effective soul. I say so only because I’ve experienced it numerous times in my life. At first I agonized loudly. The story of Hudson Taylor, in his college days, challenged me to chaff silently. It was his goal to move man through God solely through prayer. So, when someone chose to pass a buck my way, pay for my dinner, I had lots of reason to be grateful to the one who clothes the lilies. I knew without a doubt, God’s hand was on my life.

Economies, cultures and social structures collide and miss in the patterns of feeding their own. God help us learn from each other.

In Dorcas’ comment section, an anonymous reader mentions that this housewife has a garden and folks with foodstamps who live in urban areas may not—this being a said advantage toward cheaper living. Again, people somehow think, if it grows out of the ground, it’s somehow like manna in the wilderness and doesn’t cost anything! On the contrary, it costs quite a lot: labor, time and money for the seeds and starter plants. Only after a sufficient crop, can one harvest seeds for the upcoming year.

As for space to grow, almost every neighborhood in the city has gardening green space. The Hmong in the Twin Cities especially have large gardens and often till their entire lawns for growing vegetables. My grouchy neighbor keeps calling the city on the Hmong across the street, who keep on planting an immaculate garden on a ridge that is not owned by them but is unused space that nearly hangs into their property. I’ve benefited from the seed that blows from their garden into my back yard. A few years ago when I drafted my sister to help me clean up the local community garden two blocks from my house, I was the only available gardener in the area. My sister looked around the tumble-down neighborhood and assumed poverty. “Well, if they are poor,” she asked me, “why don’t they plant a garden.” Planning, time and care. Concepts I struggled to teach the little boys that come to hover with me over the plants I was growing—“Waiting all summer for a red tomato, cummon! Can we have hamburgers?” they would say. I tried to complete the cycle for them by making fried green tomatoes with them and then hooking it in to their own reality by watching the movie, “Fried Green Tomatoes.”

In my college dorm days, when I signed up for meal plans, I was not allowed to select the cheapest option for food service dining because my dorm only had one kitchen for 200 women. The meal plan was designed for those who lived off campus. It gave the student 350 meal dollars to spend per quarter. I requested an exemption from this requirement, because I knew how to cook, would cook, and wasn’t going to go bulimic on anyone. They said, no, requiring me to purchase the smallest meal plan at least, which was 10 meals a week for a little over $1000 per quarter. The 20 meals per week plan cost nearly $2000 per quarter; currently it costs nearly $3000. I bemoaned the ruling but then happened on an idea. I could just submit the dining election of my choice and unless they cross-referenced with the housing office, I could slip through the cracks. That year, I was always to be found cooking and studying in the abandoned kitchen. I used my dining dollars for lunch on the days I had class. And I cooked enough good food to share.

What is the advantage of growing your own food? It teaches the gardener the cycle of sustenance and the value of food, guarding against wastefulness and lack of appreciation for the production of good food. These principles “pay off” when integrated into an entire lifestyle. Try coming to my mother’s table and leaving for waste half a serving of the fresh peas she just picked, cleaned and prepared. Remember, this is the woman that rescues the twice thrown away. When one of my roommates couldn’t resist devouring my freshly harvested and frozen sweet corn from the refrigerator, and offered to replace it with corn from the store, I told her the corn she ate and the corn from the store were two vastly different things and I don’t eat the later. The only thing that would be suitable replacement is if she traveled to my parents and helped my Mom harvest, clean and put away corn for a day.