Parables

it's all in the faces

2010-01-28T17:31:00.004-06:00

The first time I was introduced to the friends, I failed to notice the couple’s subtle communication. The wife’s face arched into to a question. The husband nodded knowingly. They grinned together. I didn't desire to see their faces.

The first time I met the mother and sister, I shook the mother’s hand. She gazed into my eyes and knowingly stated, “So, you’re the friend!” Her mildly amused but studying look was like the siren on a fire engine, announcing the direction of her thoughts and memories of past discussions. The sister simply smiled sweetly—-I dared not discover what her face held.

The second time I shook the mothers hand, I was introduced again. “You know my friend,” she was assured. A slight flicker of recognition bubbled up into her eyes and was quickly stamped out by her nearly violent jerk of the head and withdrawal of her hand. What could that be? Rebuffed. Insulted. What could have possibly changed? The memory. A difference of opinion. An earnest request. Weighty matters too painful to discuss. Denial. What does it mean when one touches their face incessantly? Of course, a mother would only defend her child. If only they knew what I know now. The tables were turned. They all discussed the matter amongst themselves, what I only vowed to discuss, face to face, personally.

The final stare. I was introduced again. Hollow eyes. Hollow cheeks. “You know my friend.” Not anymore. There’s no need. No need for speculation. No need for friendship.

The sister, now that is another matter. Her stare from across the crowded room. A curious gaze. Slightly remembering...wondering. A moment too long to go unnoticed.

A face reveals everything.

A face lies.

What is your face saying?

when love is not a decision

2008-08-26T09:13:00.001-05:00

When love is not a decision, all sorts of indescribable human vices are entertained...intertwined. Emotions out of control. Pain turned inward. Pain turned outward. Emptiness seeking respite. Sophistry becomes its answer. When love is not altruistic—when love is not for the ultimate good of the other and toward the glorification of God, love is simply not love.

This is a thought experiment. Is it true? I invite your comments.

what happened in Africa.

2008-04-17T17:02:00.002-05:00

I gave a presentation last week, speaking on my first encounter with Africa. Here is the transcript.

How can I tell you what happened in Africa? I, myself, barely understand. I’ll have to tell you what happened to me there by telling you other stories.

First, the story of the last supper. Where the Master is there washing his disciples feet. He…the creator of the universe stoops to wash the feet of his own followers. He was their guest from heaven for a short time. But he cleans them up. He cleans up their dirty lives. He does so as the dirt and the grime of the Galilean roads dirty his own feet.

He eats the Passover meal they have prepared for him. It was their own ritual. It was their own food. And yes, they served it to the Son of God, the Creator of the universe. And he ate it and he did not die. He did die. Later. Later, they killed him, with their very own hands.
But he didn’t stay dead. And that is the point.

The terribleness of their messy lives couldn’t kill him and keep him dead.

The second story is the story of the celebration of the last supper from my childhood.

Now, I’m not going to sensationalize the Amish practice of shunning that was very much present in the way my community practiced the Lord’s Supper. We all have our shunning and excommunication rituals. Every culture has them. Minnesota, America tends to excommunicate by means of indifference through the practice of silence and unresponsiveness. There are no rules written anywhere but the practice is fully enforced whenever one wishes to exclude another from the group of the included. Every social group has their insiders and their outsiders.

It is clear, unless one is simply blind or in denial, there are insiders and there are outsiders. There are those who are included and those who are excluded. In my community of origin, the included sit down and eat the Lord’s Supper together and wash one another’s feet. The excluded don’t. The excluded take their plate and eat over there at a different table. Please understand I am not passing judgment on the practice itself or on excommunication practices everywhere other than to simply say that sin separates. There are those that eat at the table and there are those that don’t.

These two stories go together. One is the story of grace the other is the story of the fall. One is the story of Christ embracing us in our sin. The other is the story of how sin separates us from the community of God.

Now, against this backdrop I go to Africa. I am a stranger among them there. I am their guest. I am their very honored and distinguished guest. And I come from the land of the chosen, where the streets are gold and the angels sing. Well, maybe not quite but Africans had some idea that where I come from, life was unimaginably better, by comparison. In America food is cooked in ovens. There are toilets that flush. The pure water comes in bottles and is too expensive for them to buy. Everything else is really sanitary.

So in the most amazing expression of hospitality I have ever seen, the Nigerians opened their hearts and arms and received me. They would have even put me up in the most costly place they could find so that I would be comfortable, like I was back home. So that my toilet would flush and so my food would be cooked “properly” in a kitchen. This was the heart of the people toward me in the most amazing expression of love, other centeredness and hospitality.

But I quickly became almost angry as I recognized the other voices whispering through the people despite the people’s good hearts and arms loaded with hospitality. There were social structures and evil overlords and the all important colonists who were speaking also. There were people from the past, people from the present, sitting in high places in Abuja, Lagos, Washington DC or wherever.

Wordless things were being conveyed.

In the village I was preparing to eat the food that came out of the pot sitting on three rocks with the firewood underneath. They said, “No our food will make you sick! It might even kill you.” You must go to the restaurant where your food can be cooked properly.

What were they saying? Were they excommunicating themselves to their own humble table? Or were they excommunicating me also, as I sat alone in the restaurant situated inside high walls with barbed wire and a guard at the gate. This is more than excommunication! It was as though I heard, “Here, sit in this prison and eat, while we sit down at our own table to eat the terrible food that we have prepared for ourselves that even kills us, according to the official sanitation codes.” Who’s codes were these? My people’s sanitation codes? I read them half-heartedly on the plane trip over: a thick stack of documents that the Travel Clinic gave me in preparation to travel.

Excommunication works both ways it seems.

As I prepared to live and sleep in the village where the dirt floors were swept clean and the animals and the bugs ran freely. They said, “No, you must stay in the hotel in the city where there is electricity and your toilet flushes and everything is sanitary. You can’t stay here with us in our terrible situation. It will kill you. A mosquito might bite you and you’ll get malaria and die.”

I said to myself, “Ah. Ah!? Who has done this to these good people? Who has made these people believe this about themselves?” Your food is amazing and I don’t care if the toilet flushes. Get me out of this whitewashed prison!

The Master said of his mission, “I come not to be served but to serve and give my life for others.” The creator of the universe says this.

If your food kills me. If your viruses kill me. If living with you in your country kills me. So then I will die and it will be worth the dying. And even if I die. I will not stay dead. And that is the point.

So, I ate their dinner with them. And we sat at the same table. And we washed our feet in the same bucket of dirty water. And as you can see, I did not die. And the people saw and were amazed. They said to each other, “Ah, Ah!? Who is this who has come to eat with us and sleep with us and walk the dusty road with us? And the terribleness of our messy lives did not kill her.”

How can I tell you what happened in Africa. I, myself, barely understand.

welcome to my neighborhood

2008-04-08T11:13:00.000-05:00

amish spring break 2

2008-03-31T16:38:00.003-05:00

Since I so recently did a post on Amish Spring Break, I must share with you another commentary on Sarasota, the Amish-Mennonite retirement capital of the USA.
It is appropriately entitled, The Prodigal Beachy.

Here are some enticing excerpts.

Now when the two brothers had Come of Age, the younger brother, Jake Beiler, said to his father, “Verily, Father, now that I am Come of Age, I want to journey to Sarasota, Florida, on vacation, and since some of the youth group is going down over the same time, it could be a great bonding experience.” His father did not think too highly of this idea,

And Jake journeyed to Sarasota to sojourn for two months. And when his youth group was come unto the place, and he saw their manner of attire, that it was not Beachy. Then said he in his heart, “Yea, is this not the manner of Sarasota? For verily, I can come hither, and wear all manner of T-shirts and shorts, and get a full body tan, and the bishop can say nothing to me, for I am a stranger and pilgrim in a different land. Oh, what fun!” And so Jake went to Wal-Mart and stocked up on many shorts and every manner of striped and checkered and flowery T-shirts, and said in his heart, “Now no man shall know that I am Beachy.”

respecter of persons

2008-03-27T11:39:00.000-05:00

This is a coined phrase that sticks in my memory from childhood. It comes from the King James language of Acts 10:34. Peter stands up and says, “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons. But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.” This was the pronouncement of Cornelius’ acceptance into the present work of Christ.

But the story I remember hearing as an example of a situation where one should not be a respecter of persons was from James 2:3, where two types of people come to you, one is rich and wearing nice clothing and the other is poor and wears tattered clothing. In our little Sunday school we were instructed not to treat the rich person with more respect then the poor person.

At home and in the daily life of my faith community in rural Minnesota, there were plenty of chances to work this out. We were not a minister’s family. We were not the model citizens of this community. In fact we had trouble being model citizens. I remember being the odd one out most of the time. To this day, I still catch myself thinking, “I don’t have any friends.” I have a few counter responses to that one now. But over all, this status in that community provided me and my family with an opportunity to practice becoming people who are not respecters of persons. Often, we would host people who were even more rejected than ourselves. Some of them would come over and we would watch as my dad would sit in the living room with them and listen to their rambling or ranting for hours. We all knew it wasn’t very pleasant to be in my father’s position. But we learned from him. He would treat them kindly. My mother would cook for them. And we would all eat together. Very seldom would we hear my father complain about these rejected folks that came over. He only ever said enough to confirm our own judgments. These folks were lonely and because of their rejection and isolation among us, they’d become a little crazy. Everyone becomes a little crazy when loneliness sets in. When there are people who have become crazy as a result of isolation it is no reflection on their own person, it is an indictment upon the society that contains them.

To this day, I often feel more comfortable with folks that hover on the edges of social groups. If they stand a little to close when they talk. If they talk incessantly about something mundane and uninteresting. If they don’t understand the blatant cues your giving them about your boredom or your need to move on or get to work. These are the folks I feel at home with. Urban ministry has made great use of and given me a place to further practice treating everyone as equals.

The most surprising thing for one of my roommates to find out was that I was bothered by a number of people’s behavior or even their personality, but I still hung out with them. I can only credit it to my parents that I am able to embrace the outcasts, because otherwise I would be very picky and judgmental about the sort of folks I was with.

Inevitably, when I give witness to the grace God has shown me in my upbringing on the topic of preferring some above other people, people self-consciously ask, “Do I bug you”? Do you just hang out with me because you want to overcome your natural aversion to me?

So what if you are. You are loved anyway. You are accepted. This is the point. Soon we’ll all forget what our aversions were.

witches and pagans among us

2008-03-21T09:50:00.002-05:00

Around 5+ years ago, I made a concerted effort to hang out with witches and pagans. There was a ministry or two that did that sort of outreach but most of them didn’t last long. I don’t think they understood the depth of the spiritual forces they were dealing with and approached their audience in the typical Evangelical Christian Modernist way. I don’t think even I had a full grasp of it, nor if it is possible for anyone to have a full grasp of the mysterious dark forces, nor should they. Often in my quest I was with a lot of young punkish types and ravers, as well as Goths and new renaissance types. I didn’t have much success with long term relationships, although I had a few sinister offers and enough “visitors” at the witching hour to realize this was serious business.

I wanted to penetrate the darker circles—the ones which served another god and were to some degree aware of it in their rituals. But it must not have been my time yet. Last night however, I happened to be invited to a women’s group meeting at a local co-op. My friend didn’t tell me much about it but it sold itself on the themes of women’s empowerment and initiative in business etc. In actuality, it was a full blown pagan ceremony for the evangelization of more women into the serve another god sort of life. It was like Alpha but with an emphasis on ritual instead of an appeal to the intellect.

I knew something was a bit witchy when I walked into the space and there were rich red fabrics everywhere and then this get-up in the corner of the room with goddess and fertility symbols. Some nice ladies greeted me and offered me food to keep me company till my friend showed up. I noticed a tattoo on the daughter of the “high priestesses” neck of an ancient fertility goddess, arms outstretched with the dagger for sacrifice in hand. The meeting was to start at 7 sharp and the doors were to be closed at that time and the “meeting” was to begin as the equinox occurred at 7:07. We stood in a circle on a Persian carpet. We were welcomed and key people in the circle introduced. Like Alfa there were the leaders and the undercover helpers. As we began the ceremony we were given a candle and it was lighted by a leader or a helper. My phone began to vibrate as my friend was arriving and hoping to have me let her in. I broke from the circle, which is a significant desecration to the ceremony. I dallied with her outside hoping to avoid the ceremony but wishing to stick with my Christian friend and wanting to know what the rest of the empowerment meeting was all about. We came in, joined the circle and our candles were lit for us. Mine kept going out. Guess I won’t be going out from that place to spread the light of spring, as they suggested we do. We were urged to place our candles on the alter before beginning the creative project, which was just like Summer Vacation Bible School.

What’s my point? I don’t think I’ll really put a strong one out there. Perhaps I’ll simply say that we are called to evangelize. I do think it significant that I kept messing up the ceremony and the candle wouldn’t stay lit. It was an evangelistic demonstration of some sort. As Christians, we do interrupt any darkness in the works. As for fear, some of you may wonder--shouldn't I be afraid? Experience has taught me, fear is one of the worst temptations to entertain in the presence of evil. It stands next to blatant unbelief.

amish spring break

2008-03-06T17:05:00.003-06:00

Since my Grandmother moved to Florida, my family has had reason to visit the place where Amish and Mennonites gather to go on Spring Break. Incidentally, the old also go there to make it their retirement home. Grandma and several aunts live in this place called Sarasota, which is a built up city along the gulf coast south of Tampa. Several aunts clean homes for the rich and make a good living doing so. I'm even told that Leno or the other evening talk show guy has a house on the coast down there.

But then there is this little space between the freeway and the coast, called Pinecraft, that the Amish Mennonites have occupied since before my grandparents' youth days. The Real Estate is interesting and this journalist writes about it here in the Sarasota Magazine.

What I found most interesting about Pinecraft culture was what my aunt has described to me. she even took me "cruising" past Pinecraft Park which is merely a dumpy looking city park that is overloaded with Amish and Mennonites during "amish spring break," which begins sometime in December and peaks during Christmas and New Year, then fades slowly until about April or May. Rental prices in Pinecraft accommodate the demands during this season. And yes, the state of the properties in Pinecraft is as awful as the journalist describes, compared to the rest of Sarasota. But then again Amish and Mennonites have always stepped to the beat of their own drum.

Gawking is Pinecraft's biggest pastime. There is this insurance agency across the street from a fruit stand on Bahia Vista Road that gives up its tiny parking lot for a bus that comes from Ohio or Pennsylvania or some other states with Amish population density. The bus arrives with it's mostly Amish passengers at a particular time of day. This is also the perfect time to go and see who is arriving to vacation in Florida. So, this large bus, packed with Amish arrives at this tiny parking lot filled with those who are welcoming them along with twice as many spectators. If the police weren't assured that these were peaceful people, they would assign officers to the area. One of these days I'm going to ride that bus to Pinecraft just for the experience.

what people think

2008-03-04T10:46:00.005-06:00

So a friend was doing a search on Anabaptism and ran into this photo on flicker.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/toekneesan/307237705/

The photo was among his own personal family photos etc. Here were his comments...

Punk Anabaptist
Went to AAASS and AAR/SBL in DC last week. Two conferences about 3 miles apart, overlapping. Slavic studies and religious studies. Saw this woman on the way to the religious studies one. She had a traditional head cover, one I usually see on Anabaptists; Amish, Mennonite, Brethren, around here. Comes from Corinthians 11:5 which says, “Every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head, for that is one and the same as if her head were shaved.” This woman put an interesting twist on that. As you can see she is also wearing a leather jacket, rattle snake skin blouse, backpack, and wrestling shoes. Cool.

I must say I never fail to be amused when I watch people watching me.

When my brothers and sisters were younger we had a lot of fun going everywhere together. It was a riot. We would intentionally embarrass my mother. It was so easy to do anyway. Naturally, we were noticed because we were traditional and everyone was gawking but we hammed it up so that even my mother had to laugh. The best moment was once when we were driving down the freeway in our ancient green gas guzzler from a few decades ago. Mom and Dad are in the front seat with the two youngest and about 5 of us are in the back seat. We all look over at the vehicle next to us at about the time when the 4 of them notice us and stare in wonder. The pace of traffic changed and our fans had to brake severely and swerve to avoid getting into an accident. Forever after that, we laughed about being a road hazard.
(picture to be posted later)

attraction—where the battle lies

2008-02-14T19:23:00.000-06:00

Sometimes I have been a true Peter Pan. I have wished to live forever in a world of fairies and fanciful tales and best of all—to remain a child forever. Even as a child I loved daydreams and was forever punished when I was caught gazing into space. Yet when it is time to become an adult, one must. I wrote the core of this essay close to a year ago. It was one of my own first deep intellectual engagements with the topic. I thought it appropriate to post it this Valentine’s Day.

What does it mean to face the whole reality of what it means to be a beautiful, available woman in the presence of eligible men primarily, but other men, otherwise? Often young women, like I once was, would have like to remain ignorant of the fact that she might have power over a man. There is an unexplainable, mysterious power of attraction that is either petrifying or all-consuming...or joyful exuberance. For in that power there is the terror of the battle between evil and good. In that moment, gone astray, when a woman realizes that a man is attracted to her, she can either revel in the power of it. She can absorb the energy of the moment to build up her confidence—a false confidence because it is based on a transient, unsustainable moment. Or she can glory in her Lord and cause that moment to represent eternity for her and exude an eternal confidence. Or she can do nothing.

Certainly, to be innocent, unaware of the effect we women can have over a man is to be preferred above knowledge of the power and wielding it for personal enslavement, and abuse and commodification of the other. However, to enter into the full understanding of the power one channels by the hand of the Lord is much preferred. For when one comes into the full understanding of their authority and power, then appropriates it to her creator, she truly becomes and unstoppable force of attraction and beauty, unto the glory of God. One can accomplish so much more under the full confidence of this power. For, one images God under the full confidence of this power.

Why reveling in the moment is a false confidence?
A woman must give that moment to God, as she must give every moment to God, for she can either ground her existence in the eternal security of the infinite attraction God has for his beloved or she can use that moment to grovel for the moment of elation that comes with being affirmed in the moment of attraction. How she receives that moment is everything to her identity. That moment can represent to her the amazing embodiment of God’s attraction for his beloved, and she can glory in her Lord and Savior. This grounds her in an eternal identity. Or that moment can by itself be the ground of her existence. It can be the minuscule moment that her value rests upon and she will sell the piece of eternity she holds to that moment. Certainly, if she sells herself, she may have many more moments—moments that fill her empty identity for a while. But as things generally go, those moments will never be enough. Even a 1000 don’t compare to eternity. The moments are offered by fallen men in a fallen world. Their promise will never be entirely fulfilled, even if it is until death do us part. Death disrupts the eternal attraction.

Why we must embrace the moment as a reflection of Christ himself, for the sake of the other, for the sake of the eternal kingdom. For even as God wooed Israel, even as he pursued them and gave them his gifts of provision and blessing. He longed for them. He loved them with all his passion.

Likewise, in the moment of seeming irrational attraction, the finite man bares his soul. He images God in his attraction to beauty of the other and the pleasure he receives from glorying in his beloved. A woman can sell this cheaply by taking advantage of the moment. She can get him to do as she wishes, without appreciation for him. She can collect favors for herself. She can heap upon herself the transient glory of the moment. Or she can image the bride of Christ in all respect and honor, accepting his attraction as gift, accepting the work from his hand in that moment of otherness, returning to him respect and praise, not asking him to sell his dignity in this moment of powerlessness. She is but finite. He is finite. But they together reflect the infinite in this moment. This moment is not a frivolous moment. Eternity is made manifest in this moment. Heaven and hell hang upon this pregnant moment.

Nigerian Chronicles a chronicling

2007-12-30T16:02:00.000-06:00

My Nigerian parables site is up and posting. Check me out over there http://nigerian-parables.blogspot.com/

waiting

2007-12-28T22:29:00.000-06:00

Singing to the tune of “Oh, Tannenbaum.”...

Oh, FedEx man. Oh, FedEx man. Where are you now, oh, FedEx man.
The Nigerians are busy being Nigerian. But could you please return my passport.
Oh, FedEx man. Oh, FedEx man. Come quickly now, oh, FedEx man.
Since the Nigerians are being Nigerian, I think I’ll be Nigerian too. Tomorrow, today, whenever we get around to it.
Oh, FedEx man. Oh, FedEx man. Where are you now, oh, FedEx man?

I once lived in a rental house with lots and lots of roommates. And then one day we discovered we could no longer bear to take a shower in our only bathroom because the hot water pipe had completely clogged up. We made several phone calls into the main office over the next 2 or 3 months and continued to shower under the frigid spray, except for myself. I don’t shower. Finally, we could again not bear it any longer...that is, everyone but myself...and so we made up this cute little song about the broken shower and how we didn’t know which was worse, the stench of our mingled odors or the frigid spray. We sang it into the machine of our absentee landlord in full part harmony. Soon thereafter, a workman showed up at the house to replace the clogged hot water pipe. He was well rewarded.

Perhaps I should make up a little song about a broken sewing machine that needs a motor. Perhaps, I could swing by Switzerland enroute to Nigeria and pick up a motor or two for the others who are waiting too. Perhaps, it might grab the manufacturer’s attention if I sang it on the radio: a sorrowful song of a severed relationship, of oily tears as she sits alone at night upon the workman’s bench, waiting for new innards.

If one should die at the hands of another #2

2007-12-20T18:44:00.001-06:00

The accidental death

Nine years ago my sister died in a car accident that resulted from the traffic mistake made by one of her best college friends. They were on their way to Target to develop her film and were in conversation as he took a left hand turn at a red light. Oncoming traffic hit his car. My sister died soon thereafter from the injuries she sustained. The following day, when I went to the morgue to pick up her “personal effects” I discovered the roll of film that was in her pocket along with her driver’s license. The license was bent around the dented film barrel.

We were all walking around in a state of shock that week. There were random emotional outbursts about weird things like breakfast not being ready. Anger at all the too many people at the house. I remember getting to the funeral home early for the reviewal after a few days of fasting and praying and pouring over my poem I was writing for the next morning. Once I got up too fast, and nearly passed out, while the funeral director stood poised to catch me. But the image that remains in everyone’s memory is the moment Joanna’s college choir ended their moving melody and a tangibly expectant and reverent silence grabbed the attention of every soul. Not a sound was made as Joanna’s friend, who was in the accident with her, entered the room. "He's the one!" No one said it but everyone thought it. The crowd parted for him as he walked up to her coffin alone. There was a pregnant pause. Then, my brother and I, as though queued by some invisible force, emerged from the throng of those watching, to embrace him on either side as we stood together looking down at her cold body with tears streaming down our faces.

This was only the setting scene in our journey to experiencing shared grief with all who experienced loss in the accidental death of my sister. It was only afterward, when we were told back the story of that night, that we realized the powerful message we had enacted. I only remember feeling as though I was elevated slightly out of my body as it moved around, interacting with those there. Some slipping in and out, refusing to look at the body. Others there to support and observe. Yet others, touching and embracing.

if one should die at the hands of another #1

2007-12-20T18:41:00.000-06:00

There is a storyline of response and justice that plays in the minds of people who experience wrongful death to someone close to them. The principles and restorative justice of non-resistance is more than doing nothing in these critical moments. It also takes rigorous preparatory exercise. I would like to imagine/relate some of those storylines.

God's GPS

2007-12-18T16:10:00.001-06:00

A few months ago a few major freeways were shut down. My friend, who was trying to get to my house, called me to direct her. She is notoriously bad at navigating but as I found out she was even worse at taking direction from someone. I couldn’t imagine a worse combination. It would ensure one to be perpetually lost.

She told me the address of where she was as I pulled out my map. She sounded timid, lost and confused. So I began by attempting to orient her and build her confidence in trusting the direction I was giving her. I pointed out landmarks I knew she would see at the corner of University and 37th. I directed her east. I told her she would drive pass the capital building and she was wowed by my knowledge. But then I sensed she was getting impatient and confused and I asked her again where she was and figured out that she had taken a turn off to the right when I had asked her to go straight on one street the whole way. I asked her to turn around but she kept going on the wrong street. I asked her where she was at again and if she recognized any of the streets she was seeing. “No, she wailed. I’m scared. I want to go home.” I could tell she wasn’t going to turn around and fulfill the original directions but knew she could get to my place via another route. So, I told her to continue along the route she had chosen and scrambled to accommodate directing her, as before to a location she recognized. She was delighted when she found a landmark she recognized and eventually made her way to her destination.

This is the exact picture of God, leading us along the path of life. He tries to generate our confidence in him. He shows us where to go. He “fixes” the directions when we in our confusion take a turn where we were directed not to.

Isn’t this the picture of us also? We wander around on paths we do not know. We are mostly perpetually lost because we’re bad at navigating and bad at taking direction. Our whim often determines where we will go. Then when we check back with God, in our fear and confusion, it is not because he gave us bad direction, it is because we didn’t listen well and are now confused about the continued direction he is giving us to accommodate our wandering.

a small success

2007-12-17T09:06:00.000-06:00

They finally did it! After too many meetings, grueling hours, and various unmentionable difficulties with public conduct, we have the a current webpage for the council I served on. You can check it out at the link below. You will see your's truly pictured there with another Bethel alumnus, if you know who to look for. How weird is that?

Kudos to the current president for getting this up and running after all these years of various attempts. He does deserve the credit for it, for as I discovered, even though this was a board of peers, hierarchical leadership is the prevailing ethos.

http://www.paynephalen.org/

traveling to Nigeria

2007-12-15T06:35:00.000-06:00

So, you've noticed, I'm blogging again. I'm sort of in a crunch between projects and trips and stuff and thought I would leave the blogging alone for a while. But if you are a friend, don't let the appearance of busyness deter you from personal contact. I will be in Nigeria for two weeks in January. I thought I would not keep up with blogging during that time and during preparation but circumstances forced a different decision. The shots I got on Tuesday, all 6 of them, have altered my sleeping patterns. I was told by a friend, one shot would give you especially vivid dreams. I was kind of excited about that, especially since the movies that have been coming out in the last couple of year have been crap. But instead of having dreams. I am wide awake at 4:30 am without the hope of sleeping one more wink till the morning. So, instead of being upset and fighting it, I am blogging, writing and reading. Also, I have decided to blog while in Africa. Several folks have done it. I think it will be possible. I believe it will be necessary, based on the mixed reviews folks have had about my going. I think I know of only one person who has gone into the type of setting and under the type of circumstances I'll be going and he was fine. I'll be more then fine as well and I wish to bring everyone else along on that fine-ness.

"with no place to lay his head"

2007-12-15T05:43:00.001-06:00

There was a sight I saw in Guatemala when I was there a few years ago, as I looked out over the countryside from my perch high in the hills. I had gone with the usual suspects: a ministry team who would spend the day teaching local pastors. Walking along a worn path along the highway was an old woman with a load on her back, walking with a man and a child. She looked up at me as I stood in the most elaborate restaurant conference room in the area. Somehow I knew she and many like her had spent the rainy night sleeping under a tree. I did not feel sorry for her, for she had a good rest and was continuing on her way in peace. I looked out at her and desired to have what she had.

In the US, I don’t know if it is exactly illegal to rest wherever one finds a place comfortable enough. I just know that good citizens and often the police will weary themselves with questions at the least and harassment at the most, if one decides to do any sort of lengthy resting on property they do not own. I must say I have learned quickly the full implications of stranger caught in the cross-hairs of capitalist exchange. The hostile exchange sits oddly in one’s soul. I felt guilty for simply being. Then I felt an indignant responsive yet primal need to live, rise up inside from out of nowhere.

Since then I have developed this bad habit of attempting to sleep wherever I can. I used to brainstorm with my friend Greg, where all those places might be. On the livingroom floor. In my car. In the bed of my truck, with my truck parked various places. Once when my house was filled with single women and they kept coming back from a year, or several months overseas and they had taken up every nook and cranny in my house I decided I would sleep on a high shelf on my porch. I endured a summer and a winter there. My friend Greg was much more adventurous. He slept with the homeless folks. He thought about sleeping in the space just wide enough for a human, in the median on 35W. You would just dodge traffic late at night when it was sparse and then in the morning when you rouse yourself, you would persuade morning rush hour traffic to let you back across.

Now, whenever I find it pleasing to my budget to sleep in my car instead of like a more expensive accommodation. I have a particular modus operandi. I pick a neighborhood. A semi quiet one where people leave their car on the street. I visit a gas station or a restaurant before I go there. I do the usual at the restaurant or gas station. Brush teeth. Get into pajamas. Switch from contacts to glasses. I go out to my car and arrange everything for the night. I get out a dark sheet or sleeping bag for the back seat. Dark is better because it is less eye catching. I crack a window: street side or sidewalk side depending on whether it’s a more patrols on the street or a more pedestrians on the sidewalk kind of neighborhood. I get to the intended location. I park. I talk on my cell phone and scope my surroundings to loose any onlookers or suspicious folks. When all is clear, I dive into the back seat for a good night. The next morning is about choosing your moment dive into the drivers seat to drive away to find a gas station or breakfast place or park to use their facilities.

This can be done in virtually any major city. I have found the neighborhoods with high Latino density to be the most friendly. In San Diego, I stopped at a 7 eleven to use the facilities, late at night. I was turned away. I tried again at an obviously latino bar and restaurant and grille. I was welcomed at the door by a woman behind a counter, her hands in a bowl of masa. To my question she smiled and responded, “alla, a lado derecha, miha.” Music was pouring out the back room. I went to see what was happening. A band was playing last call. The man at the door let me through to enjoy. And the bouncer danced with a lady who knew him and asked.

Now lets not all rush out and do this or maybe lets...
One certainly encounters the environment much more tangibly. And I have never been caught and harassed for doing this.

lesson from the ants

2007-12-14T10:50:00.001-06:00

The sun was climbing higher in the sky as I ate my breakfast: a bag of dried fruit and nuts. I watched the ants as I was filled with warmth, food and peace. I looked across the barren terrain. The sandy basin to my back with nothing but prickly sparse vegetation. The rugged badlands to the east, where nothing grew. Hills and valleys of rocks like the one I sat upon. Nothing but lifeless barrenness as far as the eye could see. Yet the ants were busily at work around me. A tiny piece of fruit dropped from my hand into the path of an unexpecting ant. My curiosity was piqued. I watched intently to observe how a little ant would respond to a freak accident of consequential gain. It was the only piece of sticky fruit available as far as my eye could see. But for the ant... It paused. Briefly. Then it walked around the piece of fruit as though an object was obstructing its path to better things.

I heard the Lord say to me. You are this ant. Learn to recognize my blessings, which come as though from nowhere.

seeking peace in desert places

2007-11-25T23:54:00.000-06:00

I went to the desert for peace. I found that the noise was in my head. I went to the desert to pray and then I didn’t know what to say to God. I went to the desert to be alone but somehow everyone came with me. I went to the desert to rest but carried a heavier load than ever before in my life.
Deserts are the living metaphor for life. The journey is long and tedious. The nights are cold. The days are hot. The briars and thorns argue with your intent. The barren landscape mirrors the wretched parts of the empty soul, the thirsty church, the wretched state of humankind.
If you go to the desert, go to encounter wonder and terror.

So the photo is my evidence that it happened. That is my shadow against the setting sun. I pitched my tent beside a range of rock hills to the east of the basin I crossed. The sun fell behind the mountains by 5 and everything was pitch black by 6. Sweat stung the scratches and gashes I received in an encounter with a thorn bush. I washed them clean and left the thorns for removal by the morning sun. I tried to read. But I was afraid. I tried to sleep to forget the fear but the fear prevailed. I tossed and turned. The quiet nothingness contrasted with the noise and worries I brought with in my head, till the helicopters started droning away in the distance and the cold chilled me to the bone. The stars hung into my face. Cassiopeia and Andromeda beckoned me to wonder but I was too cold to be good company. The coyote’s song brought the dawn to comfort and soothe. I frantically climbed the hill of rocks that shadowed my abode from the rising sun. I sat down to contemplate the lessons given by ants. Peace and fullness flooded me to the pit of my soul as I soaked in the morning sun.

deserts and scholars

2007-11-12T18:31:00.000-06:00

So I'm off to some desert wandering and scholar stalking.
I'll be back in a week.

interpreting mystery

2007-11-11T23:23:00.000-06:00

The past series of image related posts have plumbed deeply from the depths of the mystery of God’s intimate and personal presence as well as his intensely beautiful connective character in the posited, ever being renewed creation. His word is pervasive in reality just as the word of an image sketched. Personal, communal and divine are but x to the third in a math of infinite dimensions. The power of the mystery entices and entrances.

Yet this may all be too mysterious to appreciate. My sister got a bit of a commentary and told me she would have missed most of it without the commentary. I struggle to express the mystery clearly enough to entice but allowing it its own character. In the hopes to not destroy the mystery, I make a tentative attempt toward description.

The parable of the adult in an infant seat is a personal message. It is an individual. It is also the church. It is also the Christ. All have wounds. All have scars. All have been self-inflicted. All have been rejected and unesteemed. All have put on the vestiges of infants. All are called by the same name. All exist in the tension between already-not yet.

Revelation. What is the meaning of Revelation. The images from John on Patmos, who can find the end of it? One attempts a historical contextual interpretation. One a futurist prophesy. Others stand in line. Who is right? Who has the epistemological sense of the times? Who can plumb the depths of this mystery? Perhaps there is no mystery and we must strip it down to its bare boned science. We could survey our congregations like "It matters not how it is revealed." This is perhaps security of control. Or perhaps we should bask in the rays of its eternal sustainance. We could be drawn to the banquet. Commune with the cook. Perhaps this is security of another sort.

Your life changed ours. Your death calls us to life, eternal.

2007-11-01T08:50:00.001-05:00

In memory of the death of my beloved sister,

The story of Joanna who died at age 22 was the tragedy of our lives. She was young. She was beautiful. She was dynamic and relational. And if that wasn’t enough, she was also feisty and passionate about living out the Spirit of Christ’s compassion into our lives. She was beginning her senior year at Crown College. After attending a week of spiritual enrichment meetings, she was riding with a friend, when they were in a traffic accident that took her life.

Your life to mine was full and vibrant.
Your death was like a dooms day whisper.
I longed to embrace the dreams of life with you.
But another voice spoke more insistently

You forgave one who had wronged you. You tasted the freedom of it before you died. You partook in the divine calling on earth, before your soul joined with the one who sacrificed and gave for you. Sacrifice. Forgiveness. It is etched in our memories like your last words to us. We forgave too. We continue to forgive today. Forgiveness, love and courage to live boldly in the beauty born of ashes. Lord, grant us this grace. This is the hope we live for. This is the love we are transformed by.

When we buried you body
Our tears were for our lost dreams of life with you
When we visit your grave today
Our tears remember the life we once lived with you

God called us to greater things through your life and your death. Even though we wish you could have stayed and called us to the redemptive life, your absence has done so also. Tragedy calls out the worst or the best in us. In the end, we, your family, hope to live out the best.

more than your cup of Joe

2007-10-31T09:05:00.000-05:00

So, I thought I’d get myself to a strong cup of Joe this morning after last night’s wrestling match with God. I stopped in at the local Caribou for the small dark roast. I think I’ll need it today. However, my sleepy stupor got more than it bargained for. I noticed the one barista’s long white and black falls and I thought, “When did
Caribou let its workers go Goth?” Then I saw the little old lady barista beside her and then remembered, “Oh, it’s Halloween!” I could barely restrain myself from giggling as the little old lady took my order, then handed me my coffee with the old lady, shaky hand tremors. She had put on the whole nine yards: granny shoes, a granny purse with beaded handles, plastic bead necklace in gaudy colors, white hair protruding from under a night cap, and the most outdated outfit you could find. I wonder if she’ll have to drop the shaky hands, duck waddle, granny act when the line at the cash register gets too long.

I waited till I got back to my car before I let out a belly laugh.

By the way wrestling matches with God are good things. If you don’t have them. I do highly recommend them. Life shines brighter if you have them. Life gets put into perspective. Take for example our friend Jacob, son of Issac. He wrestled with God all night one night. The next day he went out to meet his estranged brother. He organized his servants, wives, children and cattle in such a way to appease his brother but also so they had the best chances at surviving a battle. He expected to be killed by his own brother. In the natural course of things, that would likely have happened. But Jacob wrestled with God the night before. What was the wrestling match all about?

squash soup

2007-10-29T17:56:00.000-05:00

Sauté:
1-2 Onions
Garlic
2 hot banana peppers
Olive oil

Add flour to sauted veggies till oil is dried up.

Add water and bring to a boil till the following veggies are just soft.

2 cut up, pealed and softened squash
Cinnamon
Orange juice
Zest of orange
Celery
Vegetable seasoning
Soy sauce
Hot pepper to taste

the anguish of the Christ

2007-10-28T18:29:00.000-05:00

He came unto his own and his own received him not. He was rejected. He was despised. They threw him out of the temple. Yet his words were gold. They were salvation itself. They were the words of the wisdom of the ages.

He was confined to the vestiges of encumbered humanity. He emptied himself of who he was, pouring out his majesty into the likeness of us. He took the seat of infants in the corridors of our planet. He was subjected to the constraints of existence among us. He was marginalized. He was infantized. We did not see him for who he really was.

He inflicted upon himself the pain of our existence. His hands and arms bore the deep wounds of our grief. His words of love to us, he carved, in the wounds on his own body. He sacrificed himself. He continues to bear our pain.

Rise up oh, Savior of the world! Let your kingdom come. Let your will be done. Throw off the bondages of our vestige. Be our Christ. Be our hope. Recreate your creation. Rise above our rejection of you. Rise above our human infancy. By your wounds we are healed. Reign in your glory. Stand on the stage of our hearts. Speak your words of truth into our souls. May we suffer with you the pain of all humanity. My we return to infancy with you, so that we can grow again into your new kingdom, which shall have no end.

the banquet feast revealed

2007-10-28T18:28:00.000-05:00

The church of Christ is like those who came to a banquet feast. In reverence and all orderliness they sat down to dine. The feasting hall was beautifully decorated and the candle light set the mood. Conversation was pleasant and light as everyone waited to be served. The evening wore on and on and the banqueters continued to wait patiently.

Except for one banqueter who couldn’t sit still and insisted on sitting on her heals. She was abrupt and rude, asking when the food would be served. The banqueters responded with an embarrassed silence. “Perhaps she will tire of asking if we ignore her,” they thought to themselves. Yet the rude one persisted, asking again, “Aren’t we going to eat?” Finally she went to help herself to the feast in the raw. She handed the food she had gathered, to the one who could cook it and make it into sustainable sustenance.

Yet despite her rudeness, this banqueter was the only one who ate and she ate heartily. The others starved and did so silently.

rejoice with me

2007-10-26T15:21:00.000-05:00

Just a bit of news to rejoice about. Peacefullady, who frequents my blog, has given birth to a beautiful son, Issac. He was born yesterday. Photos are on her Zanga site.

it matters not how it is revealed...

2007-10-22T23:18:00.001-05:00

If you are new here at parables or even if you are an old reader that has been following for quite some time, you might find the things I connect a bit odd. However, my friends will tell you that I follow the mystery and I sit and wonder and ponder a lot.

Reveal is a survey that is out there. It reveals some things many people have known for quite some time. But more importantly it reveals some things about the modern evangelical church to people who hear it best through systems and measures. Yet there is this story I can tell that says the same thing. I call it the parable of the banquet and you may read it below. You may also watch the explanation of the survey results here. Choose your form of revelation.

the banquet

2007-10-22T23:12:00.000-05:00

I was seated at a table at the banquet. Again, I was dilly-dallying around in my chair like a kid. The lights were low. There was candlelight and everything was richly decorated and beautiful. Conversation was at a low hum while everyone was waiting for the food. The food was in the next room: buffet style. We waited and waited…then we waited some more! I grew tired of the waiting and asked my dinner companions when we were going to eat. Nobody responded. They simply continued to wait. Finally, I grew tired of waiting and got up to help myself to the buffet. I was handed a plastic bag with which to gather my food. The food was artistically arranged but it was all in the raw: onions pulled up by the stalks and laid on the table, potatoes with dirt still on them, celery with root and stalk. I was to gather my food then give it to the cook so he could cook it.

This is from an earlier post. I thought it appropriate to repost it.

the happy bride's anguish

2007-10-22T23:08:00.000-05:00

I was at a gathering of sorts—sort of a cross between an academic conference and a church gathering. Noise and people were everywhere. They were milling about in the large lecture hall of an academic building. There were 2 or 3 main speakers or guest presenters but I wasn’t much able to hear them on account of the noise and the number of people milling about and talking.

Outside this hub room, I came into what seemed to be a hallway. It also was busy with people passing through. I saw an old friend. She was restrained in a highchair for toddlers. I went over to greet her and noticed in horror that she had carved up her arms with a heavy pocket knife. There were wounds everywhere. It was as if she had carved words/messages into her arms. Some had scabbed over and others were open deep cuts and yet oozing. “What are you doing?” I cried in horror as I tried to cover her arms with my hands in a gesture of healing. Her face responded repeatedly alternating between jolly humor and deep anguish. I ignored her happy face and her joking, expressing my grief over her scars and wounds. Deep grief and anguish emerged.

You who bear the name of Christ, you who would speak his words to others, you who would bless and serve others--you are restrained to infant chairs far beyond your years. Your maturity, oh church, has been stunted to the stage of a toddler. The pain of your wounds have not been healed. Your face cannot express the hurt that you have experienced. You wear only your Sunday happy face. Yet the pain remains, expressed in scars and deep wounds written on the arms that you would use to love and serve others. Your blessing and your help, oh bride of Christ, is scarred. Why then is your face still happy, happy, happy? Why, oh you who suffers with Christ, do you not weep for your anguish is great and your self mutilation is horrendous?

Rise up oversized believer! Break out of your infant chair. Do not be content with your toddler’s diet and the wounds in your soul. Grieve with Christ on his way to Calvary. Be healed by the great physician. Confess your sins to one another, so that your healing may come. Walk into your place in the kingdom. Stand on the platforms of the world. Speak forth the words of God with boldness in the lecture halls of the world. Do not be content any longer to remain sidelined in the hallways and corridors of life, restrained to infant chairs. Who has told you, oh daughter of Israel, that this is your lot? Who has told you that you should not weep and groan for the pain of your past? Do you not notice that your good deeds bear the fruit of your own pain? Do you not hear the great physician’s voice? Rise up, oh you who bear the name of Christ! Be healed. Speak forth his glory. But remember from whence came your healing.

from Matthew 9

2007-10-22T23:03:00.000-05:00

1 Jesus stepped into a boat, crossed over and came to his own town. 2 Some men brought to him a paralytic, lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven." 3 At this, some of the teachers of the law said to themselves, "This fellow is blaspheming!" 4 Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, "Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts? 5 Which is easier: to say, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up and walk'? 6 But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins..." Then he said to the paralytic, "Get up, take your mat and go home." 7 And the man got up and went home. 8 When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe; and they praised God, who had given such authority to men.

the unintended healing

2007-10-22T23:02:00.000-05:00

Have you ever wondered about those stories where people get healed in some supposedly miraculous way? I have. Then you hear stories about how it’s a set-up and all that. People come away from the big event relapsing from their healing or whatever. It makes you think, maybe they were never healed in the first place. Yeah, I’ve wondered also. Then I found myself in the middle of an unintended healing.

The world is full of men who have been damaged by women and have taken into their souls this destruction and in response have hated women. My soul bears the mark of the rebound effect. I don’t know exactly how all of it transpired. I only know vaguely the incidents in which I was damaged. I hold no animosity toward my abusers but I can say what they did to me was wrong.

There are also the systems of oppression that I run into time and time again in my own culture as well as others’. Maybe I was super sensitive and it effected me more than it would have another. However it happened, the effects were with me. There were physical symptoms. Symptoms that had odd symbolic character connections to the issue. There were times I went deaf or dumb. Whenever a crass joke with misogynous character was spoken in my presence, I would either not be able to hear it or I would loose my ability to respond or speak. I didn’t exactly know what was the matter with me or exactly what the symptoms were but I knew things could be better in my soul.

Then, I found a group of believers who said they would pray and discern with me. As I prayed with them about the scars on my soul, it was as if the scales dropped from my lips. My jaw was unhinged. I felt set free. But isn’t this interesting, that misogyny, oppression of women, hatred of woman turns into an oppressive silencing of the woman. In the weeks thereafter, I noticed a physical change in my lips. Before, I had never really seen their natural color. I’d always battled with chapped lips, in the summer and in the winter. It didn’t matter how much water I drank or how much Chap Stick I used, they were always bleeding or peeling. But now, suddenly, they were perfect. I habitually ran my nail across them to check for loose edges and there simply were none. It was completely unbelievable. I doubted and decided to dehydrate myself and test this unintended “healing.” After a week of diet coke and coffee my lips did get a bit chapped but not anything like before. I thanked the Lord and decided to embrace my healing.

I was so excited I took a pictures for proof.

This is not to say that I haven’t struggled with chapped lips since then. I have. Currently, I having a terrible time with them. The healing was instant but it is also progressing and relapsing. I had to choose into it in moments of doubt. Oddly enough, I had the worst case of chapped bleeding lips after a friend confessed a secret affair to me and vented to me about the anger and hatred she had for her partner. 1. Praying for God’s healing of my own soul and praying for the forgiveness and healing for a couple that had fallen into destructive relational habits became one and the same. I had never imagined the effects would be written on my lips. I had never thought that my lips would be the barometer. My mouth which would speak God’s blessing and truth into the world of chaos and negativity. How oddly symbolic that the marks of this sin would muzzle the mouth.

1. If you are reading this and you just felt a stabbing in the gutt because you think I’m talking about you, I assure you, I am not. There are a number of people that could fit this confession in my life over the past year and those of you who read this—this is not you. But if you feel stabbing guilt…Confess your sin. Grieve it. And if you already have, Christ declares you forgiven and I declare you forgiven also. Walk in your forgiveness.

thanks to my readers

2007-10-18T22:53:00.001-05:00

Thanks to all you readers that have taken a personal interest in me and what I write here. I appreciate that very much. I’ve enjoyed your emails. These have been redemptive relational experiences in cybertic medium.

2007-10-17T21:30:00.000-05:00

2007-10-17T21:26:00.000-05:00

Who chooses the things over which they sweat?

choice is a luxury, friends. Be careful with it. Be very careful.

2007-10-17T21:24:00.000-05:00

get out of my bus...

2007-10-17T10:43:00.001-05:00

In Seminary we studied leadership, going through various models put together by researchers who studied successful businesses, secular and faith based materials aiming at discovering how to lead more successfully. One image that was used was the bus model. Good leaders put the right people on the bus and get the wrong people off. I was disturbed by this analogy for numerous reasons. I was also told that it is essential to mentor the promising if a leader was to pass on his/her legacy. I've always struggled with this advice because I read in the New Testament how Jesus did not choose those that would have fit into the promising category. In fact, I think he may have scraped the bottom of the barrel. And then there is the beauty of the kingdom of God being brought to those that are rejected and the last being first and Isaiah 53 and all that stuff. How does one take that seriously?

Kicking people off the bus evokes in me images of the “wrong people” standing beside the road. Are they the lame the crippled the mentally ill that can’t contribute to the bus’ destination? Or perhaps they are just ordinary people in the wrong place at the wrong time. Does this mean they don’t get to go to wherever it is the bus is going.

The analogy is too narrow. But I fear it mirrors the reality of the scope of most leaders and theorists as well.

So I put out a challenging analogy, just to reveal my own narrowness and inept attempt at expounding on leadership.

The barn raising image. Successful leadership is like a barn raising. The entire community is involved, irrespective of age, talent or disability. What matters is that you are born and that you are a participant in this community. Various “leaders” emerge based on talent and experience in construction. The youth and younger are mentored on-site, on the job. The lunch committee feeds the community. Children laugh and play and do mischief, turning the event into a social gathering. Many hands make the work lighter, as they say. I’ve also seen my father come home from these work day, rejuvenated, with a hopeful gleam in his eye.

Get out of my bus...and into my barn. Sung to the tune of “Get out of My Dreams” (and into my car). No thank you,...mister Amishman...I like my bus...I very, very...like my...charter bus casino. I feel included while it lasts.

the fight is passionate...

2007-10-17T00:44:00.000-05:00

On occasion some of my girlfriends have had the bad taste and desperation to use me as a conduit to get themselves a date or two with the male friends I’ve had. These realizations came as a surprise to me. Maybe I’m naïve to this reality, but truly, I think I prefer to be naïve in these cases. Mostly, I’ve just trusted people to be honest and to hold my best interest in sway with their own if not higher than their own. The cruel reality is many people would sell their grandmother into prostitution if it meant that they could secure a few moments of happiness for themselves. I have contemplated what it might mean to live in such a world, where there are such easy sales on essential relationships.

One thing has come to me. Friendship. Amistad. Brotherhood. Sisterhood. These are the answers. These are abundant and giving and one cannot have too many partners in these types of relationships if one is willing. These relationships may evoke jealousy among its participants. I’ve seen this too, yet generally the explosions are a bit smaller and not as permanently destructive as romantic relationships. While I, admittedly, have often hidden behind friendships with men, I have also benefited profoundly from them. I would say I have benefited more than many of my own sex. Men understand things, do things and describe things in ways I am challenged by. Because I like to partner up things and fit people and pieces together, I delight in the particular contributions men make to the whole. But in order to do this well, I would near kill myself should I be banished to working closely with only one man and relate to the rest of the world through him. The stereotypical image of a Muslim woman’s world would drive me mad. This aspect of my own culture of origin drove me mad. Yet in this culture of the “free,” I find many women and men choosing to see the other sex only through the eyes of the possibility of ultimate copulation. I figured out, with one girlfriend, that she was strangely and violently repulsed by one portion of available males she encountered. The remaining portion she dated or had some sort of sexual relationship with. Another woman struggled with placing a man who was not her husband into sexual partner possibility category, when he was clearly blessing her in a father-to-daughter relationship.

As for my one friend who would have sold me up the river for a fling with my male friend, well, she got married to another. And guess what, I’m still his friend. And the blessing is that I get to share with him in his joys and sorrows. I was invited to the wedding. I celebrated their children with them. But she can’t. She lit the wrong fire and it went bang.

It was painful to find out that she intended to deceive me and snatch away from me something I held with an open hand. It is the parable of the gift given but stolen a moment before it is offered. We have spoken, my friend and I. We have both wept over this passing on of betrayal. We have forgiven. Yet all the more, I have resolved to make the pursuit of brotherhood and sisterhood my highest banner. But how can one fly such a banner in a world that has no category for brother or for sister? Comrades! Come! Fight on! He who called us his friends bids us come and join him.

calibration

2007-10-13T16:36:00.001-05:00

I was working the graveyard shift at a job in a manufacturing company soon after I graduated from college. Every night I was required to run a machine that would coat glass with various chemicals. The machine was a robot of sorts with an arm that would pick up the round circles of glass and place them at various stations along the conveyer. The problem with the machine was that it wasn’t calibrated to place the glass plates in exactly the right position and so the operator, me, would have to take off the guards and tip the glass into the right position before the machine could continue its process. I put in several requests to have the machine calibrated, to no avail. Eventually I gave up and one night the inevitable happened. I had taken all the protective guards off so that I could easily tip each glass into place. It was 2 am and I was a bit groggy. Unthinkingly, I reached under the machine arm to tip the glass in, when suddenly I realized the clearance between the arm and the table wasn’t enough to accommodate my arm. The strong arm of the robot had securely pinched my arm to the solid surface of the counter. I was securely stuck.

When we are young and impressionable our parents or our parent calibrates us to a particular rhythm. Generally, they can calibrate us to nearly any system of being. Later as we mature, we get knocked about and loose our calibration. Or sometimes we’re landed into a situation where the earlier calibration won’t serve us well anymore. So, we need to be recalibrated.

I often think of cross-cultural translating as recalibrating myself to a new way of being. The hope is that I will be able to keep the old calibration settings intact for those times when I return to the other culture. I think of it as rewiring my switches. So that when someone flips a certain switch, it can evoke a reaction of a. b. or c. depending upon my context. I enjoy the complexity of this.

Yet there are times when I loose my calibration a little because of negligence. Sometimes I run into folks who serve as my calibrators and it ends up a little off. Whatever the case, the machine still does its job despite its little calibration problem. All I need to do is take the protective guards off and tip the glass into place and all is well for quite some time. Until some night or groggy morning makes me a little careless and I make a false move. Suddenly, I’m immobilized under the heavy arm of the system I a trying to work with against its own laws.

As for what happened at the factory...

I looked around frantically for options. There was a window to and adjacent room that my only co-worker went to occasionally. But he would enter only every 2 hours for a duration of 15 seconds tops. I looked at the clock and decided I would yell his name only every 10 seconds as he would be the only one who could possibly hear me through the thick walls of the clean room lab. If he didn’t hear me, I would be stuck there until 6 am when the day crew came in for their shift. There was also another window that faced the main production floor. Yet few people walked past it. But I began taking off my shoes so that I could throw them at the window with my free arm, should a person walk past. There I was, pinched to the chemical counter for an hour before my co-worker heard me as he entered the adjacent room for the 15 seconds. My arm was completely numb by the time he came to rescue me. I will never forget the look on his face as he entered the room. He turned white as I immediately began giving him orders on what buttons to push to get the arm to raise. He was so flustered that he shut off the machine and it would have taken 5 minutes for it to start up again. In the end, he simply lifted the arm a few millimeters with his upper body strength and I yanked my arm out.

I returned to work the next evening to operate a calibrated machine.

remembering Alminda

2007-10-13T16:31:00.001-05:00

I’ll always remember Alminda, a fierce looking, weathered, strong Christian woman who was originally from Haiti. She raised a family of 12 there. I met her at a conference I was scoping out. She too was pretty skeptical of this conference and its rock-concert style but somehow she was there. While there we both also met this interesting and refreshingly weird guy who had traveled from Texas. He was in his 50s. He was a jolly, white haired fellow, who wore his pants up too high, held in place by rainbow suspenders. He had the energy of a hyperactive teenager and wasn’t embarrassed to walk up to anyone and tell them their life story...Yes, you heard me right, he told them “everything they ever did.” John 4:29. The crazy thing was that he was always right. So, he walked up to this hardened, skeptical Haitian woman and told her all she had been through. It became a turning point in her life. I watched him do this to several other people. It was amazing. He blessed people in ways they couldn’t describe. He told them their secrets and then told them what God was saying to them. Then he disappeared.

Nobody gave him a prize even though he was better than Benny Hinn. Nobody lauded him. Nobody put him on the main stage. And it seemed to me that if they would have—he would have been ruined and he wouldn’t have been able to do what he did with much success.

Yet Alminda stayed in my life after the conference. She lived in an apartment she had no income to pay for. I would on occasion drive her places. She was a very perceptive lady. And she spent a lot of time in prayer. Her whole life was a life of prayer. On occasion she would tell me her stories. While she lived in Haiti and was raising her family, she would go to church any time the doors were opened. Outside of that she prayed. There for a time, every Saturday she would pray for the Sunday service. Every Saturday, God would reveal to her the exact message that was going to be preached on Sunday. She would then go to her pastor’s house and tell him what God had revealed to her. Repeatedly, it was the exact sermon he had prepared for that coming Sunday.

She talked about the effects this had on the young, sometimes insecure pastor. Needless to say he was a little freaked out. We would then talk about ways to not get tripped up in the insecurities (our own or another’s) but to instead live in and project a message of God’s ever present love and closeness to others. He is the water. I am the conduit. He is the potter. I am the clay.

do unto others...

2007-10-13T13:48:00.000-05:00

I was once at a festival walking down the street with a friend, when she suddenly blurted out, “All these people look really stupid. I mean look at them. Their hair. Their clothes. Don’t you think so?”

I don’t really remember how I got out of that one but not much time later she blurted out the next few lines. “I wonder what people think of us?” she said in a pensive tone. I think they think we look weird and stupid,” she continued as though she was encountering a new realization.

At that point I gaped at her a bit. She was a smart woman and I was surprised she had no realization of her own projection. I had to think to my self later—quite often we are blind to our own participation in things we have cognitive knowledge above.

...as you would have them be to you.

leadership: consensus style or hierarchical style

2007-10-11T13:34:00.000-05:00

I was once challenged by my mentor, “Leadership is real. It’s in nature. It happens everywhere. Some lead and others follow.” He was referring to strong leadership of a more hierarchical nature. Leaders are champions, in his mind. Yet this was why I asked him to mentor me. He was a challenge and a perceived threat to my way of thinking. I didn’t like his style much. It was so institutional. So top down. A friend of mine and I joked around about his strong style. We called him the general. It’s not surprising, since he was in the marines before he took this desk job. But, I reasoned, this is how half the world works, I would do well to learn to interact with it and learn to love the people who operate in these styles of leadership and being.

So I rose to the challenge and began looking around in nature for non-hierarchical leadership. Geese flying south is non-hierarchical or, rather, a sharing of leadership. All able geese take their turn at the helm. And all have a common understanding of destination/ “the goal”. This is just one example of a distribution of power/responsibility leadership style. Its opposite extreme is the hierarchical leadership. Various cultures seem to pick their place on the continuum but I would argue there are elements of both in every culture. There doesn’t seem to be much information or research on leadership styles within other cultures, however, the differences are observed within our own culture in dialogs about gender specific leadership styles.. One style is stereotypically attributed to the feminine and the later the masculine. I would prefer to refer to the differences as consensus vs. hierarchy leaderships styles. There is a leadership theorist, Mary Parker Follett who popularizes a distribution of power management style. Circular theory of power is the theory upon which she bases her consensus style of leadership. It turns the “power-over” of hierarchy leadership into “power with.” You can read about it here. Thanks to a new friend, Mr. Kriss who is doing his dissertation on her leadership style.

Some questions to respond to.
Which style is more Christ-like: hierarchy or consensus? Is this even a good question? Are there ways to make either style Christ centered? What are the pitfalls (sins) of either style? Are there any other sites out there that address these questions? Has anyone seen any great consensus leadership in practice?

Deuteronomy 10:14

2007-10-10T23:02:00.001-05:00

Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the LORD'S thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is.

more cake

2007-10-07T18:04:00.000-05:00

So I couldn't stay away from the cake making endevours since that first big attempt with my sister's wedding cake. Everything since then was a cake walk by comparison. These are the latest two birthday cakes.

2007-10-07T17:55:00.000-05:00

forgivness first

2007-10-06T23:32:00.000-05:00

There is a principle in popular psychology that I have often disagreed with. The principle assumes forgiveness is reached after a lot of work and a lot of expressed anger and hurt. The principle is mentioned in the article entitled “Forgiveness First.”

"Thousands were burned at the stake or decapitated or tortured in other ways until they died," Dr. Kraybill said. "When the martyrs were dying, they would offer prayers out loud, begging God to forgive their executioners."

Their belief that they should immediately forgive anyone who harms them is in stark contrast to popular ideas, Dr. Kraybill said. While many Americans see forgiveness as the end of a long emotional process, the Amish believe it's the start. They understand that they may feel angry and depressed, but they do not believe they should let painful feelings dictate their conduct toward others.

One of the primary reasons “working through” hurt and grief via bold expressions of anger and wishing harm upon the one who has done you wrong is that it is very simply practice in unforgiveness. It proclaims the making of a person who has been sinned against into an object of wrath toward his persecutors. Bold expressions of hate which pour out of hurt are formative for the persecutor and the persecuted. It turns the identity of the persecuted into yet another persecutor. It isn’t just venting. It isn’t just an expression of hurt. It is the start of a practice in unforgiveness.

Forgiveness begins with bold expressions of grace, before they are actualized. Christ did not secure the forgiveness of his particular persecutors before he declared it. He was yet alive when he cried, “Father forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.” The Creator did not declare there was light after it already came to be. As co-creators with Christ, should we not take up our responsibility of co-creation in his kingdom.

the meek shall inherit the earth

2007-10-06T22:53:00.000-05:00

I’ve often read this and wondered how and where this has ever occurred. I have seen the meek steamrolled, taken advantage of, anything but inheriting the earth. Quite frankly it’s rather maddening and puts the lines between your eyes on a pensive evening at home alone.

Last year after the Nickel Mines shooting was publicized worldwide. I saw a little bit of how “the meek inherits the earth” might be true. I remember being in the check-out line at the local gas station, a dirty unkempt corner between downtown, the interstate and my neighborhood. My eyes scanned the magazine rack and I stopped in my tracks. There on the cover of People were my people. What were they doing on there? I felt the shock run through my body. It would have been just as shocking to see my mother’s face on there—a place reserved for the faces of vanity of the most worldly sort. But it wasn’t even their faces depicted there. It was the backs of two teen girls walking together across a field.

It makes one wonder, why where the laws of the universe altered for this moment.

Since the incident, “the meek inherit the earth has become even more evident, at least from what is reported in the silent almost hidden stories. Atheism turned into hope for faith for one in the global audience. Read the article here. Among others in the audience were an Iranian delegation and leaders from the World Council of Churches. That is just crazy to the little Beachy girl inside me, who is accustomed to being forgotten and ignored by the world.

what to do about Walmart

2007-10-05T12:48:00.000-05:00

I’ve been on the verge of doing a post on why Amish and Conservative Mennonites don’t have the same sentiments toward Walmart, as compared to upper middle class folks. According to popular uppre middle class knowledge, Walmart exploits its workers, it monopolizes communities, robbing the poor so that tax dollars have to fill in the gaps.

Some folks are shocked to see the scene depicted above. Some find it ironic. Yet in many places, where there is a high population density of Amish, Walmart caters to the Amish community, and yes Amish and Conservative Mennonites shop there. I’ve even been in places where Mennonites have referred to WalMart as the Mennonite store. Dorcas Smucker, a conservative Mennonite writer, approaches the question from a comparative consumer’s perspective, pointing out how other companies exploit their own consumers, with scandalous advertising themes and prices in addition to doing everything that WalMart has done. Hmm.

So Walmart exploits their own workers by not providing affordable health care to its workers and their families. If you were to tell an Amish woman that this is a reason she shouldn’t support Walmart by shopping there, she would respond by noting that she has never had any health insurance nor has her family nor has any of her predecessors. “How is that exploitation?” she would wonder.

Walmart also underpays its employees. To this an Amish man would ask, “How much do they get paid?” The response is usually minimum wage, which is generally twice as much or three times as much as an Amish man would get paid. And the Amish man would humbly tell you so too, with a confused look on his face.

Walmart also exploits foreign workers who make very little profit off of their labor. Smucker rightly notes and we know this too—who doesn’t? I know of only a few fair trade organizations and products. There simply aren’t any alternatives.

It seems to me that as we look at this exchange, we encounter a phenomenon that often happens cross-culturally. Judgments don’t translate directly. Sometimes they’re entirely irrelevant. Sometimes they expose even greater injustices that have been ignored. Walmart might be the giant that becomes the object of a lot of stone throwing. But I think they are simply a representation of what we ultimately hate about ourselves and the system we’ve become entangled in.

serving soup

2007-10-03T18:38:00.001-05:00

We served each other bad soup at the Lord’s supper. We would have served it to our neighbors. Nobody was willing. Self-love kept us from it. And we poisoned only ourselves. The covenant we had made to our neighbors remained unfulfilled that supper night. In a strange coincidence we alone were poisoned. The neighbors were spared. Yet the fact remains, our kitchen is contaminated. What to do with future batches of soup from it? Do we call the health inspectors to inspect our kitchen? Do we reason that we are too busy cooking when they knock? Do we shut down our own kitchen or do we wait for incrimination or disaster to discontinue our services. Do we cover the stench of rotting soup with sweet spices making due with what we can with what we’ve got? Do we reason that grace will cover our stench? Do we shut down our kitchen or will it be shut down for us?

celebrations in summer

2007-10-03T00:57:00.000-05:00

... in the country

2007-10-03T00:55:00.000-05:00

Summer picnics in the home town community. Adults chatter. Kids pitter patter. And everyone has a good time.

2007-10-03T00:52:00.000-05:00

Jungle gyms for kids.
Can this girl defy gravity with her skirts. Absolutely! Hanging up-side-down is a childhood necesity. No skirts left behind.

2007-10-03T00:48:00.000-05:00

Volleyball games for youth and the benches for the mothers babies and the wanna be youths.

... in the city

2007-10-03T00:35:00.000-05:00

2007-10-03T00:34:00.000-05:00

Neighborhood block parties in the heart of the city have a little different feel to them. Tons of kids. Off course! The adults seem to invite all their relatives too.

2007-10-03T00:27:00.000-05:00

This is the favorite activity in our island's block parties. The blow-up bouncy pens for the tons of kids that show up. The neighbor kids who moved away are now, well, very nearly hansom young men. They didn't want to miss out. It's strange that I used to swing them around by their ankles and now I have to look up to make eye contact. And that looks like a very neatly trimmed beard he's sporting. Oh, my goodness! How they've grown. But nobody's too old to get knocked around in the bouncy pen reserved for the rough stuff. A few adults braved the "fighting pen" for the teen boys and the girls who could handle it. I only sustained a finger jam as the ref, the instigator, and the one who it was most fun to take out. Our block parties are the best!

stolen gifts

2007-09-19T23:35:00.000-05:00

There was once a rich man who went to a feast. At this feast he ate and drank with many friends. Two young men in particular spoke with him about their troubles. “Well,” the rich man said, “I have plenty of riches. I can help you obtain for yourselves a better situation.”

So, he promised to meet with them soon. Meanwhile, the two men went home and spoke to each other saying, “This our friend has a lot of riches. We will feel guilty, if we continue to be his friend so that we can rob him of his riches.”

Yet because they were poor and because they were desperate, they decided to proceed with their plotting.

So, the rich man invited them to his home one day. Before they came he set out a certain portion of money for each of them. While they were eating and drinking in his sitting room, the rich man got up to answer the door. The two men then discovered the stacks of money, took it and ran out the back door.

When the rich man returned to his sitting room and found his friends gone with the money, he ran after them. He caught one of them by the coat. Greatly troubled, he cried, “What have you done?”

“We were poor and desperate,” said the young man.

“But I would have given you the money and so much more had you been my friend and not my deceiver and robber.”

The young man hung his head in shame.

“Come, turn from your stealing. You are forgiven, but come back to my house to continue feasting with me in my sitting room. Do what it takes to make your conscience clean before me, then come to share a greater gift with me.” said the rich man.

“I have stolen from you but I am desperate!” cried the young man. “I do not know how to make this right to you.” He turned, clutched the stolen wad in his pocket and fled.

The rich man looked after him sorrowfully and said to the people who had gathered to observe, “Great is the shame of those who steal the very thing that would be given them. Yet their depravity becomes fatal if they cannot accept the greater gift they are offered. They serve themselves to their own sentence. Would they not have been much richer in money and life had they accepted my gift?” He went home and grieved silently in his empty sitting room.

meat counter boy

2007-09-18T16:47:00.000-05:00

A little vignette of a meat counter boy for your entertainment, since I’ve mentioned singleness and marriage and have had a weekend full of it.

Today I saw you again, meat counter boy. Yes, I saw you again as you stumbled all over yourself and asked me what I wanted and offered a sample of everything in your case. Yes, I heard you trying to serve me as I was interrupted by my friends, who just walked in and had to chat for what seemed way too long in front of your meat counter. Just hang on a second, while I juggle some decisions here. I know it seems like a painful eternity when I stand in front of your counter. I’ll take a half pound of roast beef. And yes, that will be all.

Oh, hello, there you are again outside the door on a smoke break. How convenient to take one now that I am exiting. This will never do. You know I don’t accept smokers, as boyfriends, you know. But you don’t know that yet. I could be your friend but I’m not sure you’d put up with the bother of being mine. Yes, goodnight and have a good weekend. I link my arm through my friends and we proceed deliberately toward home.

(time passes...I’m looking into my fridge.)

I need some meat for lunches this week. Drat! I really like the stuff the meat counter boy has. The quality and prices are the best but there is the matter of the meat counter boy. What to do? I refuse to pick an alternative meat counter on behalf of the bumbling boy. That would be quite cowardly. Well, today is the day perhaps. Perhaps he will cut to the chase, make and offer and I can turn him down kindly. But NO. I stand in front of his meat counter as he asks me my name and cuts me some meat. Now he becomes a meat counter boy with a name but a meat counter boy none-the-less. He may be the president of some prestigious club otherwise but that doesn’t matter much to me. I think the cover of this book is true to its contents and the answer is no.

Oh, there you are again, smoking a cigarette. What a coincidence? How incredibly awkward. What do I do? Maybe next time I’ll put on the bonnet, since the veil doesn’t show up so distinctly. No, that’s a cop out. Perhaps he just needs another week to cough up some courage. Patience, I tell myself, patience. I grit my teeth. I get that feeling in the pit of my stomach. I’m gonna have to say no again.

(time passes...I stand in front of the meat counter. Today is the day, I have determined.)

Hi, “XXXX” I say his name. I smile and try to look encouraging. “He needs a bit of fuel for the asking, right?!” Would you like to go for a drink sometime he asks. “Well, I don’t really drink,” I say. I do coffee though and such. I know I say this as I stand in a liquor store with a meat counter but well, I like the meat here mostly, I think to myself. “So, do you live around here,” I ask. I tell him I do. A bit of small talk and nothing more. Have a nice day etc. etc. Whew! We did it! The offer and the kind turn down. Now, I just have to remember his name for a time or two more. But we’re over the hump and all can return to normalcy.

(time passes...I’m looking at a pot of soup)

“It needs beef.” I say to myself. Where do I get the beef? You got it! Meat counter boy. Hope he’s adjusted to normalcy. I hope he figured it out. I hope I don’t get begging or something like that. A second turn-down would have to be more direct, I think. What if he asks me to coffee? Oh, that would be painful!...but manageable. I don’t have a chance to consider my options before I nearly collide with him as he was headed for the door behind me, that is…until he sees me and like a deer caught in the headlights, stops then turns heel and retreats to the back room behind the counter. I feel the awkwardness reach a new peak and wish for supernatural translevitation. I wait and wait, as no one serves me. It feels like an eternity, before he emerges again, perhaps a bit more composed, I don’t notice. He asks what I want and gives it to me. I flee, wondering if this will ever pass. I hate this feeling. I hate this feeling. I want to say no. I have to say no. But he wants me to say yes. He’s a nice person, I’m sure. He’s got good courage. That’s commendable. I wish I could fall out of attraction with me for him but I can’t. How awkward. How very, very awkward. I hope this passes soon.

It did pass and now my meat counter boy is again, merely that, a meat counter boy to me. Hopefully he is someone else’s dearest.

*Sigh*

retreating commentary

2007-09-18T16:19:00.000-05:00

I went on a short trip to a women’s retreat this past weekend. I went to spend time with my mother, who was also going. I went to reconnect with my roots and do a bit of dappling in ethnography. I went to spend time with old friends who I grew up with in our little Beachy Amish community in rural Minnesota. And as often is the case, God quietly speaks, I went for that too. Our main speaker also grew up in the same community and her keynote topic was on trusting in God. I came away with some surprising realizations. For one, I didn’t expect to experience culture shock but I did. Yes, my own culture gave me culture shock! When my mom asked me if I enjoyed myself, I told her, I felt out of place on the inside. I was drawn into conversations I hadn’t participated in for a very long time. My explanation to my mom was, “I guess I don’t think about all the things that a typical Mennonite woman thinks of. I think I would be more at home at a Seminary, where they talked about theology, systems, strategy, programming and all that.”

For one, I could not identify at all with the woman who struggled with fear, nor the one who desired to get married because she wanted the security of someone else making the decisions. I did identify with the woman I observed who was managing the retreat. I overheard her say, “I am not meek and mild…”and a bit more commentary on how God had gifted her with leadership. Somehow she seemed to manage a balance between her beautifully strong personality and submission to her husband, the latter being a Amish Mennonite pillar and the first being not common at all. The stereotype is that strong women cannot be submissive and are generally feminist and tend to trample on men and “wear the pants.” This is certainly a stereotype and it is false.

The surprising encounters:

2007-09-18T16:15:00.000-05:00

Wow, the men in the kitchen and the all male wait staff (young and old) were all volunteers and it looked like they wanted to do what they were doing, which was serving a large crowd of women, cutting no corners on the pampering and frills. There was candlelight. There was tea in fancy teacups. This is wonderful!

It’s not a great wonder that marriage works in these Mennonite women’s communities, given the amount of thought and humility these women put into their relationships with their husband. One woman gave a punitive example of a woman who judged her husband’s wishes to be “strange ideas” when he asked her to not run the dryer when she was not in the house. She admitted to not obeying his wishes when he was not around. She was chided by her sister in Christ: if you do not acknowledge your husband’s wishes in the little things, how can you possibly negotiate the big things? In the world I live in now, I am not accustomed to this sort of attention to the “little sins”.

The teaching is specific, applicable and not afraid to mess with people’s lives, instead remaining in the safety of the conceptual.

Another challenge that was put out to the women was to trust God and to have confidence in your husband. That in itself will make a successful marriage. One needs to trust God that if you husband blows it in a decision he makes, God is big enough to pick up the pieces. A few examples were given. A woman told a story of her husband who was working a business deal of his. She gave him some advice. He decided not to take it. Later, it became obvious that her husband should have taken her advice. Upon hearing the story, a young woman asked, “but did the fact that your husband’s disregard for your advice interfere with the harmony of your relationship.” The old woman chuckled. “I can tell, you are still young,” she said. “I know I can’t change my husband,” she said.

The older woman did not ridicule her husband for making a bad choice but rather used the situation to suffer with him in the consequences. In the end, that which could have brought division and self-loathing and destruction to the husband’s confidence actually worked a good they both desired, companionship and togetherness that only shared suffering can bring to a unit of two or more.

In my mind's eye, I held up something I've obsessed about. I felt it dissipate. My attachment to it released.

I would venture to guess, if the husband lived by the same principles with respect to his wife, generally the results would work toward the same end.

These Mennonite women mostly have no idea how to translate the principles of “a marriage that works” to a world riddled with feminism, entitlement, domestic abuse and misogyny. However, once when I brought a non-Mennonite woman to this sort of teaching, she said it was the best she had heard. What the non-Mennonite fears is becoming subservient to violence and a doormat to evil. Sometimes the language used in one context translates negatively to the other context. It would be valuable to have a dialogue.

Unwavering faith in God to work out the details of one life and longings is not mere talk here. It is the reality of these women’s lives and (surprise) God is faithful. Many of these women “have no options” with respect to the mainstream culture’s standards. They don’t often pour themselves into high profile careers and education. To even go as far as I did in my most recent post “needing a little help” is close to ladder climbing. To pursue desires and goals in sheer self determination, often is not the image of the virtuous Mennonite woman. Instead she waits, prays and is faithful to everything she has in front of her presently and trusts God to expand her circle of influence. I think we would all do well to have a bit more of the virtuous Mennonite woman’s spirit.

It’s no wonder there are desperate singles. As often and as central as the topic of marriage and singleness is mentioned, it surprises me no longer that young un-married women get desperate. Old maids are sort of an undesired class of their own, even though the community tries to teach and exemplify inclusion of the un-married.

The car-ride banter and commentary was enough to substantiate this assertion.
We all started off at 4 am, in a 16 passenger van. Everyone but me was wide awake and “cackling like a bunch of chickens,” as they described themselves.

A group of old maids were discussing how big of an age difference would be acceptable. It was decided that 15 years would be okay. Some time later one of them was married to a widower 18 years her senior.

I’ve often wondered why it’s generally more okay for the man to be significantly older than the woman but not vice versa. I was once turned down because I was 3 years older than the guy. I laughed at the comedy of it all, because I look like I’m at least 5 years younger than I am, if not more. My mom is 5 years older than my dad and I have an aunt who is 11 years older than her husband. So, my family has nixed the norm of the man being older than the woman. Generally, it makes more sense to have the woman be older, with respect to comparative life expectancy of males and females. Unless of course men die early so that women can experience a few years of freedom before they die.

Once a widower was dating around a bit. He met a widow that he had an interest in. But he wanted to know if she knew how to operate a catheter. I suppose the moral of that story is, when you get older your deal-breakers change.

An old maid was tired of having people ask her if she was married or who her husband was. So, she decided a snappy come-back was appropriate. The next time someone asked who her husband was she responded, “Well you see his wife hasn’t died yet.”

Another old maid was in a similar situation and she also responded to this inquiry. “Well,” she said, “My husband is Checkie Nix nutz and he died when he was an infant.

"Checkie" is the Penn. Dutch way to say Jake, which is a common name. The “ch” sound is used to pronounce the Js. My grandma did it all the time. Jerry became Cherry. It’s a little confusing when someone calls a grown man Cherry. Nix nutz is a word often used to describe a child’s careless play or something that amounts to no useful good.

needing a little help

2007-09-12T16:24:00.000-05:00

Now I’m going to feel really stupid if nobody responds to this post, so please feel especially free to contribute to the comments section.

writing
A professor from my leadership department urged me to write articles to sell to journals or something of that nature. He wasn’t able to give me much more specific direction. I’ve also thought of writing pocket sized works on themes in Anabaptist theology. Something that would not be like the “green monster” as Millard Erickson’s Christian Theology was nicknamed in the not so recent past by seminary students. It would be small and modestly priced—my aim is reform not profit. Where does one begin and who do you talk to? What themes would I pursue and what contributors would I include? I think I need a coach. These are mostly focus questions. I know I need a bit of help with focus. I swear I’ve developed ADHD over the past few years and it doesn’t do anything for my focus. How does one develop such a thing this late in life—I do have a very reasonable explanation, which I am certain nobody wants to hear.

work
I am also thinking of starting a business of sorts. I have some grand ideas for what I want it to look like eventually. But it includes vast fields of knowledge I know nothing about, like creating and maintaining a website and accounting. I also need to know folks in the design and textile industry. I want to create an organizational structure that supports a local community and has a decentralized and localized leadership. It would distribute or exchange local handcrafted items or clothing, connecting artesian, vendor and consumer in a personal way. Has anyone heard of something like this or know of an organization that works in this way. I’m sure it’s out there. I just haven’t run into it yet.

I also need to know how and where to begin moonlighting as an instructor to gain experience. The subject would be theological; unless you see other themes I would be good at in this chaos I call my blog. I know it involves developing a lesson plan. But it also involves selling myself, which I’m really terrible at, thanks to my humble upbringing. For the Amish and conservative Mennonites an entire strand of DNA has been genetically altered to ensure that no one bring undue attention to oneself in a prideful way. This makes a resume...ah, well, substandard in mainstream terms. But how do I start and where? I’ve already spoken numerous times in classes on pacifism mostly and to special interest topics relating to pillars in the Amish-Mennonite tradition but this hasn't given me many leads or other opportunities.

a child’s place in the kingdom

2007-09-06T00:25:00.000-05:00

I tend to think there is a bit of sense in the statement, your theology isn’t worth anything if it can’t be understood by a child.

A few weeks ago, a 5 year old was put under my care. I was in charge of putting her to bed and all that good stuff. Like any child, there’s the bedtime story begging. She had a book of her own which involved a story of some questionable ethics and wanted it read again. I hesitated when I suddenly realized what a golden opportunity I had. Instead, I suggested something new and pulled out a Bible story book of my own childhood. She was enthused. It had tons of pictures in it. And we paged through, trying to pick what story to read based on the pictures. She spotted a picture that enthralled her of white robed people, lined up on a golden stair, with palms in their hands and smiling faces. She asked me what it was a picture of. I paused a bit too long as I thought about how people lined up on a golden stair really wasn’t heaven to me. I responded by saying, “Well, someone was imagining what heaven looks like when they drew this picture. See, there is Jesus and everybody wants to be with him.”
“I don’t want to go to heaven,” she said.
“Why don’t you want to go to heaven?”
“I’m afraid my mommy will die.”
How can anyone describe heaven as a desirable place to a child who is afraid of death because it means separation from her mom?
“Well, we are all going to die some day, even me, even you. But heaven is like a big party. And little by little people go to the big party. And people keep talking about the party. And more and more people you know start going there, until almost everyone you know is at the party. Then you think to yourself, I want to go there too, because everyone I know is there. That’s what heaven is like and that’s how we all come to want to be there.”

I showed her the picture of my beautiful sister. I told her we used to sleep together in this very bed, as I tucked her in. I told her that my sister had died and because she loved Jesus she had gone to be with him. I told her how I too wanted to be with Jesus more than ever now because she was with him. But in my heart I understood, humanly speaking, how Jesus must seem kinda greedy.

I don’t know how well I did in my little theological discussion about heaven and death, with a 5 year old but it dawned on me then. Children are some of the best theological critics a person could ask for. Is it any wonder that Luther was a renown theologian? He taught his students at the breakfast table along with his children. Certainly, there was room for dialog and there were children there to crosscheck the theology. It may be one point in the direction of success. But I do think it a significant one. I vowed never to refuse a child a story because it was equally as formative, personally.

How would you describe heaven to a 5 year old?
What would you draw if you drew heaven for a 5 year old?

Beachy-Amish parables and comics

2007-09-05T10:53:00.000-05:00

An amazingly serious parable found here, written by the Holiness Beachy boy, who seems to otherwise be full of sarcastic fun and games. It’s got just the right amount of familiarity, with the story line moving with the flow of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Yet the deviations startle and surprise, as does the harsh punishment. It is truly a very Beachy parable, as it casts its particular points of evaluation on those who would call themselves Christian and finds them wanting.

You should also check out the satire in the remaining posts on his blog. I highly recommend, the comics on the exploits of SuperBeachy the Amish-Mennonite Superhero. The satire pokes fun at all that is sacred and serious in the Beachy world. Marriage and music. The later being the topic of great tension within the Beachy world—the question of what music is most Godly. Certainly, rock-n-roll is of the devil to those who don’t allow even one musical instrument to cross the thresholds of their churches. Even now it is likely that the evils of rock-n-roll are still being denounced from the pulpit, leaving congregants in wide-eyed fear, while the rest of the world has moved on. And so it is, in the world of SuperBeachy in Episode 2. He is summoned for help when a youth group has found themselves slipping under the control of the likes of the spirit of RockAcapella*. Only the materialized spirit of Menno Simon himself—could it be?—come back from the dead to sing the Lobliet (“Ohh-oh-oh-oh-ohh. Gott vater…”) could save this youth group. Very funny! It leaves you wondering how the author of this comic, if he is truly Beachy, how has he come to see Spiderman?

*RockAppella is the term thrown at those deviant youth who added percussion (of the non-instrumental sort) to their A ccapella songs. Technically, it was all still a ccapella, but had all the flair of PuffDaddy’s spitting, bomping percussion man.

the widow

2007-09-03T05:26:00.000-05:00

The story—it was so strange, I hardly believe it myself. It took place in the world between worlds. Perhaps, somewhere in heaven but to my soul it was as hot as hell. Or maybe it took place in hell, but heaven sustained me. I was embraced but hated, loved but sinned against. I loved in return but was rejected. I told the truth but it became a lie. I defended evil and sinned against another. The good seemed evil and evil seemed good.

I had traveled all day. I had started out on the subway, with masses of pushing people, making my way to the edge of the city. I suppressed the wide-eyed stories of people getting robbed there. “They come up to you and take everything and run, they even grab the earrings out of your ears.” I fingered my fake hoops. Costume jewelry. The micro moved along smoothly across extraordinarily beautiful, rugged country, beauty that took your breath away, while the small screened television squeaked out an American movie with translation in white words along the bottom. My head ached from stress and exhaustion. I tried to nap but couldn’t. I tried to pray instead, making out the signs as we traveled.

We arrived at the transfer station. I read the signs. I looked around. I bought flavored water in a bag, drinking it with a straw. I bought another ticket for a smaller, dustier bus. The bus driver spoke to me. I responded. Rural folks got on the bus, carrying bags of groceries and bought goods. I got on the bus. The bus driver offered me a single red rose. I thanked him. I sat in the window seat. I fingered the thorn on the rose. I rearranged my veil about my face, watching in rapt attention. I’d never seen anything quite like it. School kids in uniforms got on the bus and got off again. We arrived at the pueblito: everyone got off. The hot dusty air took your breath away.

Late that night, exhausted from walking the dusty streets, I walked along a road leading to the country. My feet tired and dusty. I hugged my veil about myself as the cool of the night was beginning to chill. Others walked the road with me but one woman with her daughter walked near me. She greeted me. I responded. The compassion in her voice drew me to trust her. She asked me what I was doing. I said I was looking for someone. She stopped at a house to inquire. She invited me to her home. I went with her. Her home was on the far edge of town, down next to a gully. Her home, a large room of peeling paint and cement, with a dirt floor. The stove stood outside along with washtubs and towels hanging in the trees. The donkey was tied to a tree. We sat at her table. I asked who she was. I thought she might be an angel, God's compassion to me. We spoke of faith. Our hearts connected. The TV blared obscenities at us, while I read through her Bible study materials. Her nieces, daughter and other children slept or watched TV in the gigantic bed positioned next to the kitchen table. We spoke way into the night and were startled at the lateness of the hour. She wrapped her shawl about herself, accompanying me to my lodging place in the pitch black of night. I fell asleep, comforted, welcomed, received, listened to—accompanied.

The night was pitch black but our hearts had been warmed. The good wore dusty feet and evil wore a beautiful coat. Right was right and wrong was wrong but for a moment, as the grand charlatan was silenced for a moment. I was sustained by a poor widow, who walked with me along a dusty road one night and became my friend.

I think I love my in-laws: contrary to popular expectation

2007-08-26T00:39:00.000-05:00

So a lot of my siblings have been getting married recently. One per summer for the past 3 summers. Frankly, I have enjoyed the new editions—the spouses. It adds a new dynamic to family. It puts an added dimension of mystery to family get-togethers in the who is this person? I can't wait to see how this package unwraps. Like the times when we all get to my parents for some family gathering at 11 pm or later. And for some reason everyone else has decided to arrive at that hour or later. It only takes two in the kitchen at midnight to start us off. Then the rest of us get home at a ridiculous hour and find others in the kitchen to join and laugh with and talk to. But first, every new arrival must open the fridge door to see what delights wait inside to be devoured. The gathering gets quite boisterous as the kitchen meeting grows. Then, Mom generally comes to investigate, with sleepy eyes and her hair in an upheaval. It’s fun to add new people to that midnight get-together in the kitchen, where everyone is too happy to see each other to think about sleep.

There is the addition of my oldest brother’s wife, who’s instant excitement and fun-loving nature adds to the positive dimension of every gathering. There is the charisma and take charge input of my sister’s husband. Then there is the kind, helpful, supportive and giving goodwill of my other two sister’s-in-law. Who ever characterized in-laws as out-laws is quite distracted from the intent of marriage to the family unit. One must be inclined to delight in the new editions. One must envision how the new edition’s strengths will contribute toward a more positive whole.

I think I love my in-laws.

necessity of reconciliation: dependant upon community demographics?

2007-08-20T18:36:00.000-05:00

I was chatting with a friend when he told me an interesting story of a daughter off to college for her freshman year. She will have 2 immediate roommates and 5 suite mates who are placed together at random. By sheer random chance—rare chance—I might add, the daughter is placed with a girl from her early teenage years, who was a bit of a terror to her life. The girl eventually moved out of the community of her childhood and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. She remembers. Her parents remember. And both had to be decided in their choice to not go on a preemptory “fix” of the “situation” which would have been to get another roommate.

I thought about how random such a situation is. How rare. By sheer chance this girl must face the past she had with another girl. But when I move to another category of my memory, I realize for others, this is not rare at all. This happens all the time in the Mennonite circles. The community is not big enough for estranged parties to loose one another in the crowd. One must face their past relationship or mis-relationship with the other sooner or later for life would cough up that person back into the present now and again. The community simply wouldn’t survive, if past situations weren’t worked through and people didn’t reconcile. Business exchanges, friendships, family relationships: issues arise but relationships must become priority. With dating even, one can’t simply perform a crash trial run for experience or fun. People in close community notice. They notice how people relate. Everyone is accustomed to being watched and remembered.

So, Mennonites, known for their reconciliation efforts, have incorporated this value because community demographics necessitate it or because they are called to emanate this aspect of the kingdom?
Further, what happens to the social group that has the capacity to “loose” all one’s enemies?

Although: (I would argue one can’t exactly loose his/her enemy. The movie “Babel” is a very poetic picture of how it is not possible to “loose” one’s enemy.) One may loose the face of an individual to the crowd, yet it returns in the face of another to haunt you. Wiccans and pagans always remember the law of threefold return, which states that whatever is done through your hand, whether good or bad, it will return to you threefold. Psychologists recognize the continued presence of the “lost” enemy in something they call transference.

the farmer's daughters

2007-08-20T18:31:00.000-05:00

This is my photo of the year.

To the farmer's daughters, green is always in style. Well, maybe not exactly. That is...it may not exactly be the intent of the the farmer's daughters to be in vogue with farming. Perhaps its the Bemidji Beavers that love green too. But it is an amazing coincidence. Isn't it?

So, for those city folk who don't get it. Green is the farmer's color. And not just any shade of green. It's grass green. It's like Petty Blue. A bucket of blue and a bucket of white. It's very particular. So, between the bridal shop and the sisters' closets, it's a beautiful color. Then when we paraded it past our father in his easy chair, he looked at us with a squint in his left eye. No words were spoken but we knew immediately, "It's John Deere green!" John Deere. "Nothing runs like a Deere." Yes, John Deere, one of the biggest farm machinery manufacturing companies in the US. My father's preference. Also, green is Pioneer seed. One of the largest farmer's seed companies. But I like the color, even though this daughter has become a city dweller.

I think I prefer this photo to the one with all sisters in pink, although I have come to cherish that one too.

the cake

2007-08-13T17:08:00.000-05:00

the couple

2007-08-13T17:02:00.000-05:00

Married on August 12, 2007

so, they call me stone wall

2007-08-09T13:59:00.000-05:00

Running on very little sleep. Think I got 3 hours last night. It’s the mammoth crunch time before the big event—my baby sister’s wedding. Dress alterations. Baking cake. Watching sugar boil. Making eggs fluffy. I’m cranky. I’m happy. I’m mad. I will take control of the situation. I will delegate and take a moment to pray. New ideas! Wow! Thank you, God. Lists of things to build the cake. Lists of things to wear. Lists of things to get done at work. Ooops here’s another dress to alter. My head is perpetually full of lists. I hope someone can keep me abreast the activities I must be at. Being there and on time is not my gift. As it seems everything else is. Conversations with relatives coming in to town. Airport schedules. A moment for a heart to heart. Boy problems. (Hers. Not mine. No boy problems outside the fact that there are none.) She cries. I cry. I’m a mess on too little sleep. I will work. I will concentrate. I will take charge of the situation. Ooops, I just poured water down my front. Oh, yes I am your administrative assistant. Pleased to meet you. I am here to help you. Please excuse the fact that I just drenched myself. More conversations. More dark secrets. More fears and terrors. Another sleep deprived night. Another day at the keyboard and blue screen. Random tears on the keyboard. Time card is due. Feeling guilty. Don’t they know that bodies can occupy spaces, while the minds do whatever. Oh, my aching back. Another phone call. Why did she say that to me in that tone, with that bitty edge to it? More emotions. And more tears. More wedding plans. Who’s going here or there when and with whom. And why? Everyone must discuss why. More tears. Who the heck is getting married anyway? And why is everybody behaving like the bride. Can I just have everyone be responsible here. Okay get it under control. You can do this. A 5 minute nap maybe. I’m gonna build this cake. Its’ gonna be huge. It’s gonna be sky high. Made with sweat and tears. And next time somebody else will do it, because I will demonstrate how fun it is.

Stonewall? Yeah sometimes, just not now.

the walk to redemption

2007-08-01T00:18:00.000-05:00

1. Decision: Entering into living forgiveness.
Turn from the ways you have sought to rectify or feel better about hurtful incidents in your life. It takes a million different forms. Ignore acknowledging anything happened at all. Talking about the incident incessantly for the rest of your life in an unredeemed light. Defaming the person who did it. Taking revenge on the person who did it. Wrongly allocating blame by either taking on too much blame or never taking on any blame. Indulging in self-medicating habits.

2. Invitation: Invite God into the picture to mediate between you the elements and the other.
God is the only just and wise judge of all situations, complication and hurtful deeds done amongst his children. Only he knows how to fix it and who is responsible for what. What’s more, outside of the growth experienced in owning our actions, he is overflowing in mercy and compassion and can heal every hurt no matter how fickle. He can erase pain and the effects of the hurts done, intentionally or unintentionally through another. He can change our perspective on what was done and who done it. He is the all knowing one, who created for harmony the things that often go crash. Let God construct the reality of the situation. Let God be the interpreter of it. Let God be the judge between you, your brother and the elements. Let God determine where the responsibility shall rest. Let him decide how you shall proceed to behave righteously in spite of the pain and because of the cross.

3. Choose the kingdom: Renounce the agreements you’ve made and the unholy responses you create as a result of your wounds.
Those little vows you make when you’ve been hurt. Renounce them and let God be the salve to soothe the soul. Do not let your wounds determine your future nor the nature of your soul, for they surely will unless God is the sole director of your life.

4. Mourn: Grieve the injustice done the pain inflicted.
The pain is real. You must feel it sometime. Grieve. Cry. Wail. Wail for the perpetrator. Cry for the situational injustice. Let it hurt for as long as it hurts. Your body may feel the excruciating pain of an emotional agony. Yet remember you have invited Christ into this situation. You are not alone. You fulfill that which the disciples didn’t in the Garden of Gethsemane. You are with Christ in that moment sweating blood. And when the time of mourning is over, it is over.

5. Enter into your holy calling: Pronounce the guilty forgiven.
“Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” Christ pronounces forgiveness over his persecutors, his killers, who have been caught in the cosmic drama in a war fought between heaven and hell. Christ sees who is ultimately responsible. In the garden he invited his Father into this drama. He sees now with his Father’s eyes. The just judge has revealed to him how he must conduct himself in the events of the cosmic drama, in the ultimate show-down between good and evil. He declares what will be. “I will destroy the temple and build it in three days.” He is a prophet. He is the Creator, resuming his responsibility among the created. He declares us forgiven. And we who have been redeemed declare our brother forgiven! Be co-creators with Christ. Declare he/she who has done you wrong—declare them forgiven. Take that list of damages done, which you've taken to God in prayer and absolve all those responsible for the various deeds done. Speak it into your life. “I no longer hold you responsible for...” “I forgive you for doing...to me.” "I forgive myself for..." Don't forget to declare yourself forgiven.

6. Journeying with him: He will walk with you and answer your questions.
On the road to Emmaus, Christ answered all their questions.

7. Watch for God's redemption. Wait and watch with expectation. Wait to take part in it.

I have trouble remembering

2007-07-30T17:59:00.000-05:00

I can’t remember much about her anymore.

I remember the moment when there were wisps of her life still clinging to the things she left behind. I remember sorting through her personal items after the funeral. Her toothbrush. It still smelled like toothpaste. Two weeks later I got it out again to look at it. I brought it to my nose. It no longer had the smell of toothpaste on it and like the fading memories, I struggled to remember, but I couldn’t. She wasn’t there to remind me of who she was.

I used to crash funerals for a while, after she died. I would look through the obituaries for the youngest person they had listed. One time there was a young man who had died because a police car had lost control at an intersection and run into him and his friend, while they had been driving home late one night. The movies taught me what to wear. I bought a black skirt a black hat and black sunglasses...black stockings and black shoes. I went to the cemetery and stood there among the mourners. The couple behind me dressed to the T in black, dark shades covering their eyes. They talked under their breath about the deceased’s sibling, when he burst into sobbing, as each family member left a rose on the casket. They clutched at each other. I hung onto every juicy detail.

I had to be sad. I needed to cry some more. I wished to be an ancient Hebrew mourner, where the rich would hire mourners to attend funerals of their beloved, following the procession weeping and wailing. I would have been the loudest of them all. I would have meant every bit of it.

The day we buried her, we all stood at the graveside, while the men in their Sunday straight coats and shoes shoveled dirt onto the lowered casket. There were no dark glasses to hide the tears in our eyes that day. There seemed not to be enough tears to cry the loss, so the God sent the elements to help us. First it snowed fluffy white flakes, then it rained and didn’t let up for a week. As for me, I didn’t see blue sky till late the following spring. After the mourners left, the following day, I returned to lay a solitary flower on the bare mound of brown clay carved into the green grass not yet deadened by the sleet and snow coming down. We don’t lay flowers on our graves. I came to lay mine in secret.

Last week I discovered my roommate at home on a work day. She is Jewish by heritage and Messianic by decision. It was Tish B’Av, a day designated by the Jews for mourning and fasting. The occasion, the destruction of the temple. I think I would enter full-heartedly into the mourning of the temple. We mourn the destruction of our individual earthly temples. Who mourns the disrepair of our spiritual houses of worship? Who mourns our broken families? Who mourns our society and our shattered world? No amount of mourning and wailing is enough to express the anguish we the created inflict upon God the creator. Mourn and wail when you can. And then mourn and wail some more wherever you wander on your sleepless nights. It is good to remember that we are all-together broken. And it is good to remember who can repair us.

Yes, I have trouble remembering the way things were and who she used to be.

miracle: when humankind sees God's salvation

2007-07-25T23:51:00.000-05:00

It seems throughout every new movement of spiritual renewal or awakening there are manifestations that fulfill the word of Isaiah, which John repeated,

A voice of one calling in the desert,
Prepare the way of the Lord,
Make straight paths for him.
Every valley shall be filled in,
Every mountain and hill made low
The crooked roads shall become straight,
The rough ways smooth.
And all mankind will see God’s salvation

Yes, things will be made right and justice will be dealt out. People will become whole again. People will see God’s salvation. Yes!? Or maybe not?
Lectures, debates and articles abound on the particulars of the theologies coming from these movements. Schemas of their worldview are constructed and discussed. But digging deeper, reading the fine print, dusting off volumes brings one to imagine the theological principles and their effect on the actual historical figures. Social impact must be considered. Why am I content with only half the story? Am I afraid of what the rest might mean? To hope—would it be too much? So, I observe a renown theologian observing and recounting the history of a movement. It reminds me of the time I went through a pastor’s library and found significant amounts of books on Katherine Kuhlman and other revival and healer types. I never saw any evidence of such an influence in this pastor’s service to his community. Yet there lies the evidence, of something.

John Howard Yoder writes, in an introduction to a small volume of significant thoughts by Eberhard Arnold, concerning the Religious-Social movement within German Protestantism. Social concern and pietism are intermingled, where pietism is defined as the encounter with God that changes reality, through “prayer, guidance and miracle.” Yoder cites the ministry of Johann Cristoph Blumhardt, who was a young pastor, who in an event of grace, witnessed/assisted the freeing of a young woman from a depressive possession. “Blumhardt developed a particular pastoral ministry over the next half century which his son, Christoph Friedrich took on. Yet (in a way quite distinct from the individualistic or internalistic turn which such deliverance ministries can take)” Yes, these are Yoder’s words of evaluative commentary. It suggests he has had enough encounter and read enough Blumhardt biography and autobiography to make such evaluative commentary about extraordinary, perhaps miraculous events. Further, among the spiritual and intellectual successors of the Blumhardts is none other than Karl Barth. Kutter, also a successor of social-religious movement influenced Arnold.

Further, I’ve encountered stories like the following, in reading Wesley, Finney and Whitefield. There was a Welsh man I believe who also preached during the Great Awakening. I don’t recall his name but I do recall the account given of a young man who was raised from the dead after 2 days of prayer and weeping. The young man who had died had been close to this minister’s heart and they had ministered together. His body had been laid out in a bedroom of a house. All others had pronounced him dead, as they prepared for the usual funeral events. Yet this man of God wept and prayed over his body, rejecting all help from those who tried to convince him the young man was dead. They even tied a cord around the dead youth’s neck, forcing it into an unnatural position, supposedly to demonstrate the lifelessness of the body. After two days the young man received life back into his body. Everyone was amazed. He was fully healed of the illness he had died of but his neck troubled him for the rest of his life. Accounts like these are numerous. I ran across the account when researching Wesley. While I was doing a search for the story above, I ran into a well cited paper on miracles and other acts of grace and strange phenomenon occurring during the times of great revival.

To this I only wrinkle my brow in consternation. I’ve seen societies which follow various of these dead men’s theological legacy. Don’t these folks know if the dust was swept back entirely, amazing and shocking things would be laid bare? Could this stuff uncovered not become the material of a stand up comedy such as the number the Earl of Shaftesbury pulled in “Characteristics” mocking the Huguenot immigrants, commonly known as French Prophets?

Could it be true?

I imagine myself rallying around the next John, wearing sandals and a rough coat. I imagine entering into the words of the prophet Isaiah once again. I don’t care on iota about the nay-saying ridicules. I want to see God’s salvation. I want the straight path. I want to cash in my lot with the disheveled character who eats locust and honey. His words are like a stream in this desert.

Yoder’s quotations are from the Introduction of Eberhard Arnold’s God’s Revolution. Plough Publishing, 1997.

frustrated with church?

2007-07-25T15:04:00.000-05:00

We've all been there, if you've ever done church for any length of time. It doesn't matter what congregation, what denomination, what new church plant, the struggle is always the same. When at first you think you've finally arrived at the perfect place, think...think again, for soon you will discover that fatal flaw. You begin to realize that perhaps it doesn't matter what they are doing and what doctrines they hold. It's a matter of call perhaps and internal cultivation within the called to environment. Here are the most excellent tips I seen on how to survive...no, rather, thrive in sandy soil of the called out environment, without doing war on the saints but instead, perfecting your own soul. An entry called, How to Survive Church, by Matt Stone.

unhooked weekends

2007-07-24T00:29:00.000-05:00

On the weekends I rarely “log onto” my web-based communications networks. I don’t want to waste my life away looking through a shadowed screen. I have also been to my parent’s farm out in rural Minnesota frequently, where there is no wireless. There is no TV. And there is barely a cell phone signal. It all helps me focus on the real verses the virtual. This is good for me, since I as a child could daydream for hours. My imagination alone would have been enough to keep me feeling like I was participating with concrete reality. I love being connected to the World Wide Web, but I do make sure I exist apart from it.

buddhist parable on possessions

2007-07-18T22:30:00.000-05:00

Although this is a Buddhist parable on possession of things, it is still applicable to our modern day preoccupation with money.
Call me cold-hearted but I rarely believe folks who say, "I'm broke." (I do empathize with the internal war of these situations.) However, generally truth be told it could be much worse. You just have to look around a bit and you've got something much worse materializing. People prostitute themselves the most when it comes to money and getting the things we think we need.

Releasing the Cows
(Told by Master Thich Nhat Hanh)

One day the Buddha was sitting in the wood with thirty or forty monks. They had an excellent lunch and they were enjoying the company of each other. There was a farmer passing by and the farmer was very unhappy. He asked the Buddha and the monks whether they had seen his cows passing by. The Buddha said they had not seen any cows passing by.

The farmer said, "Monks, I'm so unhappy. I have twelve cows and I don't know why they all ran away. I have also a few acres of a sesame seed plantation and the insects have eaten up everything. I suffer so much I think I am going to kill myself.

The Buddha said, "My friend, we have not seen any cows passing by here. You might like to look for them in the other direction."

So the farmer thanked him and ran away, and the Buddha turned to his monks and said, "My dear friends, you are the happiest people in the world. You don't have any cows to lose. If you have too many cows to take care of, you will be very busy.

"That is why, in order to be happy, you have to learn the art of cow releasing (laughter). You release the cows one by one. In the beginning you thought that those cows were essential to your happiness, and you tried to get more and more cows. But now you realize that cows are not really conditions for your happiness; they constitute an obstacle for your happiness. That is why you are determined to release your cows."

Oh, and for more of these look here

misunderstood concepts in forgiveness

2007-07-16T16:11:00.000-05:00

In my daily life of talking about forgiveness and trying to live forgiveness, I run into some misconceptions. Once I had a friend get angry with me, when I talked about forgiveness with regard to a wrong done to her. She thought I was saying that what her offender had done to her was negligible or insignificant. True forgiveness does not make this claim. Another time I was preparing to travel to a distant city with a companion. My primary purpose in going was to absolve someone of the things she had done to me—to forgive her and declare her forgiven. It was such a messy situation and involved deception and numerous people, that everyone knew the story of the offense done to me. Yet even though, I had prepared myself to not bring one iota of accusation against her or her family, my companion’s father still referred to my mission as the trip where Abby’s gonna go make some heads roll. In a worldly way of thinking, I would have been entirely justified and also had the capacity to seek my revenge. But I keep correcting people’s language when they refer to this story and the time when I went to confront my friend. “No,” I say, “I went to forgive my friend and her family.” Forgiveness is not confrontation.

Yet, both of these misunderstandings occur because worldly patterns which influence us give no space for redemptive patterns of response. I was once asked, what does one do when threatened given the fight or flight response schema. I would claim there is room under the fight category for using the adrenaline of the moment to actively resist/diffuse the threat in a redemptive way. But one has to choose into the redemptive gospel first before one can respond against the brainwashed patterns we’ve been taught from the culture.

Forgiveness is not the same as confrontation or a truth seeking session. Confrontation is when there is a forceful presentation of an agenda on some other person(s). In the arena of interpersonal wrongdoings, confrontation often takes the form of one person telling another, what he/she has done wrong. The recipient can accept, reject or amend the agenda. Truth seeking sessions are times of honesty and openness when those who involved in a “situation” gather to discover the truth about their “situation.” Confrontation and truth seeking session both precede forgiveness. Additionally, confrontation sessions tend to evoke resistance, so I don't generally advise them. Instead, I prefer truth seeking sessions. They involve questions as opposed to accusations. Although questions, open-ended or not, can be interpreted from a hostile slant or even placed in hostility.

Forgiveness is not negating/making of no consequence, a wrong that has occurred. The wrong has occurred. Individuals have been affected. Nothing will change that fact. Yet it is the human response to that offending act which render the act counter-consequential or as a generative furtherance of evil. Forgiveness writes the travesty into the script and rises above the effects by actively evoking the Spirit of Christ to transform the story into his grand redemptive narrative. Anger, revenge and acts of self-defamation transform the travesty into many more travesties like a viruses host cell, which has been taken captive generating more an more evils toward the infection of many more.

The consequences of true forgiveness is the unloading of burdens, the disassociation of one’s identity from the hurts, fears and guilts associate with/attached to an action done against you, which served to damage you relationally, emotionally or physically. Forgiveness (the noun) is a miracle (the noun). Forgiving (the verb) is the active participation in extending forgiveness (the noun) toward the healing of the other and the self toward their original created order. This is a miracle.

That forgiveness is possible is a miracle. When one extends forgiveness one extends power toward actualizing a miracle.

Somebody please give me a rule of thumb to go by on the use of affect and effect.

miracle: a definition

2007-07-12T22:28:00.000-05:00

Should be a verb, not a noun. It’s definition should be...
“the act of grace which spontaneously restores a noun or a relation toward its intended created order.”
(which means it would include the rescue of matter from entropy, according to Peter Atkins' original association of "entropy" with "disorder".)

2007-07-12T15:21:00.000-05:00

Mark 8

Jesus feeds the 5,000 with 7 loaves and fishes.

22 They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. 23 He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man's eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, "Do you see anything?" 24 He looked up and said, "I see people; they look like trees walking around." 25 Once more Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 Jesus sent him home, saying, "Don't go into the village."

Jesus has a discussion with his disciples about his identity and who people think he is. Likely, the word circulating about the miracles is contributive toward the commentaries on Jesus' identity. The people associated Christ with the best "miracle stories" from their history: Elijah and John the Baptist.

enjoy your summer: part 2

2007-07-12T12:10:00.000-05:00

Let a calf suck on your fingers

one way to enjoy the summer

2007-07-12T12:05:00.000-05:00

My brother and I went out for a ride a while back. It was the first ride I had in years. He’s married now and rides with his wife. This time we did a bit of exploring. We followed the river so we could spot his wife out rowing with her team.

I like the feel of riding because you can’t really talk, you have to feel. Feel the balance. Feel the movement. Lean into a turn. Angle your head to avoid the crashing helmets. Anticipate a lane change. This time my brother started doing this strange ducking thing, where he would get into this uncomfortable hunched position behind the short windshield. Oh, I thought, I guess he’s doing this to lessen wind resistance. So, I duck also. After the ride we had this conversation.

Him: so did you like it when I ducked?
Me: sure. Wind resistance, huh.
Him: My wife likes it when I do that so that she can see the scenery better.
Me: ???!!!!

Isn’t my brother a really nice guy. This is just one of the many little things he does to help and love everyone. Too bad I was all stuck up in the mind of performance and commodity. I suppose the shirt he wore that day didn’t help get me out of that mode much. It didn’t say, “Smell the roses along the way.” Rather it was t-shirt from his bridge class project. It had four formulas on it one of them being the stress resistance of concrete and other structural engineering formulas.

saccharine notes

2007-07-11T15:40:00.000-05:00

He came to my door often, slipping little messages under it. It became his daily practice. One of these days I’ll have to respond I thought to myself.

The day came. I leaned on the knob preparing to open the door. I sent up a prayer and a struggle ensued. I was not willing to invite him to sit in my space just to hear him clink the change in his pocket for hours. A devious thought. Perhaps I could hang pornography on the door in an attempt to shock him into being repulsed by my door. No. No. I will not resort to sinister methods, I resolved. I must open the door and face him. I must speak to him honestly as a friend speaks with another friend.

But he would come and see that there was no one in my space with me, immediately concluding he could stay for the rest of the week. I imagined repulsing him with an argument. A list of topics fell into my left brain. I was tempted. No. No. No. I must open the door, smile and be a gracious host. I must tell him definitely and certainly how often he could come and for how long he could clink his change. This would put a stop to the energy he put into the saccharine notes under the door.

On the other hand, could this be a good thing? Sometimes there are great loyalties behind these little messages under the door. There is the possibility for an amazing friendship with someone unique and rare. Someone to watch my back. A cloudy pillow on which to rest. That would be wonderful. But the clinking change and the saccharine notes and the unnamable something behind those silly little things. What to do? No. No. There must be no more daily messages. The time and preoccupation they demand will only serve to creep into my soul. Like the repetition of half-truths, one certainly does come to believe them after hearing them like a daily mantra. The gifts. They will become a blessing. And time only time will reveal the unnamed something. Until then, certainly there will be joyful times and grace for all. Oh, but I ache for the best. The promises and notes of wisdom. The cloudy pillow on which to rest.

I open the door. There he stands with earnest stance.

Not a day later, I emerged from my space only to see little notes under every door in a hall of mirrors. The notes. They were the ones I had received. When did they begin to mass produce these? I kicked myself for the time and patience and grace I had demonstrated him. I was annoyed. I felt lied to. I had received as in earnest. I had handled with care and conscience. I should have thrown them away as one should a saccharine note. I should have filled my garbage with them as he sat before me. But the word of the Lord came to me. Yet, the one who turned water into wine spoke to me. I returned his visit. I knocked on his door. I watched for the saccharine to turn sweet.

new post

2007-07-06T17:20:00.000-05:00

So, I've accepted a new post as the blog manager of my good friend, Robert V. Rakestraw, otherwise known as Bob or Mr. Bag Man. Feel free to wander over to his site at http://bobrakestraw.blogspot.com/
He has been my boss, my ethics professor, my confidant, adviser and bouncer off of ideas. He should have come with a warning label saying, "Caution: you will forever be changed by this man's sincerity and kindness."

pride and education

2007-07-05T16:34:00.000-05:00

The Amish and the Mennonites are at times characterized according to their history as humble and simple folk, who during the radical reformation despite the fact that they were humble, simple unlearned peasants, spoke truth and meaning into the life of faith with surprising courage and confidence. Well, it was big enough to warrant the attention of even the highest officials of the establishment. This history follows us. I sometimes feel like I’m climbing a steep hill in keeping up with the rest of theological academia and their core interests, while maintaining the legitimacy of my own and tying it into the core of the mainstream. Yet the objective remains, establishing relevance and engaging folks toward transformation and kingdom living.

Recently, I was reminded of a former internal perspective that us simple folk have in associating higher education with pride. Granted the actuality is likely common, however, with a degree or two under my belt, I see things quite differently. Somehow I seem to have lost the pride perspective somewhere along the way and gained the realization of how little one really knows when he/she becomes “educated.” Instead, I see learning as an opportunity to interact with people both living and those who have died, leaving their thoughts and legacy behind in volumes upon a shelf. As I describe it in this way, I get this picture of bookish people sitting in a circle, in a dusty dank library, discussing ideas with the living and the dead and the not-yet-born. The dead are represented by an empty chair with a book lying open on it, while the shadowy ghostlike figure of its author hovers over and slightly behind it. People discuss his writings and his contribution and his intended meaning. Occasionally, the discussion causes the ghostly figure to wince a bit. The not-yet-born are represented by a formless white blot hovering over a chair. Few dialogue with it. Although I could imagine a said futurist deeply engaged in a private conversation with the white blot, while others ignore the oddity. Hopefully the circle breaks on occasion and these alive bookish folks dust themselves off a bit and venture into the outdoors to influence and change a few things.

misplaced identity

2007-07-03T13:36:00.000-05:00

I’ve been reading some Eberhard Arnold and found some food for thought and implementation, in his wisdom on forgiveness.

The Holy Spirit convinces the world about judgment. And that brings decision. Judgment consists in the fact that the Prince of this world is judged, not people. John 16: 8-11. Church discipline never fights against the individual concerned; it fights exclusively against the Prince of this human world, who is out to enslave souls, including those who belong to the church. 2 Timothy 2:24-26.

Most people are, however, truly enslaved. They are convinced that deeds done through their body by the Prince of this world are their own and that the judgments of these deeds are a personal attack on their identity. This is simply a matter of misconstrued identity. The judgment of these deeds that we experience in this life is toward the positive end for the soul to be purged of the evil identities that cling like parasitic spirits. Therefore, when a judgment comes our way as a result of evil deeds done by our own hand, we must resist the urge to defend ourselves, so that our souls can be purged of the identities we have assumed from him who is not our creator.

baby's day out

2007-07-02T14:06:00.000-05:00

Occasionally in life—for me it seems a bit more than occasional—we encounter near misses. Those things we could have done that would certainly have landed us into a load of trouble. Sometimes there are those things we’re on the verge of doing but in a seeming moment of distraction, we were diverted from inevitable disaster. What disturbs me the most is when I look back and realize I have been saved from certain disaster in a moment of concerted decision, initiated by revelatory intuition, in the face of everyone jolly coming along and doing it too.

I was telling my brother about my numerous near misses--recently realized. I was freaked out and in a bit of a nervous tizzy as I told him the scenarios. His reaction was not like mine at all. He smiled and laughed and said, isn’t God amazing. He told me about how once a house church member of ours had marveled at the way I seemed to innocently leap into the middle of all sorts of crazy situations and walk out unscathed. I didn’t realize this was happening until he mentioned it. It’s something like the movie, “Baby’s Day Out.”

Our reaction to the suddenly realized danger we were in that God saved us from is entirely our choice. We could be any number of characters in that movie. We could be the baby snatchers, who know what evil intends. We could be the parents, freaking out over their baby, who God has obviously taken charge of that day.

My consejos for the day are these, be as innocent as that baby. Be as scheming as the baby snatcher. Be as concerned as the parents over the danger of another’s soul. And have a great day out and about, living up the adventure of life.

history as our school teacher

2007-06-28T10:03:00.000-05:00

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?

2007-06-26T15:21:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-14T11:03:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-14T10:10:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-12T22:49:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-12T14:54:00.001-05:00

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

my interview

2007-06-09T10:45:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-09T10:18:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-09T09:59:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-09T09:30:00.000-05:00

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

2007-06-04T09:39:00.000-05:00

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.

2007-06-03T21:40:00.000-05:00

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

cheap living

2007-06-03T18:49:00.000-05:00

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.